Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh (22 February 1735/6 – 30 October 1790) was an American Dutch Reformed clergyman, colonial and state legislator, and educator. Hardenbergh was a founder of Queen's College—now Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey—in 1766, and was later appointed as the college's first president.
Hardenbergh was descended from a Dutch family that settled New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century and was prominent in New York colonial affairs. He prepared for ministry at the home of the Reverend John Frelinghuysen, a prominent Dutch Reformed minister near Somerville, New Jersey. After being ordained, Hardenbergh was called to serve congregations in New Jersey's Raritan River valley, and later in Ulster County, New York. During the 1760s, Hardenbergh was influential in the establishment of Queen's College, the eighth of nine colleges established during the colonial period. After his efforts to lobby Britain's King George III and New Jersey's royal governor, William Franklin to permit the establishment of a Dutch Reformed-affiliated college, Queen's College was chartered in 1766. During the American Revolution, Hardenbergh served as a delegate for New Jersey's Provincial Congress which ratified the Declaration of Independence and to frame the state's first constitution (1776). He subsequently served several successive one-year terms in New Jersey's General Assembly. In 1785, Hardenbergh was appointed as the first president of Queen's College, a post he would hold from 1786 to his death in 1790.
Life and career
Early life and education Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh was born on 22 February 1735/36 at Rosendale near Kingston, Ulster County, New York in the Hudson River Valley. He was the son of Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh (1706–1786) and Maria DuBois (1705/06–1790). His brother was Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh Jr (1729–1799), who owned Sojourner Truth.Van Rossum, Helen. Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, New Brunswick.'How Rutgers University is connected to Sojourner Truth: The Hardenbergh family in Ulster County, NY'. Retrieved 25 April 2024. His parents had married in Kingston on 6 December 1728 and seven children were born to the marriage of which Jacob was the fourth. His father, who later served with distinction as a field officer under Washington in the Continental Army, served in New York's Colonial Assembly.Miller, Myrtle Hardenbergh, The Hardenbergh Family: A Genealogical Compilation (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: American Historical Company, 1958), 58.18. Major Johannes Hardenbergh, Sr. and 31. Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh, Jr., at Descendants of Job Hendricxsz van Hardenberch at hardenbergh.org (Jan C. Hardenbergh's website). Retrieved 19 January 2014."56. Reverend Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh", at Descendants of Job Hendricxsz van Hardenberch at hardenbergh.org (Jan C. Hardenbergh's website). Retrieved 19 January 2014.Frusciano, Thomas J., "Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh" (essay) in "Leadership on the Banks: Rutgers' Presidents, 1766–2009", The Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries. LIII(1) (June 1991): 3–5; published online by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey,Rutgers Leaders, Rutgers History: Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh, Queen's College President, 1786 to 1790 . Retrieved 19 January 2014. Frelinghuysen instructed Hardenbergh from his home, preserved as the Old Dutch Parsonage in Somerville, New Jersey.
Hardenbergh was the grandson of Johannes Hardenbergh, a wealthy landowner and prominent figure in New York colonial government, who was the owner of the colony's Hardenbergh Patent (1709), an immense tract of land that covered approximately 2,000,000 acres (8,100 km2) of the Catskill Mountains in what is now Sullivan, Ulster and Delaware counties in New York.Clearwater, Alphonso Trumpbour (editor), The History of Ulster County, New York (Kingston, New York: W. J. Van Deusen, 1907), 61. He was likely named for his great-grandfather, Jacob Rutsen, whose daughter Catherine was the second wife of his paternal grandfather.
According to John Howard Raven and William H.S. Demarest, Hardenbergh obtained an education from the Kingston Academy, in Kingston, Ulster County, New York.Demarest, William Henry Steele, Tercentenary Studies, 1928, Reformed Church in America: A Record of Beginnings (New York: Reformed Church in America, 128), 232.Raven, John Howard (Rev.) (compiler). Catalogue of the Officers and Alumni of Rutgers College (originally Queen's College) in New Brunswick, N.J., 1766–1916. (Trenton, New Jersey: State Gazette Publishing Company, 1916). However, the Kingston Academy was not established until 1773. Kingston did, however, have a small school with a Dutch schoolmaster founded in 1722 by the Trustees of the Freeholders and Commonality of the Town of Kingston—an organization chartered by colonial governor Thomas Dongan to provide for the free education of Kingston's children.Schoonmaker, Marius. The History of Kingston, New York: From Its Early Settlement to the Year 1820 (New York: Burr Printing House, 1888), 341ff.; Dietz, Theodore, Dutch Esopus / Wiltwyck / Kingston Memories (Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing, 2012), 119. In his late teens, he travelled to Somerset County, New Jersey to receive religious and theological instruction from the Reverend John Frelinghuysen, who was serving Dutch Reformed congregations in the Raritan valley of central New Jersey.
