Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, is an independent, undergraduate, coeducational, residential institution. It was founded in 1826 by citizens of Easton led by local lawyers James Madison Porter, Joel Jones (Yale), and an amateur botanist and mineralogist Jacob Wagener.

The initial prospectus called for a college "combining a course of practical Military Science with the course of Literature and General Science pursued in the Colleges of our Country."

Porter had met the French Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette during his farewell tour of America, and urged that they name the new college for him as "a testimony of respect for (his) talents, virtues, and signal services .... the great cause of freedom."

The governor of Pennsylvania signed the new college's charter on March 9, 1826. But it was not until 1832 that the Rev. George Junkin took up the charter and moved the curriculum and student body of the Manual Labor Academy of Pennsylvania from Germantown, Pennsylvania.

As of 2004, Lafayette has more than 2300 students.