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32Results for "1784"
Stories

Princeton and South Carolina
by Lesa Redmond | Antebellum (1820-1861)
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
by Trip Henningson | Antebellum (1820-1861)
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
by Jessica R. Mack | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
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
by Jessica R. Mack | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
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
by Michael R. Glass | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
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
1784 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
Deposition from the 1784-86 court case Furman v. Vanhorne related to determining the rightful owner of the enslaved man Prime.

"Negro Servant"
March 30, 1784 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
An ad to sell a slave placed by Samuel Stanhope Smith in 1784.

Letter from Granville Sharp
March 27, 1784 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
A letter from British abolitionist Granville Sharp to President John Witherspoon, discussing "Tracts against Slavery."

Legal complaint signed by Aaron Burr Jr.
August 9, 1784 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
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
1783 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820), Antebellum (1820-1861)
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.