A history of Rutgers College, 1766-1924 1924

Front matter

Co # < Wao oe

) fat MS SS

ra aha! Peay peeay SS x

Preface

HE one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Rutgers

College in 1916 called new and widespread attention to the origin and record of the college and compelled some diligent search into the available sources of knowledge concerning them. The preparation of an historical address for the celebration exercises involved acquaintance with and assembly of material far beyond the scope of such address. The work was a substantial beginning and encouragement of a written and detailed history appropriate to sesquicentennial time.

It was intended that the preparing of such story of the college should not delay. So large a work remained to be done, however, and the demands of ordinary affairs were so engrossing, that years passed without a resuming of the study. When, now, the time has come to finish the undertaking, the facts of a few years beyond the one hundred and fifty must be added. Much of the story is of the time before 1766, of men and circumstances in the background and beneath the foundation of the college itself. The record of the years that followed gives itself most of all to the men who, each in his day and generation, made the college, gave their life to it. Of the recent years especially a chronicle rather than a history ts given, scarce more than a narrating of events.

The work, as it advanced, made plain that an appendix containing documents could be only a partial presenting of such material. The conclusion was clear that another volume should be issued at later opportunity, adocumentary history of Rutgers. Such volume can present fully the many documents deserving place, some of which have been quoted in full or in part in the narrative of this volume. Occasion even

PREFACE then will yet remain for added publications of specific scope, notably arecord of Rutgers in the World War.

A bibliography is added to this volume, however, as complete and specific as possible, in order not only that the sources may be known, all foot notes being omitted, but as well that those who would become more fully familiar with any subject in the narrative may be guided to the body of material which so far transcends the limit of this work.

It ts a pleasure to acknowledge great obligation to the many students of the college history who from time to time in all the years past have written papers or made records concerning particular periods or events or men of the college life. In particular very grateful acknowledgment is made of the valuable assistance given in the course of the work by Mr. George A. Osborn, librarian, Mr. Earl R. Silvers, president’ s assistant, and Mr. William H. Benedict of New Brunswick, and by others who have on occasion aided in the securing and verifying of records and traditions.

W. H. S. DemMarEstT Rutgers College January, 1924

Contents

THE AMERICAN MOVEMENT IN THE

DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH 23 II THE SECURING OF THE COLLEGE CHARTER 47 IV THE SECOND CHARTER AND THE START OF QUEEN’S COLLEGE | RS V THE CITY AND THE COLLEGE IN THE REVOLUTION 101 VI AFTER THE REVOLUTION AND UNDER PRESIDENT HARDEN BERGH 139 VII THE TIME OF DR. CONDICT, PRESIDENT PROTEM 169 VIII THE TIME OF PRESIDENT LIVINGSTON 2A IX RUTGERS COLLEGE IN THE TIME OF PRESIDENT MILLEDOLER 273 X THE TIME OF PRESIDENT HASBROUCK Bias ‘XI THE TIME OF PRESIDENT FRELINGHUYSEN 361 XII THE TIME OF PRESIDENT CAMPBELL 393 XIII THE TIME OF PRESIDENT GATES List XIV THE TIME OF PRESIDENT SCOTT AT5 XV THE TIME OF PRESIDENT DEMAREST Sol BIBLIOGRAPHY SGA INDEX 559

