Narrative #13 -- King's College Demise

Absent President Cooper, who fled New York for England in the protection of the British Navy on May 25, 1775, the governors of King's College cancelled the June commencement for six graduating seniors. Meanwhile, they appointed Rev. Benjamin Moore, a 27- year old graduate of King's College (1768), assistant minister of Trinity Church and occasional tutor, as acting president. A handful of matriculated students received some instruction into the spring of 1776, until, in April, the Revolutionary Committee on Safety seized the College building for use as a military hospital. The College's library and scientific apparatus (aside from two telescopes appropriated by General George Washington) were scattered throughout the City. The British took over the building upon their occupation of New York City on September 15, 1776, using it as a hospital until their departure eight years later on November 25, 1783. It had barely escaped the fire that destroyed Trinity Church in September 1776.

A handful of governors who remained in the City met a month after the occupation in Hull's Tavern and again in Leonard Lispenard's home in June, 1777 to discuss restarting the College under British protection (Acting President Moore was by then serving as chaplain to the occupying forces). Nothing came of these discussions. When the question came up again, in 1784, as the contemporary British lyric had it, "the world had been turned upside down."

Source: Humphrey, From King's College, pp. 139-156; Oscar Theodore Barck, Jr., New York City 1776-1783, pp. 164-69

Robert A. McCaughey

Sources: Early Minutes of the [King's College] Trustees, 1755-1770, [1932 reproduction]Columbiana Room, Columbia University; Thomas, "The King's College Building," op.cit., pp. 36-41.