USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 32
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The urgent tasks of pioneering probably prevented further development of the project during the first four or five years of the colony; there is no direct record of further action until 1636. Circumstantial evidence points, however, to re- newed discussion of the subject in Boston in 1635, and to the selection of an agent to procure a printing press, and to solicit funds in England for the projected college. This agent was the Reverend Josse Glover, a wealthy dissenting clergy- man, who was much interested in education and who was in Boston in 1635. He returned to England in the spring of 1636, bought the press, secured gifts in England and Holland for a font of type, engaged a printer, and with his family sailed for Massachusetts in 1638. Unfortunately he died on the return voyage. His widow, Elizabeth Glover, brought the press to Cambridge, and it was duly set up in charge of John Daye, the printer engaged by Mr. Glover for the purpose. Whether Glover's activities were really connected with the project of a college or not, the plan seems to have been clearly formed early in 1636. In May of that year [the years then began on March 25th instead of January 1st] the citizens of Salem were considering Marblehead, then a part of Salem, as
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a site for a proposed college. Five months later (October 28th, 1636) the General Court sitting in Boston "agreed to give four hundred pounds for a school or college, whereof two hundred pounds is to be paid the next year and two hundred pounds when the building is finished, and the next Court to say where and what building."
The need of such action was emphasized a few months later by two letters from England. One was to John Win- throp from his sister, Mrs. Lucy Winthrop Downing; the other to John Winthrop, Jr. from Mrs. Downing's husband, Emmanuel. Both urged the need of establishing a college in the New England. "I beleev a college would put no small life into the plantation," wrote Mrs. Downing. She hesitated to come over with her family because her son George would have no opportunity for a college training in Massachusetts. Doubtless other desirable colonists hesitated for the same rea- son.
Notwithstanding the Downing letters, no further action took place until November 1637. During the intervening year the colony was shaken to its foundations by the controversy over Anne Hutchinson, and the struggle between the party of John Winthrop and that of Governor Henry Vane, for the control of the government. Besides these internal difficulties, there was serious trouble with the Indians, which culminated in the Pequod War. We may conjecture that the site of the proposed college was under discussion, however. As we have seen, the citizens of Salem had considered the matter in May, 1636. In 1637, rather significantly, Newetowne was often referred to as Cambridge. At a meeting in Newetowne, November 15th, 1637, the General Court voted, "the College is ordered to be at Newetowne", thereby no doubt greatly disappointing the men of Salem. Five days later the General Court appointed a Committee composed of six members of the General Court and six leading clergymen of the Colony, "to take order for the College at Newetowne." The first group included Governor Winthrop, Deputy Governor Dud- ley, Richard Bellingham, (the treasurer of the Colony) John Humfrey, Israel Stoughton and Roger Harlakenden.
The six leading clergymen included John Cotton, John Wil-
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son, John Davenport, Thomas Weld, Thomas Shepard and Hugh Peter.
The Committee thus formed became in 1642 the Board of Overseers. This Board has continued to the present day as one of the two chief governing bodies of Harvard University. Its membership, however, no longer includes officials of state and church ex officiis.
NEWETOWNE (CAMBRIDGE) IN 1636
We may pause for a glance at the New Cambridge (Newe- towne) of 1638. It was in painful contrast to Old Cambridge, -the English university town, with its ancient and even stately college buildings, which so many of the colonists had known. New Cambridge was but a little village, scarcely 300 yards from north to south and 400 yards from east to west, on the northerly bank of the Charles River, three miles west of Boston. Its area was divided by four short streets parallel to the river, crossed from north to south by four others. Its boundaries are now marked on the east by Holyoke Street; on the west by the nearly semicircular way through Harvard Square, Brattle Square and Eliot Street; on the north by Massachusetts Avenue eastward from Harvard Square; and on the south by the (then) marshy banks and muddy tidal flats of the Charles River. Within this area were forty or fifty unpainted wooden houses with shingled roofs. A little church, of hand-hewn logs, stood near the center of the vil- lage. Extending eastward from Harvard Square in what is now Massachusetts Avenue was a row of houses which formed the northerly limit of the town. First was the house of Thomas Coffe; second that of William Peyntree who had recently moved to Hartford, Conn .; third was the parsonage, occupied at that time by the Rev. Thomas Shepard,-of Em- manuel College, Cambridge,-pastor of the church, and mem- ber of the committee on the new college. These houses fronted south. Each was provided with a lot which extended back of the houses, some 500 feet into the present College Yard. Other lots occupied the remaining area of the Yard; to the north of these was the Charlestown Path (now Kirk- land Street), extending eastward three miles to Charlestown.
