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Jonathan Dickinson (April 22, 1688 – October 7, 1747) was a Congregational, later Presbyterian, minister, a leader in the Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s, and a co-founder and first president of the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University.
- Position established
18. apr. 2024 · Jonathan Dickinson (born April 22, 1688, Hatfield, Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 7, 1747, Elizabethtown, New Jersey) was a prominent Presbyterian clergyman of the American colonial period and the first president of Princeton University.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jonathan Dickinson (1688-1747) was a critical figure in the founding of the College of New Jersey, helping to secure the college’s charter and serving as its first president. Dickinson studied theology at what would become Yale College before his ordination as a Presbyterian minister in Elizabethtown, New Jersey in 1709.
26. nov. 2013 · Jonathan Dickinson 1747 After graduating from the Collegiate School of Connecticut (later known as Yale University), Dickinson studied theology and became minister of the Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
He studied theology and in 1709, when he was twenty-one, was ordained minister of the church in Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth), New Jersey. Dickinson served this church all his life, ministering to his flock as pastor, lawyer, physician and, in later years, as an instructor of young men preparing for professional study.
Led by the renowned ministers Jonathan Dickinson and Aaron Burr, Sr., a group of prominent New Light moderates decided to establish a college that would be more sympathetic to the precepts of the Great Awakening than Harvard or Yale and that would train the ministers needed by the growing New Light congregations.
In early 1746, a group of New Lights hatched a plan for a college in New Jersey to educate young men for the ministry. The four original founders— Jonathan Dickinson, Aaron Burr Sr., John Pierson, and Ebenezer Pemberton Jr.—were all Presbyterian ministers from eastern New Jersey.
