Princeton Beginnings (1746-1756)
“I believe he has no more grace than the chair that I am leaning upon.”
1
That remark is arguably what ushered the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) into
existence. It was uttered by David Brainerd, future missionary and then student
at Yale College, concerning what he felt was the insufficiently fervent classroom prayer of one of his tutors.
A classmate overheard the jibe, and it quickly got back to Yale’s President, Thomas
Clap. Though it might have been dismissed as a forgivable indiscretion, tensions were high at
Yale as the First Great Awakening swept through New England. Due to the excesses of revivalists,
Clap had recently made it a punishable offense for zealous students to call their tutors “carnal or unconverted men.”
Concerned Presbyterian alumni of Yale who were open to the “New Light” revivalists, among them the
famous Jonathan Edwards and the New Jersey ministers Aaron Burr Sr. and Jonathan Dickinson, attempted
in vain to convince President Clap to keep Brainerd’s offense from leading to expulsion. They were
unsuccessful, and Clap’s resolve was the straw of resistance to revival that broke the camel’s back of
Yale loyalty. A new college was conceived. 2
But where to put it? Returning north to Harvard was inadvisable, as Harvard too had been forsaken
for resistance to new expressions of religious fervor. The only other colonial school, William and Mary,
was far too south – and, for Presbyterians, far too Anglican. Between the two lay New Jersey, conveniently
near a revival-friendly school, sarcastically dubbed the “Log College” by its enemies, which had
been in operation since 1726. 3 Not without serious resistance, the new school secured a royal
charter on Oct 22, 1746, and Rev. Jonathan Dickinson became the College of New Jersey’s first
president. Because students met in his Elizabeth, NJ parsonage, Dickinson’s home might then be
considered the College’s first “chapel.”
Early life at the College was not easy. The ability to “turn English into true and
grammatical Latin” and translating “any part of the four Evangelists from Greek into
Latin or English,” 4 was a skill not expected of the College's graduates, but of all potential
freshmen. The daily regiment included morning prayers shortly after the 5am waking
hour and evening prayers just before dinner, not to mention multiple Sunday
church services of much greater length.