ILLUSTRATIONS

Chapter II The American Movement In The Dutch Reformed Church

Into the valley of the Raritan, into the life of the Dutch settled everywhere through it, and to the charge of churches by that time organized came the Reverend Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen in 1720. In him lay the promise of the church and of its institutions. He was destined to play a singularly far-reaching part not only in the life of the Dutch Reformed on the Raritan but in the life of that church wherever found in New Jersey and New York and in the general religious life of his time. In him, his spirit, his new-world ideals, is found the birth of the movement that. was in time to bring forth a college and a theological seminary for an American church. He was a hundred percent American for his time and was a path-finder for a Reformed Church of the Netherlands passing on into a Reformed Church in America. Frelinghuysen was a native of Lingen, East Friesland, near the border of Germany and Holland, where his father was pastor. His brother also was a minister. He was only just ordained and settled in the ministry when, at the age of twenty-seven, he received a call to work in the new world. The Classis of Amsterdam records, June 5, 1718, a call of the church of Raritan upon him, “formerly minister at Lochimer, Voorwerk, in East Friesland, and then Co-Rector at Enckhuysen,” a call which was accepted and approved. It appears that the church of Raritan had asked the Classis of Amsterdam for a minister and that the classis had been in search of a man. Frelinghuysen, journeying to Embden, it is said, to become rector of the academy there, stopped over night on his way with an elder of the church.

In family worship at night the visitor so singularly commended himself in prayer and in comment on the Word, that the elder hastened the next morning to his pastor, the Reverend Sicco Tjady, exclaiming that he had found the man for America. The classis and Frelinghuysen proved of the same mind. He arrived in New York probably in December, 1719; he preached in that city in January, 1720. He became minister at once not only of the church at Raritan, now Somerville, but also of the church at Six Mile Run and of the church at New Brunswick. He made his home at Three Mile Run, three miles or less west of New Brunswick; and there he was buried when his work was over, nearly thirty years later. He brought with him the voorleser, singing master, and schoolmaster, Jacobus Schureman, and they married sisters, the daughters of Albert Terhune, of Long Island. His parish was all the congregations, all the Dutch settlers, in the valley, three hundred square miles, where now are scores of churches, perhaps hundreds of them, of all denominations. He was vigorous, courageous, talented, devoted. He pressed the truth of the gospel without fear or favor, demanded a vital Christian experience in officers and members of the church and exalted the work of the Holy Spirit in regenerating and sanctifying men and making them fit partakers of the Supper of the Lord. So outspoken was he, so uncompromising in his words, compelled it seemed to him by the formal and superficial sort of religion that had come to prevail among confessors of the faith, that bitter controversy and opposition rose in the church at Raritan, causing him grave discomfort and even a secession from the church.

But he never yielded place and served through ill report and good report to the end. It can be readily understood that such a man and such preaching would be a ministry far beyond set parishes. He was in the foremost group of the evangelical movement of his time, an associate of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield and the Tennents in the Great Awakening near the middle of the century. There were stirring times in the religious life of New Brunswick just then. Whitefield preached there in November 1739 and came back April 26 and 27, 1740; his Journal says: ‘Sunday at Brunswick. Preached morning and evening to near 7 or 8000 people; and God’s power was so much amongst us in the Afternoon sermon that had I proceeded, the Cries and Groans of the Congregation I believe would have drowned my voice. One woman was struck down and a general cry went through the Assembly.” He speaks of finding Frelinghuysen there, of his power and influence, of the great results seen in the life of the people. Gilbert Tennent, writing in 1744 to a Mr. Prince, college man and historian in Boston, tells the remarkable work of Frelinghuysen in converting men and establishing Christian life, and owns his own debt to him. Through generations succeeding until now the community life of the Raritan Valley parishes has shown the beneficent results of his labors.

It was an American life in the making. The Dutch language must disappear. The dependence of the church in the new world on church bodies in the old world must come to an end. Institutions for the education of a ministry must arise near at home to take the place of universities across the sea. Higher education for all professions and offices in life must be offered in due time to all the people. Perhaps the rank and file of the people were not very thoughtful or ambitious along these lines, but rather contented with a quiet, a5 and comfortable possession of the necessities of life. Someone, Senator John Rutherford, wrote almost a century and a half ago: “All the most valuable lands in America are possest by the low Dutch;. . . while the low Dutch are a quiet, frugal people, possess considerable Property, are afraid to run in Debt, without being fond of Law or Offices of Government.” It fell to the ministers, among the Dutch as well as among the English and the Scotch, to be forward in the intellectual and religious movement—and only less in the civic movement—which was to give birth to a nation. Frelinghuysen was among the first to recognize the movement right for the times and he was not without the courage of his convictions or without zeal for the work.