John Frelinghuysen died in 1754, and at the age of twenty, Hardenbergh married Frelinghuysen's widow, Dinah Van Bergh (c.1723–1807) on 18 March 1756 at Raritan, New Jersey. She had two children with Frelinghuysen before his death. Born in Amsterdam, Dinah was the daughter of Louis Van Bergh, a wealthy merchant who was "engaged in East India trade."Steele, Richard Holloway, Historical Discourse Delivered at the Celebration of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Reformed Dutch Church, New Brunswick, N.J. October 1, 1867 (New York: John A. Gray & Green Printers, 1867). Hardenbergh proposed as Dinah was strongly considering returning to the Netherlands with her two children. Her diary, dating from February 1746 to late 1747, is held by Special Collections and University Archives, at the Archibald S. Alexander Library of Rutgers University. Hardenbergh and his wife had nine children: Maria (born 1757–1789), Laura (born 1757–1785), Johannes (1759–1798), Elinor (born 1760), Dina (born 1762), Jacob Rutsen (1763–1764), Rachel (born 1765–1845), Jacob Rutsen (born 1768), and Lewis (1771–1810).Hardenbergh genealogy provided in Genealogies of New Jersey Families: Families A-Z, Pre-American Notes on Old New Netherland Families (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1996), 857ff. Hardenbergh's step-son, Frederick Frelinghuysen (1753–1804), served in the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, state legislature, and was elected a United States Senator. He also served as a military officer in the Revolution and in the Whiskey Rebellion (1794) when he attained the rank of major general.United States Congress. "Frederick Frelinghuysen", Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
Career as a minister
Hardenbergh studied theology under the Reverend John Frelinghuysen, a Reformed clergyman who served several congregations located in the valley of the Raritan River in Somerset County, New Jersey, at the village of Raritan, Bedminster, Millstone, Neshanic, North Branch, and New Brunswick. These congregations had been served by Frelinghuysen's father, the Reverend Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1691–1749), who rose to prominence during the First Great Awakening. The First Great Awakening was an evangelical revival in the 1730s and 1740s that revitalized Christian beliefs in Protestant Europe and the North American colonies through powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of deep personal revelation of their need of salvation by Jesus Christ. Frelinghuysen had adapted the theological developments of the Puritan divines to preach a style of Reformed pietism, a revivalistic style of Calvinism. His son, John, preached and instructed his students in the same style.
With John Frelinghuysen's unexpected death in 1754, Hardenbergh, as his last theological student, assumed the pulpits of five congregations in central New Jersey served by his teacher. In 1757, Hardenbergh received a license to preach from the Coetus and was formally called by these congregations in May 1758. In 1761, the Coetus relieved him of two of these congregations, at Millstone and New Brunswick.
During the Revolution, General Washington, a personal friend of the Hardenbergh family, established a headquarters at Raritan in the home of John Wallace and frequently attended services sitting "at the head of the elder's pew". In 1779, the church at Raritan was burned by British forces under Colonel John Graves Simcoe who had intensified efforts to capture Washington.Simcoe, John Graves, A Journal of the Operations of the Queen's Rangers from the end of the year 1777 to the conclusion of the late American War (1787). The church was not rebuilt until 1788.
In 1781, Hardenbergh resigned his pastorates in New Jersey to accept the call to congregations at Marbletown, Rochester, and Wawarsing in Ulster County, New York. He would serve these congregations until 1785. In October 1785, Hardenbergh was called to serve as pastor to the congregation at the First Reformed Church in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He would arrive in New Brunswick to assume the pastorate in April 1786. At the same time, the trustees of Queen's College had called Hardenbergh, a devoted trustee for the school, to serve as its first appointed president. Hardenbergh was invited to fill a vacancy left by the death of the Rev. Johannes Leydt (1719–1783). For two years the church had been served by neighboring clergymen. Hardenbergh had trained both of Leydt's sons in theology—Matthew Leydt (who also died in 1783) was the first graduate of Queen's College. He would serve the congregation until his sudden death in 1790. According to church historian, Richard Holloway Steele, Hardenbergh was the last pastor at New Brunswick to preach in Dutch.
On four occasions, Hardenbergh was selected to serve as the President of the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church.
Queen's College
In 1763, he traveled to Europe and appealed to King George III of Great Britain on behalf of the proposal. On 10 November 1766, Royal Governor William Franklin chartered Queen's College.
Hardenbergh served as an early Trustee of the college, beginning with its first meeting in Hackensack on 12 May 1767, and during this time served in the capacity as board secretary until 1782. Hardenbergh's was named on both of the college's charters, the first in 1766 and the second in 1770. Hardenbergh's father served as a trustee from 1767 until 1786.
It is assumed that he served in a role administering the college's activities as early as 1770. His name appears as college president on the diploma conferred to Simeon DeWitt, a 1776 alumnus.
In 1785, the trustees invited the Reverend Dirck Romeyn to be the college's first appointed president but he declined. The trustees then appointed Hardenbergh. In 1789, ten students graduated from Queen's College.
Political career