Benjamin Chestnut

    Benjamin Chestnut [graduate of Princeton College, class of 1748] came to this country from England.  He was licensed by the Presbytery of New York in 1749, and was immediately transferred to the Presbytery of New Brunswick, by whom he was ordained, October 30, 1751, and settled at Woodbury and Timber Creek, New Jersey.   In May, 1753, he resigned his charge, but for a time continued to supply the congregations.  After preaching at a number of places, he was finally, in 1756, settled as the pastor of Charleston and Providence Churches, Pennsylvania.  In 1765, Mr. Chestnut visited the South on a missionary tour.  At one time he taught a school about twenty miles from Philadelphia.  Mr. Chestnut was a laborious and faithful minister: besides his regular duties, he was untiring in fulfilling the appointments of the Presbytery, in missionary work, extending as far as Egg Harbor, New Jersey, and the adjacent country on the Atlantic Coast.  He died in 1775.

[EDITOR'S NOTE:  The above is an excerpt (slightly edited) from: Samuel Davies Alexander, Princeton College During the Eighteenth Century (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Company, 1872), pp. 1-2.

    Benjamin Chestnut graduated from Princeton during the governorship of Princeton founder Governor Jonathan Belcher (1682-1757) (governor of New Jersey, 1746-1757), who under the charter of 1748 was ex officio president of the Princeton Board of Trustees.]

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