Led by the renowned ministers Jonathan Dickinson and Aaron Burr, Sr., a group of prominent New Light moderates decided to establish a college that would be more sympathetic to the precepts of the Great Awakening than Harvard or Yale and that would train the ministers needed by the growing New Light congregations.
Eventually, they persuaded the acting governor of New Jersey, John Hamilton, to issue a charter for this institution. The charter was granted on 22 October 1746, and despite challenges from prominent Anglican politicians, who frowned on this new Presbyterian enterprise, the new college opened in Dickinson's parsonage in Elizabethtown the following May with Dickinson as its first president.
Although not a seminary and officially non-sectarian, the early College of New Jersey was a deeply moral and religious institution. Four of the seven founders of the College were Presbyterian ministers, as were five of the eight men on the committee that commissioned Nassau Hall. Students were subjected to stern Presbyterian oratory at chapel several times daily and mandatory morning services, a subject of special undergraduate loathing, sometimes started as early as five.
Led by the renowned ministers Jonathan Dickinson and Aaron Burr, Sr., a group of prominent New Light moderates decided to establish a college that would be more sympathetic to the precepts of the Great Awakening than Harvard or Yale and that would train the ministers needed by the growing New Light congregations.
Eventually, they persuaded the acting governor of New Jersey, John Hamilton, to issue a charter for this institution. The charter was granted on 22 October 1746, and despite challenges from prominent Anglican politicians, who frowned on this new Presbyterian enterprise, the new college opened in Dickinson's parsonage in Elizabethtown the following May with Dickinson as its first president.
Although not a seminary and officially non-sectarian, the early College of New Jersey was a deeply moral and religious institution. Four of the seven founders of the College were Presbyterian ministers, as were five of the eight men on the committee that commissioned Nassau Hall. Students were subjected to stern Presbyterian oratory at chapel several times daily and mandatory morning services, a subject of special undergraduate loathing, sometimes started as early as five.