Dickinson, Jonathan

Related Category: Protestant Christianity: Biographies

1688–1747, American Presbyterian clergyman, a founder and first president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton Univ.), b. Hatfield, Mass., grad. Yale, 1706. He was a leading preacher of the Great Awakening in the middle colonies and supported the revivalists or “New Sides” in the ensuing controversy. Convinced of the need of an educational institution to carry forward the ideals of William Tennent, he obtained a charter (1746) for the College of New Jersey. In 1747 he opened the institution at his house in Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth), N.J.