John Witherspoon arrived in America from Scotland in 1768 having been persuaded by the trustees and then medical student Benjamin Rush to assume the presidency of the College of New Jersey. After declining initially, Witherspoon, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, became one of the most popular and influential presidents in Princeton University's history. Witherspoon served not only Princeton, but also the nascent United States as a member of the Continental Congress. During Witherspoon's tenure the College weathered the turmoil caused by the American Revolution: Nassau Hall sustained heavy damage, enrollment declined, and finances were precarious. In the wake of this conflict, Witherspoon's preaching tours increased enrollment, particularly from the southern United States, and he broadened the curriculum by his emphasis on English grammar and composition. He also obtained needed instruments of instruction such as books for the library and apparatus for scientific study (such as the Rittenhouse Orrery). Witherspoon advocated a well-rounded clergy, emphasizing the liberal education of students, rather than just religious instruction. It was his aspiration to produce men who would not only make exceptional clerics, but also outstanding statesmen. Witherspoon instructed many students who became notable for their contributions to state and federal government, including James Madison, Aaron Burr, Jr., William Smith Livingston, Andrew Kirkpatrick, and Ashbel Green. Part of Witherspoon's popularity and influence with both students and politicians derived from his ability to discuss the merits of contesting views, while using reason to reach an ultimate conclusion.

Samuel Stanhope Smith, born in 1751 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was the first alumnus to become president of the College of New Jersey. His father, Robert Smith, taught him at the school he headed in Pequea, Pennsylvania until the age of sixteen, when Samuel entered the College of New Jersey as a junior. He graduated with honors in 1769 before returning to Pennsylvania to teach in his father's school. In 1771 he returned to Princeton to tutor and study theology under John Witherspoon. For health reasons, he left Princeton to work as a missionary in Virginia. In 1775 the seminary that later became Hampden-Sydney College was founded, and Smith became its president. Married to Ann Witherspoon, Witherspoon's daughter, Smith returned to Princeton in 1779 as a professor of moral philosophy, and his brother, John Blair Smith, replaced him as president of Hampden-Sydney College. On Witherspoon's death in 1794, Smith, who had become vice president in 1786, assumed the leadership of the College. After the Nassau Hall fire of 1802, he raised enough money not only to reconstruct the landmark but also to add two additional buildings. Unfortunately, a riot in 1807 led to the suspension of 125 students and a growing distrust on the part of trustees. Faculty resignations and a declining student body led to Smith's resignation in 1812.

Ashbel Green was born in 1762 in Hanover, New Jersey, the son of Jacob Green, a Presbyterian minister and a trustee of the College of New Jersey. Green studied under his father until the age of sixteen, before becoming a revolutionary soldier in 1778. He returned home in 1781 to prepare for college, and the following year he entered the junior class of the College of New Jersey. He graduated in 1783, delivering his class' valedictory before George Washington and other members of the Continental Congress. He remained at the College as a tutor and then as a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy until he received his license to preach in 1786, whereupon he assumed the role of junior pastor at the Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. The year before he had married Elizabeth Stockton, a member of one of Princeton's most prominent families. In 1792 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree by the University of Pennsylvania and was elected chaplain to the United States Congress. He was re-elected to this position several times until 1800, when Congress moved to Washington, D.C. Green returned to the College of New Jersey as its president in 1812 and held office until 1822, emphasizing religion and discipline. During his tenure, he was part of the planning committee for the Princeton Theological Seminary, and he remained closely associated with the Seminary until his death in 1848. He resigned the presidency in 1822 over differences with the Board of Trustees, returning to Philadelphia to become editor of the Christian Advocate.

This series is arranged topically and contains biographical and genealogical information, correspondence, and financial records. The correspondence folder contains two items in Carnahan's hand: the first is his acceptance of the presidency in 1823; the second is a report on the state of College in 1852. Also to be found is a letter from John Quincy Adams declining an invitation to attend the College's centennial celebrations, as well as various letters sent to Carnahan. Financial materials include treasurer's and president's vouchers and checks. Among the images in this series is a photograph of a portrait of Carnahan's wife, Mary Vandyke.

