The Present Battle of Princeton

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has released its latest list of most endangered sites in America, and on that list is the Princeton Battlefield.

I’m of two minds on this. While I like preservation of historic sites and open spaces, the development that’s threatening part of that battlefield isn’t a new strip mall or factory or interstate highway. It’s faculty housing for the Institute for Advanced Study, which helped to create the battlefield park in the first place. The institute likes to provide peace and quiet and a level of rusticity for the scholars working there. I can’t help but see that use of land as a Good Thing. (For full disclosure, my uncle spent several months at the I.A.S. a few years ago, though it wasn’t a big change of scene for him since he lives on the other side of Princeton.)

I also think the Battle of Princeton isn’t quite as important as it’s often made out to be. It looms larger in American memory because it was a rare battlefield victory for Gen. George Washington, and because it was so close to the campus of an influential college. Indeed, the Princeton buildings that existed then, including Nassau Hall, were used by both armies. But since the campus and nearby neighborhood have already been developed (and people are fond of the result), there’s no preservation outcry. Of course, such an outcry would be far too late.

This map shows land now used by the I.A.S. in brown at the right. The present battlefield park is in green at the center. The grayish area marked 2 is where the I.A.S. wants to build more housing while keeping the blue area as a wooded buffer. Some fighting and maneuvers occurred over all four areas, as well as developed land nearby. Does that make preserving all the possible land more important? Or does that mean the battlefield park is necessarily symbolic, and the specific land is less important?

I’ll let you make up your own (two?) minds. For folks in the region, on 29 September the Princeton Battlefield Society is sponsoring:

A full day of activities including Battlefield and Clarke House Tours, Children’s Scavenger Hunt and games, Colonial Demonstrations, Soldiers of the Battle, and book sales, giveaways, and prizes.

Programs start at 10:00 A.M. and go to 4:00 P.M. At 4:00 P.M., Colonial Music by THE PRACTITIONERS OF MUSICK and at 5:00 PM, a performance of CATO A TRAGEDY, by Joseph Addison, by the Princeton Shakespeare Company at the Columns. (George Washington requested a performance of CATO during the encampment at Valley Forge.)

I believe there‘s been some recent questioning of that last statement, but there’s no question that Washington quoted from Cato in his letters from the start of the war.

Symposium on the Princeton Battlefield, 26 Feb.

The Princeton Battlefield Society is sponsoring a free symposium on Saturday, 26 February, to unveil its new mapping study from the American Battlefield Protection Program. The organization’s announcement says:

It is the most detailed advanced study of its nature on the Battle of Princeton. It marries an analysis of firsthand accounts with recent archeological findings, modern military analysis mechanisms and GPS technology by John Milner Associates with historian Dr. Bob Selig.

This groundbreaking study features some 34 new digital maps of the battlefield which identify the location of the long lost Saw Mill Road, the movement and locations of [Thomas] Mifflin’s Brigade, the German Regiment and other units comprising [Gen. George] Washington’s army, as well as the movement and location of the British 4th Brigade.

There will be a panel discussion with Dr. Larry Babits, Dr. Charles Neimeyer, Thomas Fleming, and Will Tatum of the David Library, moderated by author Glenn Williams.

As I understand the situation, battlefield preservationists are fighting a proposal from the Institute for Advanced Study to expand its buildings. The result is a provocative question of priorities, balancing the preservation of unique space against the potential of scientific and scholarly research. I suspect this mapping study was commissioned to pin down how certain areas of town were involved in the 1777 battle.

The symposium will take place in the Friend Center on the Princeton University campus, near the corner of Williams and Olden Street. Registration starts at 8:30 A.M., there’s an hour break for lunch at noon, and the schedule concludes at about 4:00 P.M.

Washington for Sale to the Highest Bidder

Tomorrow Christie’s will auction this portrait of “George Washington at Princeton” by Charles Peale Polk (1767-1822). Polk used his uncle and mentor Charles Willson Peale’s 1787 portrait of Washington as the basis for the face, and made many copies of this image. This particular copy has been owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and is being sold to benefit the society and the Philadelphia History Museum now growing out of the Atwater Kent Museum.

In January 2009, Christie’s sold another version of the same portrait for over $600,000, well over the estimate. But then the buyer was Mount Vernon.

The Gun at Wyman House

As I noted back here, when Isaac Chauncey Wyman died in 1910, he left most of his fortune to his alma mater, Princeton College. Newspapers immediately reported that the bequest could be worth up to $10 million. Within a few weeks that figure came down to $2 million. Still, in 1910 that was real money.

Along with Wyman’s money and far-flung real estate, Princeton received some of his antiques, including the gun he told people his grandfather had owned. Woburn researcher Chris Hurley found it mounted alongside a powder horn and sword in a display case in Wyman House, a university residence (shown above) that happens to stand on part of the Revolutionary battlefield.

From lock to mouth the barrel appears to be four feet long. I have no idea if this gun actually dates from the Revolution, or has any other identifying marks. However, Chris Hurley noted that the sign mounted in the same room has this to say:

JOHN WYMAN of Salem, Massachusetts, who had used this musket and powder horn in the French and Indian War, gave them to his son Isaac Wyman in 1776 and gave Washington £8000 to equip the brigade in which his son enlisted

ISAAC WYMAN, his son, when a boy of sixteen, carried this musket, powder horn, and sword here on this field where he fought in the Battle of Princeton under Washington, January 3, 1777.

ISAAC CHAUNCEY WYMAN, Isaac Wyman’s son, Princeton 1848, died at an advanced old age on May 18, 1910, and bequeathed most of his estate to the Graduate College, which stands on the battlefield of Princeton.

Just two years before, Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts said that Isaac Chauncy Wyman’s paternal grandfather was Hezekiah Wyman, not John. The memoir of him published in 1910 by the New England Historic Genealogical Society says the same. (Those two volumes were produced under the supervision of the same man, so they’re not independent sources.)

It’s possible that the Princeton sign is mistaken about the grandfather’s first name. But the £8000 gift to Washington is a new detail, not in any other article about the Wymans that I’ve found. (Nor is there any mention of it in Washington’s papers or other sources.)

The Princeton sign also says that Isaac Wyman was “a boy of sixteen” at the Battle of Princeton on 3 Jan 1777, meaning he was almost certainly born in 1760. Which conflicts with both birth years stated in the Wyman genealogies published between 1895 and 1910.

So it looks very much like Isaac Chauncey Wyman had no idea who his paternal grandfather was, but believed he must have been a hero in the French & Indian War and the Revolutionary War, and carried that gun.

Similarly, it looks like Isaac Chauncey Wyman had very little idea who his father was, but believed he must have been a hero of the Revolutionary War, and carried that gun.

Isaac Chauncey Wyman was obviously not a reliable source of family lore about Hezekiah Wyman, or anyone else. He may well not have even been descended from that man. Thus, what he or his biographers wrote has little or no bearing on the question of what Hezekiah Wyman did on 19 Apr 1775.

[ADDENDUM: After a reader request, I’m posting a photo of the musket in its case by Chris Hurley, with permission from folks at Princeton. Click on the picture for a larger image. Obviously, this isn’t an ideal way to examine a gun, but it’s the best we can do from afar. And the likelihood that Hezekiah Wyman used this gun to pick off regulars on 19 Apr 1775 is infinitesimal anyway.]

TOMORROW: Closing remarks on Isaac Chauncey Wyman.