By April C. Armstrong *14
In this week’s installment in our recurring series, a student asks for help on a senior thesis, the view of Nassau Hall inspires a prospective student to eschew Harvard, and more.
August 18, 1759—Incoming college president Samuel Davies writes to P.V.B. Livingston about starting his new job:
About three weeks ago I arrived here, and soon entered upon my new office. A Tremour still seizes me at the Tho’t of my situation, and sometimes I can hardly believe it is a reality, but only a frightful portentous Dream.
August 19, 1783—Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, writes to his wife from Princeton to report an incident in which Congressional president Elias Boudinot’s expected housing fell through, because it turned out that Samuel Stanhope Smith and his family were already living there. Boudinot told Smith that Smith’s father-in-law, John Witherspoon, had intended to rent the house to him.
This was a thunder clap to Mr. S. He said he had nothing of the matter. Mr. W. had not mentioned it to him. He did not know where to go with his family. He had put himself to inconvenience to accommodate Members as much as he could. But he supposed he must give up his house. Possibly the trustees might think they had a right to let it as the president of the College did not live in it himself. You can easily judge the feelings on both sides.
August 20, 1942—Henry Lind ’43 writes to the NAACP to request resources for his senior thesis: “I am particularly interested in the extent of contribution which the Negro in the United States is making toward the war effort and also in the Negro’s attitude toward the war.”
![Some say we're not the "white collar" type. But:
This young lady has been through high school.
She has had college business training.
She can take shorthand at 120 words a minute.
She can type 74 words a minute.
In other words, she would be an asset to almost any office.
There are thousands more like her, and thousands of young colored men with equal background and "white collar" training.
All they ask is a chance to compete for jobs on a fair-and-square basis. To rule them out because of the color of their skin is to repudiate democracy, overlook a valuable labor resource, and weaken national morale among both social groups. It is a bow to Hitler's racialism.
[Illustration: A woman typing on a typewriter at a desk with a phone.]](https://i0.wp.com/universityarchives.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2025/08/Urban_League_pamphlet_1940s_from_Lind_thesis_1942.jpg?resize=811%2C500&ssl=1)
August 23, 1931—In the Saturday Evening Post, Booth Tarkington (Class of 1893) writes of how he decided to go to Princeton, instead of Harvard as he’d planned:
In Nassau Street I descended from a station surrey and looked across the front campus at Nassau Hall, determined not to like it. Something unexpected happened to me–gray-brown old stone, ivies, elms, the cupola of Old North high in the sunshine–suddenly it was with me as though my skeptical and inquiring glance had been returned, not by a stranger but with kindly warmth by a grand old person already my friend. Thus instantly Harvard, not inconsolable, lost a student…
Did you read the previous installment in this series?
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