quarry. The Reverend Ezra Stiles, passing through Princeton at this time, measured the foundations and recorded their dimensions three times in his diary,1 with a drawing, which is the only contemporary plan in existence. The foundations were one hundred and seventy-seven feet long, fifty-three and two-thirds feet wide, with a rear extension of fifteen feet in length and some thirty-six feet in width and a front extension of three or four feet; the corridors were ten feet wide. There were three entrances, one on each side of the central entrance. The basement contained sixteen rooms, and the three stories forty-four rooms in all, exclusive of the hall or chapel, and the whole was surmounted by a low cupola. These sixty apartments included the rooms of students, recitation rooms, refectory, kitchen, library, etc. The roof was pitched in November, 1755. Dr. Stiles asserts that it was at this time the largest stone edifice in the colonies. The building was planned to hold one hundred and forty-seven students, reckoning three to a room, but not more of it was finished than was needed. Everything, said Mr. Burr, was being done in the plainest and cheapest manner as far as was consistent with decency and convenience, and "having no superfluous Ornaments." The cost of the building itself was about £2,900. The contract price for the president's house was £600, but it cost over that sum.

2

But in January, 1753, when the Princeton site was finally agreed upon, beside mere buildings there were other expenses to be met, such as endowment for salaries, for general equipment, and for the establishment of a fund for needy students. Long ago the trustees had cast their eyes on Great Britain. Governor Belcher had

1 Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc., March 10, 1892.
2 The building was not completed until 1762.

written in 1747 to friends abroad, hoping to get donations, and in 1749 the trustees had availed themselves of the services of two gentlemen, Colonel Williams and Mr. Jeremiah Allen, who had volunteered to solicit aid while in England. Governor Belcher and President Burr wrote letters of introduction for them to the Countess of Huntington, George Whitefield's patroness, and according to her biographer considerable sums were collected through her agency; but no record exists of the receipt of any such moneys, nor does her name even occur in the minutes of the board of trustees as having been instrumental in securing funds for the College. It would seem that her interest brought no direct financial results. By September, 1750, the trustees had received no accounts of the Williams-Allen effort, and Whitefield, who had shown deep interest in the College, explained to Mr. Tennent that all was ready for harvesting the results when Mr. Allen died of fever and the whole scheme fell through. Whitefield suggested that President Burr or Mr. Pemberton visit Great Britain on behalf of the College. The board agreed to the suggestion, and Mr. Pemberton was willing to go, but his congregation objected. Mr. Burr then reluctantly agreed to make the trip, but no one could be found to manage the College in his absence, and finally in September, 1753, the two trustees, Gilbert Tennent and Samuel Davies, were commissioned.

Mr. Davies was characteristically pessimistic over the trip; he was entering, he said, on the "most surprising and unexpected step" of his life; what would be the consequence he knew not, but he declared that at times he had "very gloomy prospects about it." And when he saw a letter from London, remarking that the "principles inculcated in the College of New Jersey are

1

NAMING THE BUILDING

41

generally looked upon as antiquated and unfashionable by the Dissenters in England," he felt it a dismal omen for the embassy on which he and Mr. Tennent were embarking. But their mission, nevertheless, was a complete success. The exact sum collected is not recorded. It was over £3,200, raised chiefly by church collections in England, Scotland, and Ireland. The story of the mission is preserved in Mr. Davies' diary, of which one volume in the original manuscript is in the library of Princeton University. The whole diary is published in Foote's "Sketches of Virginia."

At the September meeting of the board at Newark, in 1755, the governor having presented his library, his portrait and coat of arms, and the royal portraits, the board made him in sonorous terms an address of thanks, which closed with the following words: "As the College of New Jersey views you in the light of its Founder, Patron and Benefactor; and the impartial World will esteem it a Respect deservedly due to the Name of Belcher; permit us to dignify the Edifice now erecting at Princeton, with that endeared Appellation. And when your Excellency is translated, to a House not made with Hands, eternal in the Heavens, Let BELCHER-HALL proclaim your beneficent Acts, for the advancement of Christianity and Emolument of the Arts and Sciences, to the latest Ages."

But the shrewd old governor was not caught off his guard, and a year later at commencement in September, 1756, the last held at Newark, his reply was delivered to the board, expressing his appreciation of the honor the trustees would do him, but suggesting that the building be named Nassau Hall and thus keep ever-living testimony to "the Honour we retain, in this remote Part

1 New Jersey Historical Society Proceedings, Vol. VI, p. 170.

of the Globe, to the immortal Memory of the Glorious King William the Third who was a Branch of the illustrious House of Nassau."

The governor's hint was a command, and a resolution was at once passed in the following terms: "Whereas his Excellency Governor Belcher has signified to us his declining to have the Edifice we have lately erected at Princeton for the Use and Service of New Jersey College to be called after his Name, and has desired and for Good Reasons that it should be called after the Name of the illustrious House of NASSAU, It is therefore voted, and is hereby ordered that the said Edifice be in all Time to come called and Known by the Name of Nassau Hall."'1

This name soon became so generally associated with the College that in early records, and indeed until the time of the Civil War, it is common to find the institution called, even officially, "Nassau Hall," or simply "Nassau." After the erection of East and West Colleges the name "North College came into use, being later familiarized into "Old North." In recent years custom and official nomenclature have reverted to the original name.

The meeting of the board in September, 1755, is interesting not alone because it gave a name to the main college building. Looking forward to the life of the College under new conditions, the board had empowered the committee in charge of the Princeton arrangements to engage a steward and a butler, "and to settle Commons," and at the meeting in 1755 Jonathan Baldwin of Princeton, and a member of the graduating class, was appointed to the thankless post of college steward. He held the position for seventeen years, the first incumbent 'Minutes of the board of trustees.