Site Search

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.

Prospect House and Palmer House, both now University properties, have deep links to the Potters—a slaveholding family with strong ties to Georgia as well as to Princeton and the College of New Jersey.

The financial contributions of Moses Taylor Pyne (Class of 1877), one of Princeton's most prominent benefactors, reveal the complex relationship between Princeton, the American sugar trade, and the slave economy.

The lives and careers of Princeton’s early students from Georgia, who went on to hold prominent political positions during the colonial and Revolutionary periods, illustrate one of the key paradoxes of American history: the interconnection of slavery and liberty from the time of the country's founding.

The Civil War divided Princeton as well as the United States along regional lines, complicating the university’s patriotic history of wartime service as students and alumni fought in both the Union and Confederate forces.