Nathaniel FitzRandolph

FitzRandolph was the son of one of the original seventeenth-century Quaker settlers of Princeton. More than any other citizen of Princeton, he was responsible for raising for the College the money and land the trustees required of the citizens of the place where it was to be located -- 1000 pounds New Jersey money, ten acres of cleared land for the campus, and 200 acres of woodland for fuel -- and thus enabled Princeton to win from its chief competitor, New Brunswick, the honor and benefits of providing the site of the college.

Besides riding among his neighbors to solicit donations, FitzRandolph himself gave twenty pounds and 4.5 acres, described in the trustee minutes as "a certain tract of land four hundred feet front and thirty poles [rods] depth, in line at right angles with the broad street where it is proposed that the college shall be built."

FitzRandolph took great interest in the building of the college and recorded its progress in his journal: July 29, 1754, "Jos. Morrow set a man first to dig the college cellar." September 17, 1754, "the first cornerstone . . . was laid in the northwesterly corner of the cellar by . . . Mr. William Worth, the mason that built the stone and brick work, myself, and many others." November 1755, "the roof . . . was raised by Robert Smith, the carpenter that built the timber work." November 13, 1756, "Aaron Burr, President, preached the first sermon and began the school in Princeton College."

FitzRandolph was buried in the family burial ground, which was located where Holder Hall now stands. Workmen excavating for the foundations of that dormitory in 1909 discovered thirty-two old, unmarked graves there. At President Wilson's direction the contents of the graves were preserved in separate boxes and reinterred under the eastern arch of Holder Hall and a memorial tablet placed in the arch. President Wilson wrote the English and Dean West the Latin for the inscription:

NEAR THIS SPOT
LIE THE REMAINS OF
NATHANIEL FITZRANDOLPH
THE GENEROUS GIVER OF THE LAND
UPON WHICH THE ORIGINAL
BUILDINGS
OF THIS UNIVERSITY
WERE ERECTED
In Agro Jacet Nostro Immo Suo
(In our ground he sleeps, nay, rather, in his own.)