The time was one of real emergency for the church, a crisis long drawn out, wherein the fortunes of the church were plainly bound up with the founding of a college. The question rising and growing insistent was primarily that of independence from the church in the Netherlands. The great issue at the heart of that question was the ordination of ministers, the supply of a ministry to the parishes, and, with that, the founding of a college that would train in the higher learning and of a school of theology that would prepare for ordination here in the provinces. The population was large, it was increasing and it was spreading out. The people were well grounded in the confession and the forms of religion. They naturally ought to form their congregations and establish their services. Those in general church authority were responsible for the sending of ministers who would organize the churches, enter upon the parish work, and preach the word lest religion die out, lest the church shorten its boundaries and be shorn of its strength. The responsibility was not being fulfilled. The ministers were few and far between and each one had far too wide a territory to serve. Large groups of the colonists and a large number of the churches in New Jersey and in New York were without stated ministrations. The ministers came from across the sea, from Holland and its universities. Supply from that far source could not at all measure up to the need. Few men _ offered themselves or were sent. It was a far journey, a long and expensive task, for a young man from the provinces to go to the mother country for his college education, or for his theological education if he had pursued earlier studies at Yale or elsewhere.

If he had been taught his classics and his theology in the study of a minister here, as was somewhat the custom a little later at least, it was still a long and expensive journey to go to Holland for ordination, and it seemed a foolish burden to impose. At best it was slow and tedious work, to carry on communication with the classis there as to appointments and activities here; the loss of time was grievous loss of power. So it was, however, through that first half of the eighteenth century and longer. In 1696 there were nine ministers in America for the Dutch Reformed people; in 1740 there were twenty; in 1771 when the college was beginning its work there were forty-one, and the organized churches had increased to one hundred. No wonder the church did not grow and strengthen more; the wonder is that it held and prospered so well in spite of it all. Nor, on the other hand, is it to be wondered at that many leaders of the church in this country, many fine and devoted ministers in New Jersey and New York, desired no change and resisted it when proposed. This was the very evidence of their devotion to learning and to the faith and to the church as they understood the bulwarks thereof. The old Dutch high esteem for learning and for a learned ministry and for soundness in the faith dictated reliance still upon the tried and trusted source of authority. The riches of learning, the truths of a sound theology, the church commission for gospel service—where could these be so well secured as at the fountain head in Holland? Why surrender this acknowledged primacy for the less and uncertain values of training and ordination here? With some, perhaps most, of the opponents of the American movement, however, the spirit was such, no doubt, as would be today summed up as simply conservatism, unwillingness to make change, a support of what always had been.

Frelinghuysen and others with him did not see the matter in this light. They were wiser, they saw more clearly the necessity laid upon them in the conditions of their day, they had some fine vision of things beyond their time. The feeling and conviction which they had came to formal action in 1737 when they brought about a meeting of ministers and elders to confer about the situation and to take any action which might seem possible and right. It was held at New York and it was attended by seven ministers; Frelinghuysen was not there but he was at the meeting the next year. They prepared and set forth a plan of concerted and advanced activity but did not propose independence from Amsterdam, indeed proposed for themselves but little ecclesiastical power and this to be exercised subject te the foreign classis. The intention was especially to promote a better intercourse and exchange of advice between the classis and the churches in America. Some slight powers they might venture to exercise but surely subject to review by Amsterdam. It was not a very adequate plan; it proved to have little efficiency; it never satisfied the more intelligent and progressive men. They wished a classis here, independent of the one abroad, endowed with power to examine and ordain ministers. They would continue to press for this; indeed, it appears that in a very few instances a few of them took to themselves authority to ordain and from beneath their hands, without leave of authority abroad, sent men into the field which so urgently called for laborers.

