Below is the text of an email exchange between Uni­ver­sity Archivist Dan Linke and David Nathan ’90 con­cern­ing a por­tion of the Archives’ stere­o­graph collection.

Hi Dan,

Here’s a list­ing with all the infor­ma­tion I obtained yes­ter­day, faith­fully tran­scribed from the backs of the His­tor­i­cal Pho­to­graph Col­lec­tion: Stere­o­graphs Series, circa 1869–1880. The only thing I omit­ted is a font issue — some titles appeared in all caps — and the repeat­ing infor­ma­tion about “Col­lege of New Jer­sey”, “R.H. Rose”, etc. Any idea where I might look for the miss­ing cards?

Regards,

David L. Nathan, M.D.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Ques­tion: How many build­ings does Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity con­sist of?

Answer:

This ques­tion comes up fre­quently. In this case, the con­text and research pur­pose are as impor­tant as the ques­tion. What does the patron con­sider a build­ing? Build­ings on the main cam­pus, on the For­re­stal Cam­pus, or build­ings that the Uni­ver­sity owns in general?

Because of these qual­i­fiers, there is sig­nif­i­cant dis­crep­ancy among pub­lished numbers.

Mudd’s own FAQ page gives 324 as of 2000; the Prince­ton Weekly Bul­letin states 160 (on cam­pus) and 220 (off cam­pus) for 2004; and the Prince­ton Pro­file (http://www.princeton.edu/profile/) lists 180 as of 2009.

These dis­crep­an­cies can be explained by two main fac­tors: 1) change over time and 2) count­ing methods.

Con­tinue read­ing →

There are a num­ber of col­lec­tions at the See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library which doc­u­ment Princeton’s con­nec­tion to the Olympic move­ment of the late 19th cen­tury, as well as sev­eral related resources in the Man­u­script Divi­sion at Fire­stone. What fol­lows is a list of our major hold­ings which relate in some way to the topic, with links to find­ing aids and cat­a­log records wher­ever pos­si­ble. It is by no means exhaus­tive; how­ever it should prove a use­ful start­ing point for research.

Con­tinue read­ing →

This ques­tion came from two dif­fer­ent inquir­ers, one being the Library of Con­gress. On National Pub­lic Radio’s Week­end Edi­tion (Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 26, 2008), Scott Simon read some­thing he called “A Time­less Polit­i­cal Speech.” You can lis­ten to it at the Week­end Edi­tion Sat­ur­day page of NPR’s web site. Simon said it was writ­ten by Andrew Parker Nevin, Prince­ton Class of 1895, and that it was printed in the Oct. 28, 1905 issue of the Prince­ton Alumni Weekly.

How­ever, the cita­tion given with the story was wrong. In A. Parker Nevin’s alumni file I was able to find a copy of “An Address for All Occa­sions” which was pub­lished in the PAW of 14 August 1936 on page 9. The edi­to­r­ial com­ment on the top of the page describes this print­ing as “res­ur­rect­ing” the speech, so I assume it was printed in some ear­lier PAW or Princeton-based pub­li­ca­tion, but I was unable to find any other evi­dence of the first pub­li­ca­tion. Another note in Nevin’s alumni file said that it was pub­lished some time after his death in 1926. An online search sug­gests to me that it may have also been pub­lished in Harper’s in Decem­ber 1951 as well. (Read the full text by click­ing on the image here to open the image in a new win­dow.) I lis­tened to part of the NPR story while read­ing along with the speech in the 1936 PAW. It is not exactly word-for-word, but is def­i­nitely the same speech.

Sin­cerely,

Jen­nifer M. Cole

Ques­tion: Did Aaron Burr, Jr. take part in a Whig or Clio debate in which he argued against duel­ing? What infor­ma­tion on Aaron Burr, Jr. exists within uni­ver­sity records?

There is noth­ing in the records of either orga­ni­za­tion, in early Uni­ver­sity records, or in Burr’s mem­oirs that would con­firm that such a debate took place. The records of Clio debate top­ics begin in 1792, Whig in 1802; unfor­tu­nately any records of ear­lier debate top­ics would have been destroyed in the 1802 Nas­sau Hall fire. The records of the Uni­ver­sity actu­ally con­tain very lit­tle orig­i­nal mate­r­ial per­tain­ing to Aaron Burr Jr. ‘1772, at least par­tially as a result of the afore­men­tioned Nas­sau Hall fire. Most sig­nif­i­cantly, he is listed sev­eral times in the min­utes of the Trustees among the grad­u­ates of the Class of 1772. From other sources such as the Penn­syl­va­nia Chron­i­cle, we know that he deliv­ered sev­eral ora­tions at com­mence­ments while he was a stu­dent. Other Aaron Burr pri­mary sources held by the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions are gath­ered in two col­lec­tions held by the Man­u­scripts Division:

Aaron Burr (1756–1836) Collection

http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/kw52j8069

Fuller Col­lec­tion of Aaron Burr (1756–1836)

http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/sf268510w

The Uni­ver­sity Archives also holds a siz­able alumni file for Burr which con­tains clip­pings and some early ref­er­ence cor­re­spon­dence between researchers and var­i­ous Uni­ver­sity sec­re­taries about his life, focus­ing mainly on his affairs after leav­ing the Col­lege of New Jer­sey. The file also con­tains repro­duc­tions of sev­eral paint­ings, engrav­ings, and sketches of Burr. James Madison’s alumni file con­tains a sim­i­lar folder of portraits.

