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Leadership on the Banks:
Rutgers' Presidents, 1766–2004

William Linn, President Pro Tem, 1791-1795

With the death of Jacob Hardenbergh, Queen's College fell upon hard times. Their erstwhile tutor Frelinghuysen had departed, and his place was taken by a succession tutors. As the Trustees searched for a successor to Hardenbergh, the Reverend William Linn was appointed interim president.

A gifted preacher, William Linn (1752-1808), of Pennsylvania was described as "a most ardent and impassioned" minister. He graduated from Princeton in 1772, was ordained by the Donegal Presbytery in 1775, and served as a chaplain in the American army during the Revolution before being called as pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Big Springs, Pennsylvania in 1776. Linn remained at Big Springs for seven years before he moved to Maryland to become the principal of the Washington Academy. He left teaching to return to the church in 1786. In 1787, Dr. Linn was appointed a trustee of Queen's College, where he assisted Jacob Hardenbergh in securing subscriptions for the new College building, and when adequate funding for the College appeared remote, debated with his fellow Trustees the merits of merging the College with that of Princeton.

Though nothing came of the proposed merger, the Church Synod raised the possibility of moving the College closer to the large Dutch population in northern New Jersey and New York, a prospect which favored the union of the College with that of the Professorship of Theology, then languishing with the Collegiate Church in New York. The Trustees, cognizant that the Synod's plan would mean an end to the College in New Brunswick, nonetheless chose to remain and, with meager resources and diminishing prospects for the future, soon closed the College in 1795.

The Reverend William Linn's service as acting president and trustee of the College also came to an end. His interest in education continued as he completed his twenty-one years of service as a Regent of the University of the State of New York shortly before his death in 1808. For the next twelve years Queen's College was to remain dormant.