Jacob Green (pastor)

A resident of Hanover, Green was also the delegate for Morris County to the fourth assembly of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey in 1776 and served as chairman of the constitutional committee.

[4][a] His father, also named Jacob Green, was a poor farmer who died about 18 months after his birth from a "nervous fever".

[8] To gather funds, he got a probate court to approve an arrangement to sell land inherited from his father's estate.

To prepare academically, Green spent a year and a half at a grammar school learning Latin, a standard practice at the time for those interested in attending college.

[14] Afterwards, he wished to pursue advanced studies but was too poor,[15] so he accepted a teaching position at a school in Sutton, Massachusetts, for one year.

[18] In Malden, he received much religious education from the local Congregationalist church which instilled strict Congregationalism throughout the town.

[3] He strongly supported Whitefield's criticisms of Harvard straying from Calvinism and backed the goals of the Great Awakening.

[20] Green was among a group of Harvard students that followed Whitefield on his religious tour of nearby towns, making it as far as Leicester in western Massachusetts.

[22] He was reborn two months after Tennet's sermon through study, though he struggled through the remainder of college to maintain his conversion in face of Enlightenment teachings.

[3] In September 1745, he was licensed to preach and began a year-long trial, which culminated with him being ordained and installed as pastor of Hanover Presbyterian Church in November 1746.

[28][b] While Green was a devoted minister, he continued his studying, gaining a reputation for his general knowledge and his skill in Hebrew.

[16] He was a founding trustee of the College of New Jersey—now Princeton University—in 1748 and served as acting president for a period of eight consecutive months between Jonathan Edwards' death and the arrival of Samuel Davies.

[1][41] He is buried in Hanover Presbyterian Church Cemetery, along with both his first and second wife; his grave features a lengthy epitaph[42] written by Ashbel Green.

[46] He married again in 1757 to Elizabeth Pierseon, who died in 1810, and had six children,[45][c] with his most notable being Ashbel Green, the eighth president of Princeton University.

[43] Articles written by Green were featured in the New Jersey Journal, a revolutionary-era newspaper, under the pen name of "Eumenes.