32Results for "1784"
Stories
Princeton and South Carolina
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Princeton alumni from South Carolina owned successful plantations, large numbers of slaves, and served as leaders in the Confederate cause during the Civil War.
Princeton and Mississippi
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Princeton students and their families lived in the Mississippi area decades before statehood in 1817. From the 1790s to the Civil War, Mississippians at the College of New Jersey came from elite families who built their wealth on cotton and slave labor.
Henry Kollock
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Henry Kollock (1778-1819) was a Princeton professor, pastor, and slave owner. He appeared in the first fugitive slave narrative: Life of William Grimes, a Runaway Slave.
Princeton in the West Indies
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Under the leadership of President Witherspoon, the College of New Jersey launched an ill-fated campaign to secure donations from slaveholding planter elites in the West Indies.
Princeton’s Founding Trustees
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A firm majority of Princeton's founding trustees (sixteen out of twenty-three) bought, sold, traded, or inherited slaves during their lifetimes.
Primary Sources
Deposition of Thomas Janney in Furman v. Vanhorne
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Deposition from the 1784-86 court case Furman v. Vanhorne related to determining the rightful owner of the enslaved man Prime.
"Negro Servant"
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An ad to sell a slave placed by Samuel Stanhope Smith in 1784.
Letter from Granville Sharp
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A letter from British abolitionist Granville Sharp to President John Witherspoon, discussing "Tracts against Slavery."
Legal complaint signed by Aaron Burr Jr.
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Legal complaint from Aaron Burr Jr.'s client Thomas Stevenson, regarding a woman who was enslaved by Stevenson and purportedly lured away by a man named John Lake.
Letter from Sarah Gibbes to John Gibbes
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A letter from Sarah Gibbes to her son John Gibbes (Class of 1784) in which she encourages him to maintain ties to the Boudinots and Stocktons, wealthy New Jersey families.