James Carnahan
James Carnahan [1]
president of Princeton College, was born Nov. 15, 1775, near Carlisle, Cuimberland Co., Pa. In November, 1798, he entered the junior class in the college of New Jersey, and received the first degree in the arts in September, 1800. He read theology under John M'Millan, D.D., in Western Pennsylvania. In 1801 he returned to Princeton as tutor, and resigned his tutorship in the fall of 1803. He was licensed by the presbytery of New Brunswick at Baskenridge in April, 1804, and preached in the vicinity of Hackettstown, Oxford, and Knowlton. January 5, 1805, he was ordained pastor of the united churches of Whitesborough and Utica, N.,Y. In February, 1814, he moved for his health to Georgetown, D. C., and opened a school, teaching there for nine years. In May, 1823, he was chosen president of the college of New Jersey, was inaugurated on the 5th of August, 1823, and, after a service of thirty years, resigned in 1853, and his connection with the college was dissolved June, 1854. He was in different capacities connected with the college for thirty-five years, viz. two years as a student, two as a tutor, and thirty-one as president. "His character was distinguished by mildness, joined to firmness and vigor; his learning was extensive, and his practical ability in the ordinary affairs of life exceedingly acute. His labors were very useful in every department of activity — as a man, a Christian clergyman, the head of a most important educational institution, and an efficient cooperator in numerous schemes of benevolent enterprise." He died in Newark, N. J., March 3, 1859. — New York Observer; Wilson, Presb. Almanac, 1860, p 68.
