By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
Celebrating its bicentennial this year, the Princeton Theological Seminary has influenced the Princeton community and its graduates have helped shape civil rights and the free press.
Princeton Seminary was established in May of 1812 by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church as a post-graduate professional school of theology after four years of discussion, said Kenneth Henke, archivist. The seminary archives include an 1810 letter laying out the plan for the seminary, supporting reports and other documents.
In the early periods, before the seminary was established, the Scottish-Irish would send ministers over to establish presbyteries in the middle Colonies of early America, organizing the first presbytery in Philadelphia.
Presbyterians value education and pastors are trained in Greek and Hebrew. “The Presbyterians had this tradition of a learned ministry, so they were much more strict about who they would ordain to be a pastor,” he said.
Princeton was chosen as the location because Richard Stockton, the son of the signer of the Declaration of Independence, donated the land for the seminary. “Which is why we are so close to Morven,” said Mr. Henke. “He gave us four or five acres and we purchased a few more.”
The first classes were held in a house or in rooms on the Princeton University campus.
”The first classes were in August in 1812,” he said. “There were three students and one professor and they met in a house they rented. In Princeton the houses move around, it used to be where Trinity Church is, but now it’s down Mercer Street.”
Archibald Alexander, the man who advocated for the seminary, was the first instructor and served for 39 years.
”The seminary was founded that year and the war (the War of 1812) broke out and one of the people who was on our board of directors (Colonel Henry Rutgers) was a Revolutionary War hero from New York and they were worried the British would invade from Canada into New York,” said Mr. Henke. “So between the General Assembly, which approved the Seminary in May and the first meeting of the board of directors in June, he had to go back to New York state, organize the militia to defend New York in case the Canadians invaded and then come to the meeting at the end of June.”
The first board meeting was held at 3 p.m. on June 30, 1812, according to a minute book in the archives. Attendees at the meeting included Ashbel Green, who became president of Princeton University, then known as the College of New Jersey, in that year and Samuel Bayard.
As word of the seminary spread, more students came. There were 14 students in May 1813 and a second instructor, Samuel Miller, was added.
Architect John McComb Jr. designed the original seminary building, Alexander Hall, which was built in 1816. This was the same person who designed the Old Queens building on the Rutgers University. Rutgers University was named after the colonel.
At the same time as Alexander Hall was being constructed, a home for Mr. Alexander was built. Dr. Miller’s home is now the Nassau Club.
Charles Hodge was an early graduate of the seminary and became its third professor, beginning to teach in 1820. He was originally hired to teach Hebrew and two of his sons and one grandson followed in his footsteps and taught at the seminary.
The basic program, the master of divinity, takes three years to complete. Advanced degree programs are also offered.
The Presbyterian church came out of the Protestant Reformation from John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland in the 16th century.
The seminary drew many influential Presbyterians to Princeton throughout the 19th century and influenced many others outside the community, particularly with the publication of the “Princeton Review” magazine.
Mr. Hodge founded the magazine in 1825, and called it “Biblical Repertory;” it was called “Princeton Review” only from 1878 to 1884, with other names in between, according to seminary records. In 1890, it re-launched as a completely different publication, “Presbyterian and Reformed Review,” and ran until 1902, when it again changed its name to “Princeton Theological Review,” and ran until 1929.
Mr. Hodge remained editor and main contributor for 40 years.
”It was a major cultural magazine with book reviews and things like that. People at the university and at the seminary were people who were editing that and publishing articles,” said Mr. Henke. “It was a major center of cultural influence, particularly for the middle Atlantic region. Princeton had this tradition of education and it drew educated people to the town.”
The institutions of higher learning helped the town of Princeton grow, drawing people to live there because of the scholarship. Educational institutions are still the major employers in town to this day, said Mr. Henke.
One prominent Princetonian was Betsey Stockton, who was born a slave at Morven. Mr. Green, who married Richard Stockton’s daughter, set her free. After being admitted to the First Presbyterian Church in Princeton she learned of the plans of a seminary student to go to the Sandwich Islands, what is now Hawaii, on a missionary trip.
”(Mr. Green) also educated her and taught her to read,” said Mr. Henke. “She came back to Princeton and some of the students in the seminary began tutoring her and she got this desire to be a missionary; in those days single women did not become missionaries and certainly single African American women did not become missionaries.”
After an appeal from the mission board, she became the first single American woman sent overseas as a missionary. She taught at a missionary school for ordinary children and a church while in Hawaii in 1822 and upon returning to North America, she established a school for Indians in Canada.
Ms. Stockton returned to Princeton in 1835 and taught in a school for African Americans in the Witherspoon Jackson neighborhood. She helped found Princeton’s First Presbyterian Church of Color teaching a Sabbath School; it was renamed the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in 1848.
”She never married and she was very well-respected in the Princeton African American community, having started as a slave across the street,” said Mr. Henke.
Some well-known graduates are featured with a display in the archives.
Famous seminarians included Theodore Sedgwick Wright, one of the first African Americans, a free man, to have an advanced education when he graduated in 1828, well ahead of other institutions of higher learning. The man went on to found the American Anti-Slavery Society and was very involved in the abolitionist movement and his church, the first African American Presbyterian church in New York, was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
”Before we had him we had a Native American who came to study here and who died here and is buried in Princeton Cemetery,” said Mr. Henke. “Early on there was this interest in multi-cultural outreach.”
Newsman Elijah Parish Lovejoy, another seminarian in 1832 and 1833, lost his life in the battle for a free press.
Mr. Lovejoy had his news presses attacked and destroyed in St. Louis because he was discussing the slavery issue in Missouri, which was divided on the issue.
”He finally moved across the river to Altman, Ill., which was a free state, and there were anti-abolitionists in Illinois as well and they came and destroyed his press several times,” said Mr. Henke. “He was shot and killed defending his press. It became a great cause for the abolitionists in the 1830s.”
Another pioneering journalist attended the seminary, Stephen Foreman. Mr. Foreman was a Cherokee Indian from Georgia and he founded and was an associate editor the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix in 1829. He also protested the removal of the Cherokee from Georgia in Washington, D.C.
”When it was clear that they were not going to be allowed to stay, he accompanied his tribe on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma,” said Mr. Henke. “He became quite a leader of the Cherokee people in Oklahoma and he founded their education system and was a member of their Supreme Court. He was also a Presbyterian minister, so he translated the Bible into the Cherokee language.”
Sheldon Jackson graduated from the seminary in 1858 and served his ministry in Alaska and imported reindeer after noticing the lack of food for the native Alaskans and the Gold Rushers as the whaling industry began to fail.
”He was responsible for introducing reindeer to Alaska,” said Mr. Henke.
In the 1860s the school’s Brown Hall was the only large building constructed in Princeton during the Civil War.
The pastor and founder of the largest Presbyterian church in the world in Seoul, Korea, in 1945, Kyung Chick Han, was educated in Princeton, graduating in 1929. He pastored until his death in 1973.
The first woman admitted into the seminary was Muriel Van Orden Jennings, who was awarded her degree and an advanced degree in 1932, after finishing third in her all-male class. She served more than 80 years of ministry until her death in Feb. 2000.
Other prominent graduates include Francis James Grimke, who co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and James Reeb, who was a white minister and civil rights believer who was beaten to death by four white Southern men in Selma, Ala., after Martin Luther King Jr. requested clergy to the area after the march on Montgomery on March 7, 1965. Dr. King gave Mr. Reeb’s eulogy.
Current work of scholars at the seminary include interpretation and study of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
