In April 1776, the Committee on Safety ordered the King’s College governors (or Trustees) to close the College in 6 days so they could turn the building into a hospital. While the library and the academic equipment were packed up and stored in City Hall, classes did continue to meet. The students were allowed to complete the term using a house on Wall Street and the Class of 1776 was awarded diplomas, even if there was no commencement ceremony. So who were the members of the last class to graduate from King’s College and what happened to them after graduation? 

The students of the Class of 1776 were in many ways similar to those of earlier classes. They were mostly between 18 and 20 years old when they graduated. Four lived in New York City and two came in from New Jersey (Hoboken and Newark). Most of them were Anglicans and subscribers to Trinity Church. A few of them make appearances in the Black Book of Misdemeanors, or the record of student disciplinary infractions. For example, Peter Rutgers Kissam was caught “repeatedly playing at cards” (June 1773) and was later in trouble “for behaving irreverently at prayers” (April 1775). Peter Ogden appears 4 times in the book: for making so much noise and confusion “as to cause [Dr. Clossy] to stop his anatomical lecture” (December 1773) and for breaking a classmate’s door (April 1775). But after graduation, the Class of 1776 took different paths.

Samuel Vetch Bayard joined his brother’s regiment, the King’s Orange Rangers, and rose to the rank of major. He was recommended by Governor William Tryon of New York to serve as Surveyor of Customs. After the war, Bayard, along with 18,000 other loyalists, moved to Nova Scotia. Loyalist refugee families who sought asylum in Nova Scotia were given acres of land, agricultural implements and provisions for two years.

James Devereux went with his family to London during the Revolution. His father, also James Devereux, had been a resident of New York for 30 years and had acquired a fortune in trade with his own vessel. The father made a loyalist claim for his losses. In support of his claim, Charles Inglis, rector of Trinity Church, described him as a man of irreproachable character. There is some evidence that the son James may have returned to New York in the 1790s.

At the time of the Revolution, the prominent colonial lawyer Benjamin Kissam was training a King’s College alumnus at his firm, John Jay. He had three sons attend King’s College. The oldest, Samuel, became a doctor, after receiving a BM 1769 and an MS 1771. Peter Rutgers Kissam, a middle son, was lucky in that he was able to graduate as part of the last class of King’s College (BA 1776). He became a merchant in the city. His younger brother Benjamin, however, was not as fortunate. He had just entered King’s in 1775. In order to complete his studies, Benjamin went to Edinburgh to train as a doctor. He returned to New York in 1784 (after the British had left) and went on to teach at the Columbia medical school (1785-1792) and even served as a trustee.

Matthias Nicoll married Ann Taylor of New York City on June 4, 1777. Nicoll was one of three brothers who graduated from King’s College. He ran a store in Stratford, Connecticut. From his obituary in the N.Y. Courier and Enquirer from February 25, 1830, we learn that he died at the age of 62, a man “of liberal education and the habits of a scholar.” 

Peter Ogden had started studying law in Newark after graduation. In 1777, he moved to the City and went on to serve as the Secretary to the Board of Police in New York City during the war. After the expulsion of the British from New York in 1783, Ogden moved to London, but he did eventually return to America in 1790, while collecting a loyalist pension. 

There are still some questions about which Willett Marinus was the one who graduated in the Class of 1776. Some have claimed that it was the patriot Colonel Willett Marinus, but, more likely, the member of the Class of 1776 seems to have been his young son, who died about the time of the Revolution. 

Not all of the members of the Class of 1776 were able to complete their degrees. On the list of diploma candidates sent to the engrosser to prepare the diplomas, there were actually 11 names. Thus, there were 5 more class members who got close enough to graduation that their diplomas were made, but those diplomas were not awarded. For example, Frederic Dibble left King’s College just shy of graduating. (He had even paid his diploma fee!) Dibble returned first to his home in Stamford, CT. He and his loyalist family moved a number of times until finally relocating to Nova Scotia. And while John Watkin Watkins did not graduate in 1776, at the first commencement ceremony of the renamed Columbia College in 1788, he received an honorary degree.