Touring the nation, from Princeton to Princeton to Princeton

Though more than 1,000 students and alumni hail from Princeton, N.J., only a handful grew up in other Princetons.

David Matheu '96, who grew up in Princeton, Ill., said the coincidence frequently has been the butt of jokes.

"They'd say, 'You can't even leave home, can you?' " he said, adding that in his senior year he was mistaken for Dave Matthews by a freshman who thought she saw him in New York. But Matheu played in the University Jazz Ensemble, not the popular alternative band.

Coy Byron '02 of Princeton, W.Va., also said he and his friends crack jokes about his hometown. "All these coincidences added up, so I had to get in," he quipped.

Three Princetons resemble the University in other ways as well: Princeton, W.Va., Princeton, Mo., and Princeton, Minn., are all located in Mercer counties and have tigers as their high school mascots.

Princeton, W.Va., is a bucolic community in the southeastern part of the state surrounded by mountains, rivers and valleys that lure tourists for the city's outdoor recreation. The "Gateway to Four Seasons Country," Princeton, W.Va., burned twice during the Civil War.

Connie Clay, the librarian and wife of the city clerk, said she receives about five bills per year that are misdirected to her library instead of Firestone.

"I have a $30,000 budget for all the books," she said with a Southern drawl. "So when I receive a $500 bill for one book, it's like aaaaaaaaaaah!"

Princeton, Mo. — located 13 miles from Iowa — has about 1,000 residents, seven churches and three auto repair shops. The high school has only about 200 students. "We're just a little rural town," said Jennie Vertrees, the town historian.

Though librarian Judy Cox said she hasn't received misdirected bills or phone calls, she said she enjoys living in a town that shares a name with the University.

"I tell my kids, 'Guys you can tell everybody that you graduated from Princeton,' " she said.

Located in an area known as the "Black Patch" because of its farming of dark tobacco, another Princeton in western Kentucky is a "small town with rural roots, handshakes and solid values," according to its Website. "You bet, we wave at neighbors and grin and say 'Howdy' to newcomers." The town was founded by William Prince during the Westward movement in the early 1800s.

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Keith Dukes, the town's police chief, recently participated in a United Nations mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina, along with nearly 3,000 police officers from around the world. "I got more comments than anyone else," he drawled. "People were constantly saying, 'I've heard of Princeton before.' But of course it was the University and not Princeton, Kentucky."

Other Princetons dot the map across North America in Louisiana, Ohio, Idaho, Minnesota, Iowa, British Columbia, Illinois and Indiana.

According to Princeton, Ill., city clerk Clyde Wray, early settlers decided on their town's name by selecting one of three possibilities from a hat. The town is notable for farmland that ranks among the top in the nation for agricultural revenue, a 19th century downtown with antique boutiques and a Civil War reenactment festival in October.

Though settled for its fertile farmland, Princeton, Ind., has had a booming marketplace since a Toyota factory moved in several years ago. Located in southwestern Indiana between Evansville and Vincennes, Princeton made national headlines for its 1895 earthquake, deadly 1925 tornado and 1998 UFO sighting.

Even the aliens seem to be confused.