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Stories

Tapping Reeve and Mumbet: Abolishing Slavery in Massachusetts
by Suzanne Geissler Bowles | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
Tapping Reeve (1744-1823), Princeton alumnus and founder of the nation’s first law school, served as co-counsel in the 1781 case Brom and Bett v. J. Ashley, Esq., which led to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts.

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.

Jonathan Dickinson
by Cailin Hong | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
Jonathan Dickinson, a prominent figure in the Great Awakening of the mid-18th century, served as Princeton’s first president. Genny, an enslaved girl he purchased in 1733, may have worked beside him and his students in the college’s earliest years.

Slavery in the Curriculum
by Geneva Smith | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
John Witherspoon and Samuel Stanhope Smith’s curriculum emphasized Scottish moral philosophy, providing early Princeton students with a new philosophical framework for opposing slavery even as pro-slavery apologists used the same philosophical concepts to defend the practice of owning slaves.

Samuel Hopkins and the Paradoxical Legacy of Jonathan Edwards Sr.
by John T. Lowe | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
Patriot and theologian Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803) vigorously opposed slavery throughout his life. Paradoxically, his antislavery theology was inspired by his mentor, the slave-owning Princeton president Jonathan Edwards Sr.
Primary Sources

"Negro Boy" to be sold by Samuel Stanhope Smith
November 20, 1780 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
Newspaper advertisement for a slave sale by Professor Samuel Stanhope Smith

"Brandy ... 100 pipes Brandy"
1803 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
1803 New York Evening Post ad detailing trustee Robert Lenox's goods from around the globe.

1800 Federal Census Entry for Robert Lenox
1800 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
1800 Federal Census entry for trustee Robert Lenox.

Manumission Papers for Will
1796 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
1796 manumission papers for Will, a slave bound in service to trustee Charles Ewing's family.

Grave of Jonathan Edwards Sr.
2017 | Colonial & Early National (1746-1820)
Grave of Princeton president Jonathan Edwards Sr. in the Princeton Cemetery.