Gen­er­ally ignored or barely noted by Prince­to­ni­ans today, Washington’s Birth­day was one of the most impor­tant cam­pus events dur­ing the late 1800s and early 1900s. The day was marked in a vari­ety of ways such as ath­letic con­tests, musi­cal enter­tain­ment, and plays. The cel­e­bra­tion was capped off by an ora­tor­i­cal con­test, where each class selected a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to com­pete for a cash prize, usu­ally spon­sored by the Nas­sau Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zine.

Cover of the 1897 Washington’s Birth­day Pro­gram,
Washington’s Birth­day Cel­e­bra­tion Records

The char­ac­ter of the holiday’s cel­e­bra­tion changed sig­nif­i­cantly over time. The first Prince­ton obser­vance of the first president’s birth­day was noted in the Feb­ru­ary 1794 min­utes of the Clio­sophic Soci­ety. Clio’s obser­va­tion of the occa­sion included an ora­tion by Brother Gamma, a.k.a. Henry Kol­lock ’1794, which includes few details other than that it was received “to the great sat­is­fac­tion of all.” The tra­di­tion seems to have been revived decades later, as the Archives’ Washington’s Birth­day Cel­e­bra­tion Records (AC200) con­tain event pro­grams from the years 1873 to 1909.

For much of its lifes­pan, the cel­e­bra­tion appears to have been rau­cous, empha­siz­ing a spirit of class rivalry, espe­cially between fresh­men and sopho­mores. Inter-class haz­ing was fre­quent, and an ele­ment of humor per­me­ated each pro­gram, espe­cially in the ora­tion deliv­ered by the senior class speaker, who was per­mit­ted to digress from the patri­otic speeches expected of the other three classes.