It was in 1747, at another meet- _ ing, that a more formal organization was made, one still lacking, however, the strength and independent power which were needed and which must come in due time. A body was formed called the Coetus. It was to be composed of all the ministers and of representative elders. It acted with the consent of the Classis of Amsterdam. It held power to ordain in special instances by special favor, usual ordination still to be held in Holland. It was not final in acts of discipline. The progressives, having gained this much, naturally were not yet satisfied but still looked forward to full independence, and they increasingly exercised powers not fully granted to the Coetus. On the other hand, ministers in favor of continued foreign authority, strongly averse to an American classis, formed themselves into a body opposed to the Coetus, called the Conferentie. It was an unhappy division which in this quite formal fashion endured for more than twenty years. The American party had more to overcome perhaps in their brethren at home than in those abroad; with a united desire and request here, Amsterdam would perhaps have cordially approved American church independence with little delay. The controversy between Coetus and Conferentie centered largely on the question of an institution of higher learning and especially a professorship of theology or divinity here. Our tracing of that controversy is our near approach to the founding of Queen’s College; it passes, indeed,

HISTORY OF RUTGERS COLLEG® beyond the securing of the college charter; it ends only when the college has actually begun its work.

Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen died just as the formal Coetus began, in the year 1747 or 1748, at the age of fifty-six or fifty-seven. He was buried near his home at Three Mile Run in a little graveyard which still remains, now known as Elm Ridge Cemetery, the exact spot of the grave being not surely known but said to have been just west of a tree whose decayed stump was still to be seen not many years ago; and in recent years a substantial monument in his memory was placed there. He passed away, having been privileged to see the promised land of American church independence and of an American college but not permitted to-enter into it. His sift to the-great movement was more than any achievement during his own life; it was even more in his family, in the sons that carried on his work and the grandson who began the work of the college itself, and as well in others descended from him who have signally served the church and the college and the nation, each in his own day and generation. The story of his immediate family is a sad one if sadness is in shortness of life, far from sad in the reckoning of faith. He had two daughters and five sons. One daughter married the Reverend Thomas Romeyn, the other married the Reverend William Jackson. The five sons all came to maturity and all studied for the ministry; three of them died in one year, one of them just settled in his first charge, the other two on shipboard returning from their ordination in Holland. One of the surviving sons was the Reverend Theodorus (Theodore) Frelinghuysen of the church at Albany; the other was the Reverend John Frelinghuysen who succeeded his father in charge of part of the great combined parish in New Jersey which his father had served. With these two men especially fat DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH reposed the cause of the long-talked-of college for the next ten or twelve years, the one forwarding it by aggressive support and by sacrifice of all things even unto life itself, the other by himself carrying on work which was the forecast and close forerunner of the work which the organized college would soon undertake.

Meantime, however, new elements were entering into the problem through the founding of the College of New Jersey, as it was then called, at Princeton, the founding of King’s, soon to become Columbia, and even the founding of the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. Harvard, William and Mary, and Yale had been founded long before, and Yale was quite well known tothe people of the Dutch blood in New York and New Jersey. Princeton, however, was in the close neighborhood, and the people founding the college there were in most friendly relations and in especial religious — sympathy, the Scotch and the Scotch-Irish of the Presbyterian Church being much the same as the Dutch Reformed in church order and church confessions. So closely mingled were the populations in this part of New Jersey that it was very easy to think of New Brunswick, then surely known as a Dutch town, as the possible site for the Presbyterian college. Princeton secured its first charter, of which no copy exists, in 1746, and its second charter in 1748, but its location was not finally fixed until 1752. Started at Elizabeth Town under the Reverend Jonathan Dickinson, moved to Newark after his death and briefly presided over there by the Reverend Aaron Burr, the college still sought more advantageous location.