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From Charlestown one took the ferry for the few hundred yards across the mouth of the Charles River to Boston. By this way Governor Winthrop and his escort came in state from Boston to the first commencement of Harvard College in 1642.
No direct record remains of the early proceedings of the committee on the college, but during the six months following its appointment it appears to have done three things: (1) it bought the house and lot of William Peyntree as a site for the institution; (2) it appointed the Rev. Nathaniel Eaton, M.A., (who had recently come to the colony with his family) as President of the projected college ; and (3) it secured from the town the gift of 2 2/3 acres of land adjoining the Peyn- tree lot on the north, in what is now the northwesterly corner of the College Yard.
The town also assigned to "the professor" 21/2 acres of land north of the Charlestown Path opposite the lot given to the college. On the date of these gifts, May 2, 1638, the Gen- eral Court changed the name of Newetowne to Cambridge, in recognition of the Alma Mater of many of the colonists, and "for the sake of somewhat now founding here, which might hereafter grow into an University."
The Peyntree house, the first building used by the college, stood within the present lines of Massachusetts Avenue, about a hundred yards east of Harvard Square. Its site is now marked by corners of red brick set in the street pavement. It is conjectured that in the summer of 1638 Nathaniel Eaton, the newly chosen President of the college, remodelled this two-story wooden structure to provide rooms for students as well as for his family, and that the college was opened there in the same year, perhaps in September. The number of students can hardly have exceeded a dozen, and may have been not more than nine.
JOHN HARVARD IN MASSACHUSETTS (1637-1638)
Meanwhile (in July 1637) John Harvard, whose education in England we have followed in the preceeding pages, had arrived in Charlestown with the young wife whom he had married on April 19, 1636. She was Anne Sadler, sister of
Proprie of the Collages in Cambridge in An
From a reproduction of the original which is in the Massachusetts Historical Society EARLIEST VIEW OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 1726, BY WILLIAM BURGIS
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JOHN HARVARD IN MASSACHUSETTS
one of his college chums, and daughter of the vicar of Ring- mer in Sussex, England. John Harvard was a wealthy man, as wealth went in the colony; he possessed a fortune of £1600. He also had a very unusual library of about 250 titles, num- bering about 400 volumes. The collection of this library had involved no small risk on his part. It contained many Puritan religious works which Archbishop Laud, relentless enemy of the Puritans, had strictly banned in England. Among the books thus forbidden were the works of the Rev. William Ames, M.A., of Christ's College, Cambridge. Ames (1576- 1633), who was perhaps the most distinguished Puritan theo- logian of his day, had been driven out of England because of his opposition to the ceremonies of the Anglican Church. He spent the latter part of his life in Holland, chiefly as a professor in the now extinct University of Franeker. His writings in theology and ethics were widely studied in the Protestant universities. Laud considered him so objection- able that the sale of even his commentaries on the Psalms was forbidden, under penalty of £100. John Harvard's li- brary contained at least six of Ames's works. Archbishop Laud objected hardly less strenuously to the views of John Calvin. John Harvard's library contained no less than eleven of Calvin's works.
How did he get these books? Probably they were smuggled in from Holland, and passed by divers porters and book deal- ers into his hands. Doubtless a sufficiently dramatic story would unfold if the facts were known.
