New Jersey Women's Heritage Trail
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124 Witherspoon Street |
| Betsey Stockton was an African American woman who began her life as a slave for the prominent Stockton family in Princeton. When she gained her freedom at the age of 20, she became a missionary, traveling to Hawaii (Sandwich Islands), Canada and Philadelphia teaching school and sometimes serving as an unofficial nurse. Stockton returned to Princeton in 1835, living in a small house on Witherspoon Street, which was primarily an African American neighborhood at the time. She spent the rest of her life in Princeton working on behalf of its African American and white residents to enrich the lives of the members of the local African American community. Stockton was instrumental in the founding of the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church, originally called the First Presbyterian Church of Colour of Princeton. She also began teaching African American children in a public school in Princeton in 1837, which she continued to do for several years. Betsey Stockton died in Princeton at the age of 67, and was memorialized by her former students who donated a stained glass window in her honor to the Witherspoon Street Church. | |
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