College of New Jersey was Princeton's legal name during its first one hundred and fifty years. But the College was usually referred to as Nassau or Nassau Hall or Princeton College after it moved to Princeton in 1756. In the 1860s the College baseball team used the name ``Nassau''; starting in 1870 all athletic teams were designated ``Princeton.'' On October 22, 1896, the anniversary of the signing of the College's first charter, at the climax of the Sesquicentennial Celebration, President Patton announced that ``from this moment what heretofore for one hundred and fifty years has been known as the College of New Jersey shall in all future time be known as Princeton University.''
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton
University Press (1978).
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