In its first decade, the College led a peripatetic existence. Dickinson died after less than a year in office. He was succeeded by Burr, who moved the college to his parsonage in Newark. Later, classes were also held in rooms over the town jail.

To the pious New Lights, this unsavory location was hardly an appropriate setting for the academic training of the impressionable young. The cosmopolitan allures of this burgeoning port city offered untold temptations. Armed with a stronger charter,