Princeton, New Jersey

“ In consequence of this disposition, what is now Princeton College was founded in 1746. This institution was first called the "College of New Jersey," and was established at Elizabethtown. It was in its early days a very small seat of learning; for, when the Rev. Mr. Dickinson was appointed to be its president, the faculty consisted entirely of himself, and his only assistant was an usher. There were then about twenty students in the college. ”

“ Wildness is wholly absent, but so is tameness too. It is somehow through its very moderation that the glamour of this land is wrought. But we must nicely distinguish between the poetry and the prose of moderation: Princeton Junction, New Jersey, is perfectly moderate, and is also the type and pattern of hundreds of thousands of square, comfortable, unoffending miles in the United States which you would never wish to see again—indeed which you would never wish to see once; whereas, even as I write, I am homesick for Touraine, though it isn't my home. ”

“ New Jersey had begun to feel the effects of the great political reform movement sweeping the country and Democratic leaders knew that the state could not be won for their party unless a strong, clean man led the ticket. Woodrow Wilson's splendid campaign to make Princeton a truly American institution had caught the eye of the whole country. He had been a life long Democrat. New Jersey had within her borders the very man the party needed. ”

“ A normal school has been in successful operation at Trenton for several years, and has nearly 250 pupils. The college of New Jersey at Princeton, and its sister theological seminary, although not State institutions, occupy places in the very front rank of American schools of learning. Finance.—The only State debt is that known as the war debt, amounting at present to less than $1,700,000, and paid off at the rate of $100,000 per annum. ”

“ Trenton is the capital of New Jersey, and contains about two hundred houses, together with four churches. The streets are commodious, and the houses neatly built. The state house, in which congress met for some time during the war, is a heavy clumsy edifice.
PRINCETON. Twelve miles from Trenton, stands Princeton, a neat town, containing about eighty dwellings in one long street. Here is a large college, held in much repute by the neighbouring states. The number of students amounts to upwards of seventy ”

“ Amzi Dodd, ex-chancellor of New Jersey and the ex-president of the New Jersey Life Insurance Company. He is still a resident of that State. During the past three-score years it has been my privilege to deliver between sixty and seventy sermons or addresses in Princeton, either to the students of the University or of the Theological Seminary, or to the residents of the town. The place has become inexpressibly dear to me as a magnificent stronghold of Christian culture and orthodox faith, on the walls of whose institutions the smile of God gleams like the light of the morning. ”

“ Our victories at Trenton and Princeton were received as the signals for action. As the enemy retired on Brunswick, they were followed by the exasperated farmers, and harassed terribly. But, at the time when my story commences, the red-coats were in quiet possession of New Jersey, from Burlington to New York. General Washington had come over on this side of the Delaware. ”

“ Ten years afterwards the college was established at Princeton.
The manners and customs of the college must have been very primitive, and we will give a few of the rules which were made for the students: "Every scholar shall keep his hat off to the president about ten rods, and about five to the tutors. When walking with a superior, they shall give him the highest place, and when first going into his company, they shall show their respects to him by first pulling off their hats ”

“ Succeeding Congresses had been held there, with the exception of the period when the city was in the possession of the enemy, in the year 1777, until, on the 21st of June, 1783, in consequence of the mutiny of the soldiers, the President was authorized to summon the members to meet at Trenton, or Princeton, in New Jersey, "in order that further and more effectual measures may be taken for suppressing the present revolt, and maintaining the dignity and authority of the United States." ”

“ The task I mean, is to drive the enemy out of New Jersey, for at present they occupy Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, Pennytown, Bordenton, Burlington, Morristown, Mount Holly, and Haddonfield, having their main body about Princeton, and strong detachments in all the other places, it is supposed with a design of attacking this city, whenever they can cross the Delaware on the ice, for they have only been kept from it, by our sending up the gondolas and bringing off, or destroying, all the boats along the Jersey shore. ”

“ New-Jersey and Pennsylvania ladies are, in my opinion, collectively handsome, the most so of any in the United States. But I hope our Yankee ladies will not be jealous at hearing this; I allow that they have as many mental beauties as the others have personal, perhaps more, I know nothing about it—they are all handsome.
We passed through Princeton and encamped on the open fields for the night, the canopy of heaven for our tent. Early next morning we marched again and came up with the rear of the British army. ”

“ After leaving Princeton he tries teaching, the law, the newspaper, the sea; he is aflame with patriotic zeal; he writes, like most American poets, far too much for his own reputation. As the editor of the National Gazette in Philadelphia, he becomes involved in the bitter quarrel between his chief, Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. His attachment to the cause of the French Revolution makes him publish baseless attacks upon Washington. By and by he retires to a New Jersey farm, still toying with journalism, still composing verses. He turns patriotic poet once more in the War of 1812 ”

“ It ended in Princeton getting her magnificent Graduate College — and losing her president. Mr. Wilson felt that he could be of no more service to Old Nassau. When therefore an opportunity to serve his fellow men came with the Democratic nomination to the governorship of New Jersey, he accepted it, and doubtless gladly, for it opened the avenues of statesmanship and public service for which his whole life had been an unconscious preparation. ”

“ That he was at Trenton the night before Christmas and aided in the defeat and capture of that hated Hessian contingent that had been marauding up and down New Jersey is also an established fact. It is equally true that with the three Rhode Island regiments, forming a material part of Washington’s army, he braved the elements in that historic night march from Trenton to Princeton, fought the next morning in the battle of Princeton, and successfully assisted in driving Cornwallis out of New Jersey. It was the crisis of the Revolution. ”

