Davidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina with a historic 665-acre main campus and a 110-acre lake campus on Lake Norman. The college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars.Davidson annually enrolls about 1950 students from 47 states and 40 countries. Of those students, nearly 80 percent study abroad and about 25 percent participate in 21 NCAA Division I sports.Students may choose from 26 majors and 17 interdisciplinary minors, as well as other interdisciplinary studies. The college is governed by an honor code and the majority of students, about 93 percent, live on campus for all four years.HistoryAn institution of higher learning of The Presbyterian Church USA, Davidson College was founded in 1837 by The Concord Presbytery after purchasing 469acre of land from the family of a Revolutionary War commander, Brigadier General William Lee Davidson, for whom the college is named. Church records show a meeting on May 13, 1835, among subsequent meetings, by members of the Concord Presbytery making plans to purchase and perform initial construction on the land, with land payments starting Jan. 1 of the following year. The first students graduated from Davidson in 1840 and received diplomas with the newly created college seal designed by Peter Stuart Ney, who is believed by some to be Napoleon's Marshal Ney.
