Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/310



Virginia Gazette before this arrives. The letter to the merchants in Philadelphia, requesting their concurrence, was lately burned by the students of this place in the college yard, all of them appearing in their black gowns and the bell tolling There are about 115 in the College and in the Grammar School, all of them in American cloth."

"Last week, to show our patriotism," wrote in 1774 another Princeton student, Charles Beatty,

"we gathered all the steward's winter store of tea, and having made a fire in the campus we there burnt near a dozen pounds, tolled the bell, and made many spirited resolves. But this was not all. Poor Mr. Hutchinson's effigy shared the same fate with the tea, having a tea-canister tied about his neck."

With such a nursery of patriotism at its very hub, the temper of the surrounding community can easily be pictured. The proposition for a provincial congress came from Princeton. John Hart, a farmer from the neighboring township of Hopewell, and Abraham Clark, a farmer's son from the neighboring county, were associated with graduates from Princeton College and delegates from Princeton town in conducting its deliberations. Both were made delegates to the Continental Congress and both, along with Witherspoon and