The library as a whole included three general divisions. Rather more than one-third of it was devoted to theology; more than one-third consisted in commentaries on the Bible, chiefly in Latin. The remainder of the 250 titles included apparently John Harvard's school and university text-books, -grammars and dictionaries in Latin, Greek and Hebrew; phrase books in Latin, some classical Latin and Greek authors, and a few works on natural science, logic, philosophy, law and medicine,-also chiefly in Latin. Among the works in English was Francis Bacon's Essay on the Advancement of Learning, published originally in 1605; owned by John Har- vard in the edition of 1633. "To advance learning and perpet- uate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry
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to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust" was one chief concern of the first colonists of New England.
John Harvard was admitted a townsman of Charlestown in August 1637, shortly after his arrival. He bought or built a house, and acquired several pieces of land in the town. On the 2nd of November in that year he rode the three miles westward along the Charlestown Path to the little church in Newetowne, where the General Court was in session; there he took the oath and was admitted as a freeman of the colony. As he entered the village he passed, all unknowing, the site on which the future Harvard College was to rise. At this very session of the Court, two weeks later, the college, still un- named, was "ordered to be at Newetowne."
The remaining facts of John Harvard's life in the colony are quickly told. He and his wife were admitted as mem- bers of the church in Charlestown on November 6th. Within a few months he became pastor of the church, and in April 1638 he was elected by his fellow-townsmen as one of a com- mittee of six to "consider of some things tending toward a body of laws" for the colony. Up to this time the Governor and his assistants had ruled affairs in accordance with the Bible, but without fixed general laws. The demand of the colonists for a code was now becoming insistent.
What the Charlestown committee did does not appear. No records of any kind give us another glimpse of Harvard until his death by pulmonary tuberculosis on September 14, 1638. At about this time the new college, under Eaton's presidency, was opening for its first session. The young clergyman's thoughts turned the future of this institution as his end ap- proached. Perhaps, recalling the colleges of Old Cambridge and the long line of benefactors who through four centuries had given buildings and endowments thereto, he looked for- ward with prophetic vision to a similar development in the New Cambridge on the banks of the Charles River. His faith in the future was shown by the one great act of his life. To the new college he left one half of his fortune of £1600, and his entire library. Six months later Secretary Increase Nowell made the following entry, still legible, in the records of the General Court: "It is ordered, that the
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Colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shal- bee called Harvard College."
THE FIRST HARVARD HALL
The money received from the Harvard legacy was used in part to erect a college building on the Peyntree lot, near the southerly end of the present College Yard. Work was be- gun in the summer of 1639, but nearly four years passed be- fore it was completed. The construction was at first super- vised by President Eaton. His account of expenses for the first summer is still extant. It includes items for digging the cellar, for "leading" (transporting) clay and stone for the underpinning; for felling, squaring and "leading" timber for the frame; for cedar boards, iron casements, bricks and lime; for "fencing the yard with a pale fence 6 foot and 1/2 high," and for setting out thirty apple trees,-all at a total cost of £301.
The building was scarcely well under way when (in Septem- ber, 1639) Eaton was dismissed from office for brutally beat- ing Nathaniel Briscoe, a young man whom he had recently engaged as an usher (assistant) for the college. Management of the college funds and the building operations was then delegated by the Overseers (the committee of twelve, des- cribed above) to Samuel Shepard of Cambridge and the Rev. Hugh Peter of Salem. How the teaching was carried on during the year 1639-40 is unknown.
DUNSTER AND CHAUNCY (1640-1672)
Early in August 1640 the Rev. Henry Dunster (1609- 1659) arrived in the colony. He had matriculated at Magda- lene College, Cambridge, in 1627,-the year in which John Harvard entered Emmanuel College. The two took their de- grees in the same years (B.A., 1631; M.A., 1634). Dunster was invited to take the presidency of Harvard College within a few days after his arrival in Massachusetts; he was elected to the position on August 27, and he served with great dis- tinction therein for fourteen years. In 1641 he married Mrs. Elizabeth Glover, widow of the Rev. Josse Glover, who, it will be recalled, had brought the printing press to Cambridge
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after her husband's death in 1838. Mrs. Glover-Dunster died in 1643. There were no children by this marriage. A year later President Dunster married for his second wife Eliza- beth Bass by whom he had three sons and two daughters.
