In the 1946–1947 aca­d­e­mic year, Prince­ton cel­e­brated its 200th anniver­sary with a series of con­vo­ca­tions and events, end­ing with a con­clud­ing cer­e­mony, cap­tured in a news­reel, which included a con­vo­ca­tion address by US Pres­i­dent Harry Tru­man. Today’s blog fea­tures another news­reel about the University’s bicen­ten­nial year that focuses on “Char­ter Day,” Octo­ber 19, 1946. In addi­tion to Princeton’s almost 200-year old char­ter and the “largest pro­ces­sion in Prince­ton his­tory” at the time (which included 23 hon­orary degrees recip­i­ents), the news­reel addresses the begin­ning of inter­col­le­giate foot­ball, depict­ing a re-enactment of the first foot­ball game between Prince­ton and Rut­gers from Novem­ber 6, 1869 dur­ing half­time of the 1946 Princeton-Rutgers game.

Princeton’s char­ter, granted to the Uni­ver­sity on Octo­ber 22, 1746 (then still known as the “Col­lege of New Jer­sey”) is shown fleet­ingly in the news­reel (0:38). Read­ers of our reg­u­lar blog already know that the char­ter, on inter­mit­tent dis­play dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of Mudd Man­u­script Library’s 50th anniver­sary, is actu­ally not the orig­i­nal (which was lost) but the sec­ond char­ter, drawn up in 1748. (An expla­na­tion can be found in our Fre­quently Asked Ques­tions.) The famous early pic­ture of Nas­sau Hall that fol­lows at 0:48 is the cop­per engrav­ing by Philadel­phia artist Henry Dawkins (copied from a draw­ing by Prince­ton stu­dent William Ten­nent, Class of 1758), which was printed in Samuel Blair’s Account of the Col­lege of New Jer­sey (1764). For more infor­ma­tion about the engraver, who was also a coun­ter­feiter of paper money, see Julie Mellby’s Graphic Arts blog.

Over 500 peo­ple com­prised the aca­d­e­mic pro­ces­sion that opened and closed the morning’s con­vo­ca­tion, accord­ing to the Prince, includ­ing fac­ulty, trustees, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all alumni classes and mem­bers of the Under­grad­u­ate Coun­cil. The pro­ces­sion included an offi­cial del­e­ga­tion from the United Nations, headed by Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Trygve Lie, and mem­bers from the State Bicen­ten­nial Com­mis­sion, includ­ing Wal­ter E. Edge, Gov­er­nor of New Jer­sey. Lie (1:42) and Edge (2:11) were among the 23 hon­orary degree recip­i­ents, as were the Dan­ish physi­cist Niels Bohr, the Span­ish writer Sal­vador De Madariaga, and the French philoso­pher Jacques Mar­i­tain (2:21–not all recip­i­ents are clearly visible).

The last eight min­utes of the news­reel are occu­pied by the 38th Rutgers-Princeton foot­ball game in the after­noon (2:47), with a humor­ous reen­act­ment of the first Rutgers-Princeton game of Novem­ber 6, 1869 (5:51), con­sid­ered the ‘birth’ of inter­col­le­giate foot­ball. A descrip­tion of the foot­ball game and the reen­act­ment by The­atre Intime and mem­bers of the Rut­gers soc­cer team can be found in the Prince. A copy of the pro­gram notes about the 1869 foot­ball game, with an expla­na­tion of the rules, may be down­loaded at Twenty-four Stal­wart Men.pdf. A sec­ond arti­cle from the pro­gram, sum­ma­riz­ing the his­tory of the Princeton-Rutgers foot­ball rivalry, can be viewed at  77 Years Princeton-Rutgers.pdf. More infor­ma­tion about early foot­ball can be found in Foot­ball: the Ivy League Ori­gins of an Amer­i­can Obses­sion by Mark Bern­stein ’83, who wrote our pre­vi­ous blog entry.

The footage on this 16mm film is part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (part of item no. 0092).