“ There was another famous American sailor who came out of New Jersey, who was perhaps of as much value to his country as any other naval commander, although he was not the hero of any great sea fights.
This was Robert F. Stockton, who was born in Princeton, and who entered the navy early in life. He became an excellent officer and a great fighter. His disposition to do battle showed itself not only in leading men into action, but in doing a great deal of fighting himself. He distinguished himself in several naval combats during the war with Algiers. ”

“ He served as tutor in the College of New Jersey, and in 1822 founded a grammar school at Princeton, which he conducted until 1827, when he became interested in the effort to supply every family in New Jersey with the Bible. ”

“ The next morning the ladies and children left New York for Philadelphia, the home of the Davises. On the journey there Mrs. Parke was begged for a story of the time when Washington fought so hard to protect the city they were bound for.
"After leaving Brunswick, New Jersey, when Cornwallis appeared there, Washington retreated, leaving twelve hundred men to protect Princeton, and, with the rest of the army, proceeded to Trenton, on the Delaware. ”

“ The governor of the State of New Jersey is ex officio president of the board of trustees, who are twenty-five in number besides the president of the college. The trustees appoint the members of the faculty and have entire control over the funds and property of the college. They fill all vacancies in their own body. ”

“ The surrounding district is fertile, and is engaged in farming and cattle-raising and coal-mining. The water-works and electric light plant are owned and operated by the municipality. Princeton was settled in 1830, incorporated in 1838, and chartered as a city in 1881. ”

“ It has surprised the people of the United States to find New Jersey at the front in enterprises of reform. I, who have lived in New Jersey the greater part of my mature life, know that there is no state in the Union which, so far as the hearts and intelligence of its people are concerned, has more earnestly desired reform than has New Jersey. There are men who have been prominent in the affairs of the State who again and again advocated with all the earnestness that was in them the things that we have at last been able to do. ”

“ William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia, is appointed to be governor of the province of New Jersey. I make no doubt that the people of New Jersey will make some remonstrances at this indignity put upon them. You are full as well acquainted with the character and principles of this person as myself, and are as able to judge of the impropriety of such an appointment. What a dishonor and a disgrace it must be to a country to have such a man at the head of it, and to sit down contented. ”

“ They are of simple well-proportioned architecture, of a distinctive type, less luxuriant, massive, and exuberant than those across the river in Pennsylvania, although both evidently derived from the Christopher Wren school. The old Jersey homes seem to reflect with great exactness the simple feeling of the people and to be one expression of the spirit of Jersey democracy.
There were no important seats of commerce in this province. Exports of wheat, provisions, and lumber went to Philadelphia or New York, which were near and convenient. ”

“ One autumn night about a decade ago, in the quiet village of Princeton, a party of bold young men might have been seen wending their way stealthily westward along the broad, though wavering, line that marks the route by which in former days the stage-coaches were wont to rumble back and forth between New York and Philadelphia. ”

“ Such is the skilled and educated industry of New England, and such the inventive genius of her people, that there is no limit to her products, except markets and consumers. As New York increases, the swelling tide of the great city will flow over to a vast extent into the adjacent shores of Connecticut and New Jersey, and Hoboken, West Hoboken, Weehawken, Hudson City, Jersey City, and Newark will meet in one vast metropolis. Philadelphia will also flow over in the same way into Camden and adjacent portions of New Jersey, whose farms already greatly exceed in value those of any other State. ”

“ For the sake of your State—for the sake of her reputation through the world—for your own sakes—for the sake of your children, and their children yet to be—say to the world that New Jersey shares in the spirit of this age,—that New Jersey is not a survival of the Dark Ages,—that New Jersey does not still regard the thumb-screw as an instrument of progress,—that New Jersey needs no dungeon to answer the arguments of a free man, and does not send to the penitentiary men who think, and men who speak. ”

“ From Harper’s Magazine
Copyright, 1918, by Harper and Brothers.
Copyright, 1919, by Harrison Rhodes. The pretty, peaceful Jersey farm-land slopes gently up from the Delaware River to the little hill which Princeton crowns. It is uneventful country. The railway does not cross it, nor any of the great motor trunk roads. On the river itself there is no town of considerable size, though on the map you read the quaint name of Washington Crossing for a little hamlet of a few houses. ”

“ Princeton offers opportunities for study and research in the natural and exact sciences which are in some ways unique. The situation in the country, but within easy reach of New York and Philadelphia, offers many advantages. With its peculiar attractions, Princeton takes its place with the great universities so closely lining the eastern seaboard—Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Pennsylvania and the Johns Hopkins. ”

“ On the road from Princeton to Fitchburg we passed fields which were entirely covered with the mountain-laurel in full bloom,—as splendid a spectacle, in its way, as could be imagined. Princeton is a little town, lying on a high ridge, exposed to all the stirrings of the upper air, and with a prospect of a score of miles round about. The great family of this place is that of the Boylstons, who own Wachusett, and have a mansion, with good pretensions to architecture, in Princeton. ”

“ Paterson and Neighboring Cities and Towns.—Paterson, located at the Falls of the Passaic River, had a population in 1920 of 135,866 and is the third city of the state in size. The founding of the city was suggested by Alexander Hamilton, who foresaw the value of the power generated by the falls and made plans to use it for manufacturing purposes. Its great growth as a manufacturing center is largely due to this power. In the value of its manufactures, it is the fifth among the cities of the state. Its most important industry is the manufacture of silk products of all kinds. ”