Saturday, October 4, 2025, 10:30 a.m.
Wallace House & Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Sites
Virtual Lecture: https://events.gcc.teams.microsoft.com/event/bcdd9d3a-a040-453b-9181-ff95d6af30cd@5076c3d1-3802-4b9f-b36a-e0a41bd642a7

When William Franklin, Royal Governor of New Jersey and son of Benjamin Franklin, granted the charter for Queen’s College in 1766, the Wallace House’s John Wallace, still a merchant in Philadelphia, wrote to his brother in Scotland fearing the new Dutch Reformed college might undercut the Presbyterian-led College of New Jersey at Nassau Hall in Princeton. Ten years later, Mr. Wallace was moving to New Jersey and would be neighbor to the Rev. Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh, the Dutch Reformed minister who led the effort to found Queen’s College!

Bradford Bow discusses the Scottish Enlightenment in New Jersey in this virtual lecture, drawing from his research on John Witherspoon and the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in a Transatlantic context.

Register for this virtual lecture online: https://events.gcc.teams.microsoft.com/event/bcdd9d3a-a040-453b-9181-ff95d6af30cd@5076c3d1-3802-4b9f-b36a-e0a41bd642a7

Dr Bow is an intellectual historian of America, Scotland and Britain during the long eighteenth century, with a broader interest in the global contexts of Enlightenment intellectual and moral culture. Dr Bow completed a PhD in the fields of Enlightenment History and Scottish Diaspora Studies at the University of Edinburgh in 2012 and organised research activities for the Carnegie Trust funded project ‘Scotland’s Trans-Atlantic Relations’ (STAR). Dr Bow joined the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy in August 2019. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Distinguished Shinhan Professor at Yonsei University.

This program is part of a series made possible by the Wallace House and Old Dutch Parsonage Association, Proud Partner of Revolution NJ, with the sponsorship of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. #njhumanities

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this series do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

250 years after Scottish emigrant and Philadelphia merchant John Wallace built the Wallace House at “Hope Farm,” the Wallace House is under construction again as part of Down the Brook: Revitalization of Wallace House & Old Dutch Parsonage State Historic Sites for Revolution NJ. The historic rehabilitation of Wallace House is being supported in part by a Semiquincentennial Grant from the Historic Preservation Fund administered by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

? Revolution NJ is New Jersey’s official observance of the 250th anniversaries of New Jersey’s first Constitution July 2, 2026 and the American Revolution in New Jersey from 2024 – 2033.

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