Nineteenth-century letters move into 21st century

A col­lec­tion of John Maclean’s papers are now avail­able online. Maclean, the 10th pres­i­dent of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity, served from 1854–1868 when the insti­tu­tion was known as the Col­lege of New Jer­sey. The let­ters, acquired last year, were scanned and loaded as PDFs and linked to the collection’s find­ing aid via its folder list. These let­ters to and from John Maclean doc­u­ment the his­tory of the Col­lege of New Jer­sey as well as fam­ily mat­ters. Maclean was the son of Princeton’s first chem­istry pro­fes­sor, and the papers include the 1814 inven­tory of the estate of his father, John Maclean, Sr. One of the more inter­est­ing doc­u­ments pro­vides evi­dence of New Jersey’s con­nec­tions to slav­ery. See the last two entries of p. 3 of this inven­tory, found in Box 4, Folder 11.