The College of New Jersey was chartered on October 22, 1746. It was the fourth college in the American colonies, founded by Presbyterian ministers who wanted an institution of their own, and it began in a place far smaller than its later fame. The name Princeton came later.
The college opened the next year in Elizabeth. It moved first to Newark and then, in 1756, to the village of Princeton, where a building named Nassau Hall went up and became the largest stone structure in the colonies. The school took the town's name. It was renamed in 1896.
It was a seminary at heart. Ministers were the aim. The founders wanted ministers, and the early students were trained for the pulpit as much as for anything else, but the college grew beyond that purpose almost at once. It produced statesmen and lawyers and scientists in numbers.
The college was caught up in the Revolution. Nassau Hall was occupied by both armies at different times, and British troops fired on it during the Battle of Princeton in 1777, and the Continental Congress met there briefly in 1783. The school survived the war and came out stronger.
Princeton became one of the great American universities. It produced two presidents and a long line of scholars, and its name now stands for the highest rank of learning. A small Presbyterian seminary chartered in 1746 ended up shaping the nation it helped to found.