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Johannes Hardenbergh (1706-1786)
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Person
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Johannes Hardenbergh (1706-1786)
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Identifier
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NJS-PER-00368
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Given Name
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Johannes
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Family Name
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Hardenbergh
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Alternate Name
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Johannis Hardenberg
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Joannes Hardenbergh
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Birth Date
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1706
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Death Date
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1786
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Biographical Description
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Johannes Hardenbergh (1706-1786) was one of the founding trustees of Queen's College (later Rutgers) and the father of the college's first president Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh Sr. He was a wealthy landowner and slaveholder who resided in Ulster County, NY, for most of his life. During the last year of his life he came to live in New Brunswick, NJ, with his son Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh Sr., who was beginning his tenure as college president.
He was a member of the First Provincial Congress of New York. Historical records often refer to him as Col. Johannes Hardenbergh; he was a field officer in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.
He is not to be confused with his father Sir Johannes Hardenbergh (1670-1745) or his son Col. Johannes Hardenbergh Jr. (1729-1799).
The following is a description of his house with slave quarters, originally built by his grandfather Jacob Rutsen in 1700, from the book The Hardenbergh Family: A Genealogical Compilation by Myrtle Hardenbergh Miller (New York: American Historical Co., 1958), page 58:
"a stone building sixty-two by twenty-five feet in dimensions. The main house had numerous rooms, fireplaces, and had handsome panelled woodwork and recesses for beds enclosed by panelled doors. At the southwest end and opening into the house were the slave quarters of stone fifteen by eighteen feet, on the same end in the cellar was a cell in which delinquent slaves were confined."
This house with slave quarters was originally called Rosendale (giving its name to the town of Rosendale in Ulster County, NY), and by the mid-18th century it came to be known as Hardenbergh Hall.
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Relationship to Rutgers
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Trustee (Founding 1766)
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Spouse of
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Maria Du Bois
Rutgers University
