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George Morgan White Eyes, Racial Theory at Princeton, and Student Financial Aid in the Eighteenth Century
In 1779, a group of Delaware set up camp on Prospect Farm, owned by George Morgan, along a dirt walkway that separated them from the campus of the College of New Jersey, as Princeton University was named until 1896. They brought a boy with them who was about eight or nine years old. His father…
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Marriage and Undergraduate Life at Princeton University in the 1970s
By Iliyah Coles ’22 Married undergraduates have been at Princeton for decades, even though they might appear to be relatively scarce at the University now. In fact, students who got married before attending college weren’t even allowed to be admitted until around 1970, most likely in part due to the difficulty in finding adequate housing…
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Dear Mr. Mudd: War, Epidemics, and Suspended Classes at Princeton
Q. Dear Mr. Mudd, Has Princeton University ever had to close the campus before? Or have a lot of students been displaced and had to leave and/or study at home for some other reason in the past? A. In 2020, Princeton University suspended residential instruction after Spring Break due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was…
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Debating Race at Princeton in the 1940s, Part II: Roundtable News and the Liberal Union
This is the second post in a two-part series examining Princeton University’s debates over admitting African Americans in the 1940s. These debates began in earnest due to the dedication of one undergraduate in the Class of 1943, Francis Lyons “Frank” Broderick, whose efforts were the focus of the first post in this series. Here, I…
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Debating Race at Princeton in the 1940s, Part I: Francis L. Broderick ’43
This is the first post in a two-part series examining Princeton University’s debates over admitting African Americans in the 1940s, which began in earnest partly due to the dedication of one undergraduate in the Class of 1943, Francis Lyons “Frank” Broderick. By April C. Armstrong *14 and Dan Linke At first glance, Francis Lyons “Frank”…
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Faculty Wives and the Push for Coeducation at Princeton University
Coeducation brought female students to Princeton, but it didn’t bring the first women. There have always been women connected with the institution. Nonetheless, coeducation did change the lives of the women who were already here. Esther Edwards Burr, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, and Isabella McCosh, wives of three Princeton presidents from earlier centuries, have all received…
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Whatever Happened to “The Vigil”?
By Iliyah Coles ’22 I have been looking for information about The Vigil, a minority newspaper that the University published in the late twentieth century. As a black student at a predominantly-white institution, I wanted to see what the newspaper would be about and how effectively it incorporated voices not usually heard. After researching and…
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Princeton’s Bulletin Elm
By Zachary Bampton ’20 with April C. Armstrong *14 On September 29, 1882, one writer for the Princetonian (then published every other week rather than daily) remarked that the Bulletin Elm was “fast filling out its days” and would soon be “a thing of the past”. Almost 140 years later, few remember the role the…
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Suicide, Princeton University, and Emotional Labor in Public Services
Though it may not be obvious to most of the people who use our library, work in special collections often includes playing a role in someone’s grieving process. Archivists have begun talking about the ways in which interacting with donors puts them in the position of providing comfort to the bereaved, but this is also…
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Princeton’s Summer Trips Across North America
Although traveling significant distances is routine for many Princetonians these days, traversing North America was not always as easy as it is now. Our records reveal a variety of both academic and pleasure trips over the years that have used horses, trains, cars, and bicycles to reach their destinations. Most of the lengthy North American…
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