In May 1747, the first classes of the College of New Jersey met not in Princeton, but in Elizabethtown. The school that would become Princeton University opened its first term in the parsonage of the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson, longtime pastor of the First Presbyterian Church and the college’s first president. For a few consequential months, present-day Elizabeth became the setting where a newly chartered college became a working school.

A College Before Princeton

The College of New Jersey did not begin in Princeton. Its first charter was granted on October 22, 1746, by Acting Governor John Hamilton. That is the date Princeton University recognizes as its founding, but a charter was only the legal beginning. The school still needed a president, a place to teach, and students.

On April 27, 1747, the trustees elected Jonathan Dickinson as the college’s first president. Dickinson had served the First Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth for nearly four decades and had helped shape the plan for the new college. In the fourth week of May, the school opened at his parsonage in Elizabethtown.

The First Classes in Elizabethtown

Princeton’s University Archives identifies Dickinson’s parsonage as the place where classes began. Local histories place the former parsonage near Pearl and Race Streets and describe it as Dickinson’s private residence and the place where he received students. The building no longer stands, and no surviving church or house in Elizabeth should be mistaken for the college’s original classroom.

The setting was modest. Princeton’s public histories describe the parsonage as a makeshift college and estimate the first group at eight or 10 undergraduates. They also suggest that Dickinson’s books, rooms, and household spaces helped serve the school’s daily needs. These accounts convey the modest scale of the college’s beginning, although they should be understood as historical interpretation rather than a precise reconstruction of the 1747 school.

A History That Must Include Enslavement

The parsonage was not simply a place of learning. Princeton’s research on its early history documents that Dickinson enslaved a woman named Genny. The university says that the first students would have encountered her at the house, while also noting that surviving records do not establish every detail of her work or daily life there.

That uncertainty matters. The story of the college’s first term cannot be told as though the parsonage existed apart from the labor and coercion that shaped colonial households. A responsible account should name what is documented, acknowledge what the record does not tell us, and avoid inventing scenes around Genny’s life.

A Brief First Term

Dickinson’s presidency was short. He died in October 1747, only months after the first classes began. The College of New Jersey then moved to Newark, where its next president, Aaron Burr Sr., lived. In 1756 it relocated to Princeton, its long-term home.

The May 1747 classes therefore belong not only to Princeton’s institutional history, but to Elizabeth’s. Here, inside a pastor’s parsonage, a newly chartered college became a working school—and began the path toward becoming one of the nation’s most enduring universities.

Why This Matters

Did Princeton University begin in Elizabeth, New Jersey?
Yes. The College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University, was chartered in 1746 and held its first classes in May 1747 at the Elizabethtown parsonage of its first president, Jonathan Dickinson.

Where were Princeton’s first classes held?
They were held at Jonathan Dickinson’s parsonage in Elizabethtown, near what local histories identify as the area of Pearl and Race Streets. The original building no longer stands.

Who was Jonathan Dickinson?
Jonathan Dickinson was a longtime Presbyterian minister in Elizabethtown and the first president of the College of New Jersey. He died in October 1747, only months after the college’s first classes began.

When did the college move to Princeton?
After Dickinson’s death, the College of New Jersey moved to Newark under Aaron Burr Sr. It relocated to Princeton in 1756.

Sources

• Princeton University Archives, “Who Founded Princeton University?”
• Princetoniana, “The Early Years”
• Princeton & Slavery, “Princeton’s Founding Trustees”
• Historic Elizabeth, 1664–1914, PDF pp. 15 and 39 / printed pp. 9 and 33.
• Elizabeth New Jersey Then and Now, p. 553.