The trustees directed that the second public Commencement be held at New Brunswick, a majority of them favoring location of the college there, although Governor Belcher favored Princeton, and believing that a Commencement there would help their cause. In 1750, September 26, they voted that a proposal be made to the towns of Brunswick and Princeton, that each try what sum of money it could raise for the building of the college, enabling the trustees to judge between them and make best choice. In 1751, May 15, they decided that New Brunswick be the place, provided that the inhabitants secure one thousand pounds proclamation money, ten acres of land contiguous to the college, and two hundred acres of woodland, the furthest part not more than three miles from the town; they also appointed a committee to examine the situation there and as well an offer made by Princeton. In the same year, September 25, they decided no confirmiag of the choice of New Brunswick was possible, | some particular action on the part of that place still delaying. In 1752, September 27, they voted that, the people of New Brunswick not having complied with the terms proposed to them by the time appointed, they were free from any obligation to fix the college there; and they chose Princeton, subject to similar conditions. In 1753, January 24, they made record that Princeton will have complied with the conditions when Mr. Randolph shall have given deed to certain land; they felt that the matter was concluded; and they began arrangements for the erection of a college building at Princeton. In 1756 President Burr and seventy students moved to Princeton to occupy the building given the name of Nassau Hall by Governor Belcher. Dutch Church interest and support were well in mind; the Reverend John Frelinghuysen of Raritan was chosen a trustee in 1750, and the Reverend John Leydt of New Brunswick in 1760.

On the other side of New Brunswick, in New York City, King’s College received its charter in 1754. It too was in the

Old Van Harlingen House Old College at New Brunswick, at Millstone 1759

“a 7 ‘5 bs, TP: : = | 2 ee : 7 a a7 eS ’ . ‘ 1 ras ) 7 - on > / a 7 | “ Pack ‘ i a —_ pe: | — a 4 neighborhood of the Dutch, in the centre of their greatest population. Its people, the English, were in generally cordial relations with the Dutch; their church, the Protestant Episcopal, while more removed in order and confession from the Dutch Reformed than the Presbyterian, was not decidedly alien to it. The Dutch did not oppose the founding of King’s, in such vigorous spirit at least as the Presbyterians, who, in _ the person of William Livingston, waged a fierce campaign against it as a sectarian enterprise. More than that, King’s made definite overture for Dutch affiliation and cooperation. Its charter was so framed that the minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York should always be a member of its Board of Trustees; and it was so framed as to provide for a professorship of theology for that church at the college. In fact an early record, New York Journal, February 6, 1755, says: “On Wednesday last the Rev. Mr. Lambertus van Schenkle, Dutch Professor of Divinity in the College of New York, was deposed from his office [for heresy], and the governors of said college have passed a resolve that none but an Episcopalian be for the future promoted to the said professorship.” As to which it may be said that there was probably a hasty appointment by the college to establish the Dutch connection, that it was probably without nomination or approval by the Dutch Church, and, beside, that the whole item may be an error.

It is plain what varied angles there now were to the problem with which Theodore Frelinghuysen of Albany and his compatriots wrestled. He had no doubts in his own mind. He would stand for a college all their own and for a professorship of theology all their own. But it was now more than an argument with Amsterdam for an American institution. It must be an argument against being content with King’s

HISTORY OF RUTGERS COREE

College as sufficiently unsectarian for academic education in spite of the fiery tirades of William Livingston to the contrary; it must be an argument against being content with Princeton as satisfactorily meeting the college need; or, if either King’s or Princeton, academic, be accepted, or if both be rejected, it must be an argument against attaching their professorship of divinity with either. The minister at Second River (Belleville), New Jersey, the Reverend G. Haagoort, November 19, 1748, arguing for continued dependence on Amsterdam in letter to that classis includes even Pennsylvania in his views: “Since in Pennsylvania a college has already been erected and one was about to be erected in New York. From there some students could go to Holland to pursue their studies further.”’ The Dutch Reformed Church in New York, now known as the Collegiate Church, during the preliminary struggles of the founders of King’s had petitioned these founders that a professor of the church’s choosing might be connected with the college, “as the youth intended for the ministry will without that privilege at a vast expense to the parents be obliged to reside several years in Holland, or other foreign Protestant countries.’ This, however, was the plea of but one church and of that probably at the insistence of the minister, the Reverend Johannes Ritzema, who continued to the end an arch opposer of a new college, who probably desired the divinity appointment at King’s, and who was later proposed for it by Amsterdam. In any case he and his church, the officers of it, soon parted company on this point, they giving their support to a new foundation which would be really their own.

