The College of California was the predecessor of the University of California public university system. In 1853, in the recently established town of Oakland, California, noted educators Rev. Henry Durant and Dr. Samuel H. Willey founded the Contra Costa Academy to provide boys with a liberal arts education with a strong emphasis on the classics. It was nominally nonsectarian with a general Christian atmosphere, though its trustees, educators, and supporters consisted of a coalition of Congregationalists and Presbyterians. This private college preparatory school grew quickly and by 1855, with the benefit of some government grants and a new charter, the newly renamed College of California opened in what by then had become the city of Oakland, on the four blocks bounded by Twelfth, Fourteenth