Yours sin­cerely,

Daniel Bren­nan

Ques­tion: While at Prince­ton, did James Madi­son suf­fer a ner­vous col­lapse due to the inten­sity of his stud­ies?

The story of Madison’s sup­posed ner­vous col­lapse in the days before com­mence­ment and its place in Prince­ton lore are pri­mar­ily the result of a brief note in MacLean’s “His­tory of the Col­lege of New Jer­sey” which states that at com­mence­ment in 1771, “Mr. James Madi­son was excused from tak­ing part in the exer­cises.” Many other sources which dis­cuss the young Madi­son as a stu­dent attribute the very same state­ment to a com­mence­ment pro­gram, how­ever if such a doc­u­ment exists it is not in the hold­ings of the Uni­ver­sity Archives. The clos­est such resource is a hand­writ­ten repro­duc­tion of an arti­cle from the “Penn­syl­va­nia Chron­i­cle” doc­u­ment­ing the event in Com­mence­ment Records, which lists Madi­son among the grad­u­ates but makes no men­tion as to whether he was present or not.

Nonethe­less, in Madison’s “Auto­bi­og­ra­phy” (actu­ally an unti­tled man­u­script written/dictated at the age of 80) he writes that “His very infirm health, had been occa­sioned not a lit­tle by a dou­bled labor, in which he was joined by fel­low stu­dent Jos. Ross, in accom­plish­ing the stud­ies of two years within one…” At some point later his­to­ri­ans must have made the con­nec­tion between this pas­sage and MacLean’s note that he missed com­mence­ment. Note that in his cor­re­spon­dence as a stu­dent (com­piled in the Papers of James Madi­son) the young states­man makes no men­tion what­so­ever of these health trou­bles or of miss­ing com­mence­ment, although later in life he did suf­fer from peri­odic bouts of an unknown mal­ady which some his­to­ri­ans sus­pect may have been epilepsy (as dis­cussed in the Madi­son biogra­phies of Ralph Ketcham and Irv­ing Brant).

Yours sin­cerely,

Daniel Bren­nan

Ques­tion: Is there any evi­dence about Alexan­der Hamilton’s poten­tial admis­sion to Prince­ton?

When dis­cussing the can­non­ball leg­end, it has some­times been sug­gested that Hamil­ton took a cer­tain delight in fir­ing on Old Nas­sau since he had been admit­ted to the col­lege and then later denied entrance. The old­est ref­er­ence to Hamilton’s alleged admis­sion to Prince­ton is in the nar­ra­tive of his life as told by Her­cules Mul­li­gan, a com­pan­ion from his time at King’s Col­lege, which was later put to paper and printed in John C. Hamilton’s 1834 biog­ra­phy “The Life of Alexan­der Hamil­ton.” Accord­ing to the story recounted by Mul­li­gan, Hamil­ton met with John With­er­spoon in Sep­tem­ber of 1772 and was granted admis­sion to the Col­lege. The deci­sion was then revoked by the Trustees on account of Hamilton’s desire to pur­sue his stud­ies at an accel­er­ated pace and earn his degree in less than four years. Mul­li­gan reports that Hamil­ton was noti­fied of the deci­sion through a let­ter from With­er­spoon; how­ever if it ever existed this let­ter has never been recovered.

In addi­tion to the lack of any source beyond that of Mul­li­gan (a source which has some­times proven quite unre­li­able in regards to other details of Hamilton’s life) there are sev­eral pre­vail­ing issues which cast doubt on the story. The first is that there was already a prece­dent in place at the Col­lege of New Jer­sey that allowed stu­dents to pur­sue accel­er­ated stud­ies, as James Madi­son and Aaron Burr had both been per­mit­ted to do so in pre­ced­ing years. Sec­ond, if the mat­ter was for­mally brought before the Trustees, osten­si­bly there would be some record of it in the Trustees’ min­utes– how­ever there is none. Finally, Hamilton’s close asso­ci­a­tion with Trustees Elias Boudinot and William Liv­ingston makes it seem unlikely that his own patrons would refuse him entry to the col­lege on a tech­ni­cal­ity, par­tic­u­larly since they had allegedly arranged the meet­ing with With­er­spoon in the first place. A use­ful explo­ration of these issues is found in James Thomas Flexner’s “The Young Hamil­ton.” Con­versely, in “Alexan­der Hamil­ton: a Life” Willard Sterne Ran­dall (under the assump­tion that Mulligan’s story is true) pro­poses that With­er­spoon, aware of Hamilton’s ille­git­i­mate ori­gins, refused him admis­sion on those grounds. With­er­spoon is known to have been par­tic­u­larly crit­i­cal of Colo­nial Gov­er­nor William Franklin (Ben­jamin Franklin’s half-son) for the very same rea­son, so it fits in that sense. The story about the Trustees which Hamil­ton then allegedly received was lit­tle more than a cover-up from Witherspoon.