Dunster was thirty-one years old when he began his ser- vice as president of Harvard College. He was a man of the highest character and ability,-a preacher "very powerful to move the affections"; a scholar distinguished for his knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, as well as Latin; a keen thinker; a courageous follower of the truth as he saw it; yet possessed of "a gentle heart, and a noble vein of Christian charity" for those who finally (in 1654) drove him from his place because of his views on the baptism of infants.
As President of the college he proved that he was not only a scholar, but also a many-sided man of affairs. He rendered to the institution a long "series of official services, well di- rected, unwearied, and altogether inestimable."
The story of Dunster's dismissal from his position in 1654 cannot be here rehearsed. It is a tragedy of the first order, in which Dunster's character shows at its highest. He was succeeded in 1654 by the Rev. Charles Chauncy, B.D. of Trinity College, Cambridge, who had been some years in the colony. He served until his death in 1672. Like Dun- ster, Chauncy was a scholar of great distinction. He had been Professor of Hebrew and acting Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge; he had been driven from his pulpit by Archbishop Laud. "Few suffered for non-conformity more than he, by fines, by gaols, by necessities to abscond, and at last by an exile from his native country." President Josiah Quincy, writing in 1840, thus compares Dunster and Chauncy :
"Both of them were able, faithful, and earnest. Both pious, even to the excess of the standard of that quality, which characterized the times. Both were learned beyond the meas- ure of their contemporaries; and probably, in this respect, were surpassed by no one, who has since succeeded to their chair. After years of duty unexceptionably fulfilled, both experienced the common fate of the literary men of this country at that day ;- thankless labor, unrequited service, ar- rearages unpaid, posthumous applause, a doggrel dirge, and
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NEW ENGLAND'S FIRST FRUITS
a Latin epitaph." The limitations of space forbid a detailed acount of their services.
1
In 1643 a small pamphlet appeared in London under the heading New England's First Fruits: In Respect of the Col- lege and the Proceedings of Learning Therein. This is the earliest printed account of Harvard College; it was originally a letter "sent over by the Governor and divers of the Minis- ters," and apparently written shortly after the first Com- mencement in September, 1642. The reader who has fol- lowed attentively the description of education in England, and especially at Cambridge, at the outset of this chapter will have no difficulty in understanding the phrases of this pamphlet, and in perceiving that the beginnings of education "in the English manner" had been made in the New World. Nevertheless, Harvard was not a mere copy of an English original. Puri- tan ideals colored instruction, government, and discipline, through and through. Puritan doctrines shaped the curri- culum. The ideal of a reformed college, implied in John Winthrop's "Conclusions for New England" in 1629, was here achieved. At this point the writer of 1927 stands aside for the chronicler of 1642:
NEW ENGLAND'S FIRST FRUITS (1642)
After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our liveli- hood, rear'd convenient places for Gods worship, and setled the Civill Government: One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning, and perpetu- ate it to Posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust. And as wee were thinking and consulting how to effect this great Work; it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly Gentleman and a lover of Learning, there living amongst us) to give the one halfe of his Estate (it being in all about 1700.1.) towards the erecting of a Colledge, and all his Library: after him another gave 300, 1. others after them cast in more, and the publique hand of the State added the rest : the Colledge was, by common consent, appointed to be at Cambridge, (a place very pleasant and accommodated
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and is called (according to the name of the first founder) Harvard Colledge.
The Edifice is very faire and comely within and without, having in it a spacious Hall; (where they daily meet at Com- mons, Lectures, Exercises) and a large Library with some Bookes to it, the gifts of diverse of our friends, their Cham- bers and studies also fitted for, and prossessed by the Stu- dents, and all other roomes of Office necessary and conveni- ent, with all needfull Offices thereto belonging: And by the side of the Colledge a faire Grammar Schoole, for the train- ing up of young Schollars, and fitting of them for Academicall Learning, that still as they are judged ripe, they may be re- ceived into the Colledge of this Schoole. Master Corlet is the Mr., who hath very well approved himselfe for his abili- ties, dexterity and painfulnesse in teaching and education of the youth under him.
