nd wife of the late Hon. Nicholas Brown, the
distinguished benefactor of the University, and from whom it derives its
name.

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The success of the Hopewell Academy inspired the friends of learning
with renewed confidence, and incited them to establish a college. "Many
of the churches," says the Rev. Morgan Edwards, "being supplied with
able pastors from Mr. Eaton's academy, and being thus convinced from
experience of the great usefulness of human literature to more
thoroughly furnish the man of God for the most important work of the
gospel ministry, the hands of the Philadelphia Association were
strengthened, and their hearts were encouraged, to extend their designs
of promoting literature in the Society, by erecting, on some suitable
part of this continent, a college or university, which should be
principally under the direction and government of the Baptists."[B]

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Mr. Edwards, to whom reference is made in the foregoing, was the pastor
of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, to which he had recently
been recommended by the Rev. Dr. Gill, and others, of London. He was a
native of Wales, and an ardent admirer of his fellow-countryman, Roger
Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. Possessing superior abilities,
united with uncommon perseverance and zeal, he became a leader in
various literary and benevolent undertakings, freely devoting to them
his talents and his time, and thereby rendering essential service to the
denomination to which he was attached. He was the prime mover in the
enterprise of establishing the college, and in 1767 he went back to
England and secured the first funds for its endowment. With him were
associated the Rev. Samuel Jones, to whom in 1791 was offered the
presidency; Oliver Hart and Francis Pelot, of South Carolina; John Hart,
of Hopewell, the signer of the Declaration of Independence; John Stites,
the mayor of Elizabethtown; Hezekiah Smith, Samuel Stillman, John Gano,
and others connected with the two associations named, of kindred zeal
and spirit. The final success of the movement, however, may justly be
ascribed to the life-long labors of him who was appointed the first
President, James Manning, D.D., of New Jersey. His "Life, Times, and
Correspondence," making a large duodecimo volume of five hundred and
twenty-three pages, was published by the late Gould & Lincoln, of
Boston, in 1864.

In the summer of 1763, Mr. Manning, to whom the