1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/New Brunswick (New Jersey)

NEW BRUNSWICK, a city and the county-seat of Middlesex county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the Raritan river, at the terminus of the Delaware & Raritan canal, about 23 m. S.W. of Newark. Pop. (1890) 18,603, (1900), 20,006, of whom 3526 were foreign-born and 755 were negroes; (1910 census) 23,388. It is served by the Pennsylvania and the Raritan River railways, and by daily steamboats to New York. There is a fine stone bridge across the Raritan. In the city are the Wells Memorial Hospital, St Peter’s General Hospital, a Carnegie library, a Federal building and a Soldiers’ Monument. New Brunswick is the seat of the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in America, the oldest theological school in the United States, founded in 1784 in New York City, situated at Flatbush, Long Island, in 1796–1810, and removed to New Brunswick in 1810, and of Rutgers College (originally Dutch Reformed, now nonsectarian), which was founded in 1766 as Queen’s College, was rechartered in 1770 as a college for “the education of youth in the learned languages, liberal and useful arts and sciences and especially in divinity,” was first opened for instruction in 1770, was closed during 1795–1807 and 1816–1825, and was renamed in 1825 in honour of Colonel Henry Rutgers (1745–1830), of New York City, a liberal benefactor. The college embraces two schools: the classical school and the scientific school, which in 1864, in pursuance of the Morrill Act of 1862, was constituted by the state legislature as the state college for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts; a preparatory school is also controlled by its trustees. An agricultural experiment station is maintained in connexion with the college. In 1908–1909 there were 306 students. In 1908 the library of Rutgers College contained 57,000 volumes, and that of the Theological Seminary 48,000 volumes. The city has a variety of manufactures, and the total value of factory products in 1905 was $8,916,983, 54% more than in 1900.

A settlement was made here in 1681, and for a time the place was known as Prigmore’s Swamp; later, after John Inian had established a ferry across the river, it was called Inian’s Ferry; the present name was adopted in honour of the house of Brunswick. New Brunswick received a city charter from the royal governor in 1730, and was chartered as a city by the state legislature in 1784. During the War of Independence, General Washington and his army entered New Brunswick on the 28th of November 1776, but on the approach of the enemy evacuated it, and from the 3rd of December 1776 to the 13th of April 1777 it was occupied by the British under Lord Howe. Cornelius Vanderbilt was for several years the proprietor of the Bellona Hotel of New Brunswick, now a tenement house.