served as an early Trustee of the college, beginning with its first meeting in Hackensack on 12 May 1767, and during this time served in the capacity as board secretary until 1782. Hardenbergh's was named on both of the college's charters, the first in 1766 and the second in 1770. Hardenbergh's father served as a trustee from 1767 until 1786. It is assumed that he served in a role administering the college's activities as early as 1770. His name appears as college president on the diploma conferred to Simeon DeWitt, a 1776 alumnus. In 1785, the trustees invited the Reverend Dirck Romeyn to be the college's first appointed president but he declined. The trustees then appointed Hardenbergh. In 1789, ten students graduated from Queen's College. Political career During the American Revolution, Hardenbergh represented Somerset County as a delegate to the final session of New Jersey's Provincial Congress, a transitional legislative and governing body that met in Burlington, New Jersey from June to August 1776. This session ordered the arrest of the New Jersey colony's last royal governor, William Franklin, and began to transition the state from a crown colony into an independent state. The Provincial Congress subsequently ratified the Declaration of Independence and framed the first Constitution of the State of New Jersey (1776). Hardenbergh served several one-year terms in New Jersey's General Assembly. Death and legacy Hardenbergh died on 30 October 1790 of tuberculosis in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was interred in the churchyard of the First Reformed Church in New Brunswick. The inscription on his grave was written by the Reverend John Henry Livingston and exhorts mourners to "go walk in his virtuous footsteps; and when you have finished the work assigned you, you shall rest with him in eternal peace." It eulogises Hardenbergh as "a zealous preacher of the Gospel, and his life and conversation afforded, from his earliest days, to all who knew him, a bright example of real piety...a steady patriot, and in his public and private conduct he manifested himself to be the enemy of tyranny and oppression, the lover of freedom, and the friend of his country." At the time of his death, Hardenbergh was a wealthy man—largely due to monies and property inherited from his father and grandfather—and was the owner of 40,000 acres of land in Ulster County that was once part of his grandfather's patent. Hardenbergh's great-great-grandson, architect Henry