THIS VIDEO: Reese Witherspoon,Best Actress Academy Award Winner for Walk the Line, she is the Great Great Great Granddaughter of Princeton's John Witherspoon, who in 1771 called the Princeton 'College’s' pastoral setting a 'campus', introducing that word into the American vocabulary; later, he persuaded his friend George Washington to give 50 gold guineas to the College. (Washington was a longtime advocate of the place. “No college has turned out better scholars or more estimable characters than Nassau,” he said in a letter to his adopted son, a member of the Class of 1799.) In addition to a president and vice president of the United States, he taught 9 cabinet officers, 21 senators, 39 congressmen, 3 justices of the Supreme Court, and 12 state governors.
Largely because of him, Princeton became known as the “seedbed” of revolution. Six months after he signed the Declaration of Independence, the College became the site of a strategic victory as Washington surprised the British in the Battle of Princeton. Six years later Washington was again in Princeton, at the invitation of Congress assembled in Nassau Hall, to accept the official thanks of the nation for the successful conclusion of the war. During that visit he also attended Commencement exercises for the Class of 1783.

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