Hampden–Sydney College (H-SC) is a private liberal arts men's college in Hampden Sydney, Virginia. Founded in 1775, Hampden–Sydney is the oldest privately chartered college in the Southern United States, the tenth-oldest college in the US, the last college founded before the American Declaration of Independence, and the oldest of only three four-year, all-male liberal arts colleges remaining in the United States (alongside Morehouse and Wabash). Hampden–Sydney College is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register. It is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA). Among its alumni is President William Henry Harrison. History Founding and early years The college's founder and first president, Samuel Stanhope Smith, was born in Pequea, Pennsylvania. He graduated as a valedictorian from the College of New Jersey (now, Princeton University) in 1769, and he went on to study theology and philosophy under John Witherspoon, whose daughter he married on June 28, 1775. In his mid-twenties, working as a missionary in Virginia, Smith persuaded the Hanover Presbytery to found a school east of the Blue Ridge, which he referred to in his advertisement of September 1, 1775 as "an Academy in Prince Edward...distinguished by the Name of HAMPDEN–SIDNEY". The school, not then named, was always intended to be a college-level institution; later in the same advertisement, Smith explicitly models its curriculum on that of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). "Academy" was a technical term used for college-level schools not run by the established church. As the college history indicates on its web site, "The first president, at the suggestion of Dr. John Witherspoon, the Scottish president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), chose the name Hampden–Sydney to symbolize devotion to the principles of representative government and full civil and religious freedom which John Hampden (1594–1643) and Algernon Sydney (1622–1683) had outspokenly supported, and for which they had given their lives, in England's two great constitutional crises of the previous century. They were widely invoked as hero-martyrs by American colonial patriots, and their names immediately associated the College with the cause of independence championed by James Madison, Patrick Henry, and other less well-known but equally vigorous patriots who composed the College's first Board of Trustees." Classes at Hampden–Sydney began in temporary wooden structures on November 10, 1775, on the eve of American Independence, moving into its three-story brick building early in 1776. The college has been