In short how­ever, there is no evi­dence in the records of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity which con­firms or even hints that Hamil­ton was ever granted admis­sion to the Uni­ver­sity. But given what is known about the young Hamilton’s polit­i­cal atti­tudes, what is known about the admin­is­tra­tion of the Col­lege at the time, and the orig­i­nal source, the verac­ity of the story is questionable.

Yours sin­cerely,

Daniel Bren­nan

Ques­tion: What book con­tains the first ref­er­ence to Alexan­der Hamil­ton shoot­ing the can­non­ball that crashes through Nas­sau Hall and destroys the por­trait of King George?

Accord­ing to a pop­u­lar story told and retold over the years, dur­ing the Bat­tle of Prince­ton young artillery com­man­der Alexan­der Hamil­ton directed his can­nons at the remain­ing red­coats who had holed up in Nas­sau Hall, and fired a shot straight through the win­dow, neatly decap­i­tat­ing the por­trait of King George II which hung in the room. The ear­li­est avail­able ref­er­ence to Hamilton’s being behind the can­non­ball I have found is in Sir George Otto Trevelyan’s “The Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion” pub­lished in 1905. On page 137 of vol­ume three he writes “Even in that quar­ter there was very lit­tle blood­shed, but some pro­fa­na­tion; for young Alexan­der Hamil­ton, with the irrev­er­ence of a stu­dent fresh from a rival place of edu­ca­tion, planted his guns on the sacred grass of the aca­d­e­m­i­cal cam­pus, and fired a six-pound shot which is said to have passed through the head of King George the Second’s por­trait in the Chapel.” Trevelyan typ­i­cally employs foot­notes when draw­ing upon pri­mary sources but there is none asso­ci­ated with this pas­sage. When the story is ref­er­enced by later his­to­ri­ans it almost always traces back to Trevelyan.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Ques­tion: Can you defin­i­tively doc­u­ment the first use of “House­p­a­r­ties” as a term for the Spring club bac­cha­nal?

Answer:Writ­ing in the Prince­ton Alumni Weekly in 1960, Brown Rol­ston 1910 makes the claim that “It was my sec­tion of the Cot­tage Club and that of Cap and Gown which started House­p­a­r­ties. It took con­sid­er­able argu­ment and per­sua­sion to get the col­lege author­i­ties to con­sent, but under the con­di­tions of strict chap­er­on­age they finally did. The girls stayed at the clubs and each club had a dance to which the girls and mem­bers of the other club were invited and a most enjoy­able and respectable time was had by all. My mother and sev­eral other ladies were on guard but, as I said, the girls were ‘nice’ girls and were quite used to being chaperoned.”

If we take Rol­ston at his word, it would mean that house­p­a­r­ties orig­i­nated with the Class of 1910. It’s worth not­ing how­ever that since he is writ­ing in 1960, Rol­ston is almost cer­tainly using the term retroac­tively. While the events Rol­ston describes may match the def­i­n­i­tion of house­p­a­r­ties (at least by early 20th cen­tury stan­dards) it seems unlikely that they were called that. The first time that the term actu­ally appears in ref­er­ence to a col­lec­tive cel­e­bra­tion at the clubs seems to be a brief men­tion in the Daily Prince­ton­ian in 1916. After this point it quickly enters the Prince­ton ver­nac­u­lar and by 1920 there is a “house­p­a­r­ties” issue of The Tiger.

There are two Prince arti­cles which briefly dis­cuss the ori­gin of house­p­a­r­ties that one can review online, as they explain their evo­lu­tion from smaller “tea parties.”

http://prince-web1.princeton.edu/archives/2003/05/02/news/8153.shtml

http://prince-web1.princeton.edu/archives/2006/05/04/arts/15524.shtml

I hope that this infor­ma­tion helps. I can­not find any­thing in any of our records which would indi­cate that 1908 was the first year of house­p­a­r­ties. Even if Brown Rol­ston was only a junior when the events he describes hap­pened (it’s unclear if he was dis­cussing his junior or senior year), then the date still would have been spring 1909. Let me know if there’s any­thing else I can do; I under­stand that brag­ging rights to a cen­tury of par­ty­ing is on the line here.

Yours sin­cerely,

Daniel Bren­nan

The staff of the Mudd Man­u­script Library answers over 2,000 e-mail inquiries a year, and those which should be of inter­est to a wider audi­ence will be shared via this blog. This blog cat­e­gory is named Dear Mr. Mudd because in a few instances some of the e-mails sent to our gen­eral library account are addressed that way.