The ear­li­est doc­u­ment held by the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Archives, the 1748 Char­ter of the Col­lege of New Jer­sey, along with the first two vol­umes of the University’s Board of Trustees Min­utes, have been dig­i­tized and are now avail­able online through the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions web­site: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/7w62f826z

Images of the doc­u­ments are also linked from the online find­ing aid for the Board of Trustees Records: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/w66343618

The orig­i­nal char­ter, which has been lost, was issued in 1746 by John Hamil­ton, pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil of the Province of New Jer­sey, who was act­ing as gov­er­nor at the time. Because Hamilton’s author­ity was ques­tioned, the legal sta­tus of the Col­lege came under attack, and a sec­ond char­ter was there­fore issued in 1748 by Jonathan Belcher, newly appointed gov­er­nor of the province. It cor­re­sponded, for the most part, to the char­ter of 1746, but it increased the max­i­mum num­ber of trustees from twelve to twenty-three, made the gov­er­nor of New Jer­sey a trustee ex-officio, and stip­u­lated that twelve trustees were to be inhab­i­tants of the State of New Jer­sey. The char­ter granted the trustees and their suc­ces­sors full power and author­ity to acquire real and per­sonal prop­erty, to erect build­ings, to elect a pres­i­dent, tutors, pro­fes­sors, and other offi­cers, to grant degrees, and to estab­lish ordi­nances and laws.

Vol­umes 1 and 2 of the Trustees min­utes, which date from 1746 to 1823, con­tain a wealth of infor­ma­tion about the per­son­al­i­ties and activ­i­ties of the young Col­lege of New Jer­sey. As these min­utes date from the very begin­ning of the Col­lege, they address the mul­ti­tude of issues and prob­lems the trustees ini­tially addressed.

The min­utes con­tain the names of offi­cials, trustees, teach­ers, and stu­dents. They also pro­vide a record of the major deci­sions of the Col­lege (such as the elec­tion of new pres­i­dents) as well as smaller ones (such as which foods the stew­ard could sell to stu­dents and where the account books would be kept). Researchers will find infor­ma­tion related to the stan­dards for admis­sion and grad­u­a­tion; lega­cies received; names of mem­bers of the grad­u­at­ing classes; names of recip­i­ents of hon­orary degrees; the list of books donated by Gov­er­nor Jonathan Belcher; the hir­ing and fir­ing of tutors; the selec­tion and elec­tion of pres­i­dents; the pur­chase and sale of land; the estab­lish­ment of account­ing meth­ods; the main­te­nance of the Col­lege facil­i­ties; fundrais­ing efforts; the run­ning of the Gram­mar School; the rate of board for stu­dents; and the con­tin­ual hir­ing and fir­ing of stew­ards. Per­haps the most fre­quent topic of dis­cus­sion in the early records is the state of the College’s finances.

We hope to con­tinue to dig­i­tize Trustee min­utes as well other impor­tant records of the Uni­ver­sity in the com­ing years.