By April C. Armstrong *14
In this week’s installment in our recurring series, an alum joins a gold rush, a student writes a very long sentence, and more.
January 20, 1898—George White, Class of 1894, is dropped off on a remote Alaskan shore with other prospectors in the Klondike Gold Rush and sets forth on a 30-mile journey on foot through the Chilkoot Pass that will ultimately take three months. Unlike most prospectors, White will succeed in finding the minerals he seeks.
January 22, 1986—Walt Coan, the now-elderly son of a former Princeton staffer, is quoted in the Daily Princetonian describing how his family came to Princeton beginning with his grandfather in the 1830s or 1840s. “I guess they chased him the hell out of Ireland—he didn’t like them potatoes.”
January 23, 1836—A Princeton student writes to his aunt,
After a week of pouring [sic] over musty books and, snuffing up the smellers, the delightful fumes of midnight burning fish oil, after disentangling the knotted forms of twisted Hebrew roots and diving into the misterious subtlities [sic] of metaphysical disquisitions, the whole art of which is to make confusion out of order, to make what was evident to a child, dark as the darkness of Egypt, on which subject he who can make the greatest fuss about nothing, and put together words of high sound, and magical meaning, which is no meaning at all, by thousands, clothing ideas, if there are any at all in such a profusion of rainment [sic], as to make a giant out of a Liliputian, [sic] and completely conceal the little puny infant, is the most learned man, I say after this, my brain is clouded, and distracted by such a mist of perplexity, and doubt, and is so obtuse from the load of what you please, resting upon it, that I rejoice when Saturday evening comes, that I may have a little rest, and dispel the fog by letting in the light of old recollections, and discovering to myself that I am not some great, deep-minded, thoughtful, thick headed sage of antiquity, but J.V. Reynolds. This is a monstrous long sentence.
January 25, 1780—In Elizabeth, New Jersey, the first building to hold classes for the College of New Jersey (which moved to Princeton in 1756) is burned by British soldiers.
For the previous installment in this series, click here.
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