Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh

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The Rev. Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh (1736–1790)

Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh (1736 – 30 October 1790) was a Dutch Reformed minister and the first President of Queen's College (now Rutgers University) from 1785 to his death in 1790.

He was born in 1736 in Rosendale, New York. He became a preacher in the Dutch Reformed faith and was active in establishing a college in New Jersey that would be affiliated with the Dutch church. He lived in the Old Dutch Parsonage in Somerville, New Jersey. In 1763, he traveled to Europe and appealed to King George III of England 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.

He served as a delegate to New Jersey's last Provincial Congress, which met in Burlington, New Jersey in 1776 to ratify the Declaration of Independence and to frame the first Constitution of the State of New Jersey (1776). He served several one-year terms in New Jersey's General Assembly. After a brief return to the ministry he was selected by the Trustees of Queen's College to be the institution's first President in 1785&mdasha post in which he served until his death.

Hardenbergh married Dinah Van Bergh, widow of his mentor, John Frelinghuysen on 18 March 1756 at Raritan, New Jersey. She was the daughter of Louis Van Bergh. 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.

Reverend Hardenbergh died on 30 October 1790 of tuberculosis in New Brunswick, New Jersey and was buried in the First Reformed Church Cemetery, New Brunswick.