It was Theodore Frelinghuysen who, stirred in soul by the long delay of definite decision and by the vigor of the King’s College party, rose to the urgent task and challenged the church to action. In 1755, in the cold of midwinter, he started on horseback down the Hudson Valley to rally the ministers and congregations to his cause; here and there he stopped in the parishes of New York and New Jersey, finding no small sympathy and support. On April 17, 1755, three weeks before Ritzema was to appear before the Governor and Council in behalf of the King’s College Dutch _Church professorship, he sent a letter to ministers and consistories of the churches, reciting the questions pressing upon them and the proposal that the congregations petition the Very Reverend Synod of Holland for an American classis, “as well as an Academy, where our youth, who are devoted to study, may receive instruction,” calling a conference or convention at New York on the 27th day of May, 1755, and, “as a friend and brother,” asking the ministers, each with an elder, to represent their congregations. The convention was held. Thirteen ministers and eighteen elders were there, seven elders coming from churches at the time without pastors. They came from every part of the church’s territory, from the churches on the Hudson from Albany down and in the Rondout and Wallkill Valleys; from churches on Long Island and Staten Island; from churches on the Hackensack, Passaic, and Raritan. New York City was not represented. Among the ministers were Theodore Frelinghuysen, who opened the session with an edifying prayer, John H. Goetschius, John Leydt, who was scribe, Samuel Verbryck, and David Marinus, whose names were to continue well known in the progressing movement; and among the elders was Hendrick Fisher, who was to be the leading elder in the college founding and first_president of the Board of Trustees. The minutes of the convention state that as to the proposal of a classis and a seminary—academy or colwe)

lege—the opinion and purpose was to put them in operation and to further them. The action calling for a college was unanimous. It was resolved that a delegate be sent to the Synod of Holland to present the case and Frelinghuysen was unanimously chosen to go. A paper was drawn up and signed to provide for the defraying in part of his expenses. He expressed his willingness to serve but stated the difficulty of leaving his congregation. This difficulty was recognized and it was proposed that supplies be provided for his pulpit as far as possible for the time during which he might be gone. He then consented, a committee was appointed to prepare necessary papers, and the session, after thanksgiving, adjourned. The convention met again on the 28th. On the 29th, it met as an extra session of the formal body, the Coetus—Ritzema held it to be unlawful—and as such gave approval to the petition to the Synod of Holland and to the appointment of Frelinghuysen as delegate, every member signing the action. They met again on the 3oth and, some items of the delegate’s commission being yet incomplete, authority was given to the president and scribe to complete them.

The commission of Theodore Frelinghuysen, then fully prepared as his credential for the synod and as statement of the cause he would present, written in Latin, is before us as the great foundation document of the college that was to be, second only to the charter actually creating it, and preceding the charter by eleven years and more, signed, “in the name and by the authority of the whole Coetus,”’ by the several ministers. It declares: ‘Inasmuch as it is expedient for the glory of God, and conducive to the salvation of men, to establish in these recently inhabited ends of the earth Semznaries of True Philosophy |Seminaria Vere Sophia| as well as of sound doctrine, that men may be imbued with the principles of human wisdom, virtue, and unostentatious piety: Therefore, we, pastors and elders of both provinces—viz. of New York and New Jersey, in America—being assembled in a Coetus, and having established an alliance among ourselves, do resolve in these present critical times to strive with all our energy, and in the fear of God, to plant a uni- _ versity or seminary for young men destined for study in the learned languages and liberal arts, and who are to be instructed in the philosophical sciences; also that it may be a school of the prophets in which young Levites and Nazarites of God may be prepared to enter upon the sacred ministerial office in the church of God.”’ It commends the Reverend Theodore Frelinghuysen to the synod that he may explain the matter more fully and be forwarded in his task of securing funds for the institution proposed.