Over the Colledge is master Dunfter placed, as President, a learned concionable and industrious man, who has so trained up his Pupills in the tongues and Arts, and so seasoned them with the principles of Divinity and Christianity that we have to our great comfort, (and in truth) beyond our hopes, beheld their progresse in Learning and godlinesse also; the former of these hath appeared in their publique declamations in Latine and Greeke, and Disputations Logicall and Philosophicall, which they have beene wonted (besides their ordinary Ex- ercises in the Colledge-Hall) in the audience of the Magis- trates, Ministers, and other Schollars, for the probation of their growth in Learning, upon set dayes, constantly once every moneth to make and uphold: The latter hath been manifested in sundry of them by the savoury breathings of their Spirits in their godly conversation. Insomuch that we are confident, if these early blossomes may be cherished and warmed with the influence of the friends of Learning, and lovers of this pious worke, they will by the help of God, come to happy maturity in a short time.
Over the Colledge are twelve Overseers chosen by the gen- erall Court, six of them are of the Magistrates, the other six of the Ministers, who are to promote the best good of it, and (having a power of influence into all persons in it) are to see that every one be diligent and proficient in his proper place.
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Rules and Precepts that are observed in the College.
1. When any Schollar is able to understand Tully, or such like classicall Latine Author extempore, and make and speake true Latine in Verse and Prose, suo ut aiunt Marte; And decline perfectly the Paradigim's of Nounes and Verbes in the Greek tongue : Let him then and not before be capable of admission into the Colledge.
2. Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Iesus Christ which is eternall life, Job. 17.3. and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning.
And seeing the Lord only giveth wisedome, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seeke it of him Prov 2, 3.
3. Every one shall so exercise himself in reading the Scrip- tures twice a day, that he shall be ready to give such an ac- count of his proficiency therein, both in Theoretticall obser- vations of the Language, and Logick, and in Practicall and Spirituall truths, as his Tutor shall require, according to his ability ; seeing the entrance of the word giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple, Psalm. 119. 130.
4. That they eschewing all profanation of Gods Name, Attributes, Word, Ordinances, and times of Worship, doe studie with good conscience, carefully to retaine God, and the love of his truth in their mindes else let them know, that (not- withstanding their Learning) God may give them up to strong delusions, and in the end to a reprobate minde, 2 Thes. 2. 11, 12. Rom. I. 28.
5. That they studiously redeeme the time; observe the generall houres appointed for all the Students, and the speciall houres for their owne Classis: and then dilligently attend the Lectures without any disturbance by word or gesture. And if in any thing they doubt, they shall enquire as of their fellowes, so, (in case of Non satisfaction) modestly of their Tutors.
6. None shall under any pretence whatsoever, frequent the company and society of such men as lead an unfit, and dissolute life.
Nor shall any without his Tutors leave, or (in his absence) the call of Parents or Guardians, goe abroad to other Townes.
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7. Every Schollar shall be present in his Tutors chamber at the 7th. houre in the morning, immediately after the sound of the Bell, at his opening the Scripture and prayer, so also at the 5th. houre at night, and then give account of his owne private reading, as aforesaid in Particular the third, and con- stantly attend Lectures in the Hall at the houres appointed. But if any (without necessary impediment) shall absent him- self from prayer or Lectures, he shall bee lyable to Admoni- tion, if he offend above once a weeke.
8. If any Schollar shall be found to transgresse any of the Lawes of God, or the Schoole, after twice Admonition, he shall be lyable, if not adultus, to correction [whipping], if adultus, his name shall be given up to the Overseers of the Colledge, that he may bee admonished at the publick monethly Act.
The times and order of their Studies, unless experience shall show cause to alter.
The second and third day of the weeke, read Lectures, as followeth.
To the first yeare at 8th. of the clock in the morning Logick, the first three quarters, Physicks the last quarter.
To the second yeare at the 9th. houre, Ethicks and Politicks, at convenient distances of time.
To the third yeare at the 10th. Arithmetick and Geometry, the three first quarters, Asstronomy the last.
Afternoone
The first yeare disputes at the second houre.
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