John Maclean, Jr. was the eldest of six children of John Maclean, Sr. and Phoebe Bainbridge. His father was born in Glasgow, studied for the medical profession, and became a surgeon. At 24, the elder Maclean immigrated to the United States for political reasons. He was invited to take the vacant chair of natural philosophy, which included chemistry, at the College of New Jersey, becoming the institution's first professor of chemistry. He married in 1797, and John was born on March 3, 1800. Entering the College of New Jersey as a sophomore, he graduated in 1816 as the youngest in his class. He taught for a few months in Lawrenceville, New Jersey before earning a divinity degree from the Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1818 he was appointed as a tutor of Greek at the College of New Jersey, beginning a long, varied, and devoted career at his alma mater. Four years later he was elected to fill the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy, though this did not prevent him from subsequently teaching languages and literature. Maclean also served as the College's librarian from 1824 until 1849.

James McCosh was the first president since John Witherspoon who was not an alumnus of the College of New Jersey. Many similarities have been noted between the two men. Both were born in Scotland and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. Witherspoon was inaugurated in 1768, and McCosh was inaugurated one hundred years later in 1868. They died one hundred years apart, almost to the day, and like all presidents until Woodrow Wilson, both were ministers.

Francis Landey Patton served as president from 1888 to 1902 during an era of change and growth, reflected in the adoption of the name Princeton University in 1896. Born January 22, 1843 in Warwick, Bermuda in a house called Carberry, Patton was the eldest of three sons. His father died when he was six years old. Patton attended the Warwick Academy in Bermuda and graduated from Knox College at the University of Toronto in 1862 and from the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1865, the year in which he was ordained a Presbyterian minister. His first three pastorates were in the state of New York. In 1865 he married Rosa Antoinette Stevenson, with whom he had seven children.

Born December 29, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia, Woodrow Wilson was the son of Joseph Ruggles Wilson, a Presbyterian minister trained at the Princeton Theological Seminary. His father sympathized with the South during the Civil War and was a leader in the Southern Presbyterian Church and a professor at the Columbia Theological and Southwestern Theological Seminaries. Woodrow was raised in Augusta, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina. Born into a religious family, he accompanied his father on pastoral calls and edited minutes of the General Assembly. He attended Davidson College in his freshman year (1873-1874), and then prepared for entrance to the College of New Jersey, enrolling in 1875. An ambitious reading program offset his light course load. He became known as a leader, and his classmates elected him speaker of the American Whig Society, secretary of the Football Association, president of the Baseball Association, and managing editor of The Daily Princetonian. He graduated in 1879 and then studied law at the University of Virginia from 1879 to 1880 before briefly practicing in Atlanta, Georgia. Wilson's graduate work, undertaken between 1883 and 1886 in political science and history at Johns Hopkins University, culminated in a doctoral dissertation entitled Congressional Government. Wilson married Ellen Louise Axson of Rome, Georgia in 1885 and had three daughters. Ellen died in 1914, and he married Edith Bolling Galt in 1915.

Born in Peoria, Illinois April 19, 1861, John Grier Hibben was the son of the Rev. Samuel Hibben, a Union chaplain in the Civil War who died when John Grier Hibben was one year old, and Elizabeth Grier Hibben. Hibben graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1882. As a student, he was a junior orator, editor of the Bric-a- Brac, winner of the mathematical prize, sophomore honor prize, and the Class of 1861 prize. He was also valedictorian, class president, and received the J.S.K. fellowship in mathematics. Having completed a one-year post-graduate course at the University of Berlin, he attended the Princeton Theological Seminary from 1883 to 1886. During this time he temporarily took the place of Henry B. Fine, Class of 1880, as instructor in mathematics at the College of New Jersey, and he briefly taught French and German at the Lawrenceville School. Hibben was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1887 and married Jenny Davidson of Elizabeth, New Jersey the same year. They had one daughter.