BURR, Aaron, clergyman, born in Fairfield, Connecticut, 4 January, 1716; died 24 September, 1757. He belonged to a Puritan family that for three generations had given to church and state men of eminence. He was graduated at Yale in his nineteenth year, having gained one of the three Berkeley scholarships, which entitled him to maintenance at the College for two years after graduating. While pursuing his post-graduate studies he was converted, and at once turned his attention to theology. 

At the age of twenty-two he became pastor of the Presbyterian church in Newark, New Jersey, where he soon acquired a commanding reputation as a pulpit orator. Here he also established a school for boys, which proved highly successful. He prepared for his pupils a Latin grammar known as the "Newark Grammar" (1752), which was long in use at Princeton. In later years he published a small work on the "Supreme Deity of Our Lord Jesus Christ" (new ed., 1791), with an occasional sermon. 

In 1748, at the age of thirty-two, he became president of the College of New Jersey, but without interrupting his pastoral service. In the summer of 1752 he married Esther, daughter of Jonathan Edwards, of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In the autumn of 1756 he resigned his charge at Newark and removed to Princeton, where he died from overwork. He left two children, Sarah, born 3 May, 1754, and Aaron. As scholar, preacher, author, and educator, President Burr was one of the foremost men of his time. To his more solid qualities were added a certain grace and distinguished style of manner, which re-appeared in his son. Though nominally the second president of Princeton, he was practically the first, since the former. Jonathan Dickinson, only served for a few months. He was in a true sense its founder, and the College may be said to be his monument. Six of its presidents are buried in Princeton by his side.