Vita: John Harvard
Brief life of a Puritan philanthropist: 1607-1638
by Conrad Edick Wright
John Harvard's name is so familiar that it may come as a surprise
to learn how much of a man of mystery he is. Most graduates of
the university that bears his name know that no picture or physical
description of him survives, so it is impossible to know what
he looked like. But consider this further catalog of lacunae:
no surviving record documents the date of his birth, ordination,
or arrival in Massachusetts; there is no way to be certain why
he went to college, entered the Puritan ministry, or emigrated
to the New World; nor is there any way to be sure why he bequeathed
the bulk of his estate to a small college that welcomed its first
students barely days or weeks before he died. Thanks to this bequest,
John Harvard eventually became the most famous member of Puritan
New England's first generation, yet the best tools for sketching
him are inference, informed speculation, and the genealogist's
most useful friends, vital records.
Harvard was born in Southwark, Surrey, across the Thames from
the City of London. His father, Robert, a butcher, worshipped
at St. Saviour's, the same church as William Shakespeare. Because
his mother, Katherine, was a native of Stratford-on-Avon, one
author has proposed that the playwright introduced the couple--an
intriguing story, but the evidence is entirely circumstantial.
Robert Harvard was a more prominent resident of Southwark than
his occupation might suggest; he held a number of important local
offices, including vestryman and trustee of the parish grammar
school, where students learned the Latin they needed for college.
In the absence of written evidence, it is reasonable to assume
his son studied at this school, probably entering about 1615.
Grammar schools sent many of their brightest students directly
to the realm's two ancient universities, Oxford and Cambridge,
but John Harvard's formal education came to a temporary halt at
the end of the parish school's course of study. At this point
he was probably apprenticed to a master to learn a practical calling--one
of his brothers was a London cloth worker.
London was the place to get ahead in early Stuart England.
Ambitious men and women came by the tens of thousands, bringing
not only their aspirations, but also disease. Harvard was the
fourth of nine children, but after his father, a stepsister, and
two brothers died of the plague in the summer of 1625, only his
mother and one brother, Thomas, remained of his immediate family.
They shared a comfortable estate that grew and grew again when
Katherine Harvard remarried twice within the next two years.
There was a silver lining for Harvard in his family's tragic
losses: the deaths increased each survivor's inheritance. With
the money that became available to him, he resumed his education
in December 1627, when he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
where he paid his own way. Nothing in his own words indicates
why he chose Emmanuel, but in itself his selection was a statement
of his purposes. Puritans had established the college in 1584
to train their clergy. Harvard clearly wanted a role in their
campaign to reform the Church of England.
A decade later almost all the family's assets--about £2,000--were
his. Katherine had died in 1635 and Thomas in the spring of 1637.
Meanwhile, in April 1636 Harvard had married Ann Sadler of Ringmer,
Sussex. By now he had probably also taken holy orders, although
no confirming record survives.
In the late 1630s, a certain kind of college man found New
England an especially attractive prospect--Puritans, Cambridge
men, and particularly graduates of Emmanuel solemnly committed
to theological and liturgical reform. More than one-quarter of
the university men who came to New England before 1646 had studied
at Emmanuel; it was probably Harvard's old college contacts that
brought him to Massachusetts.
Only a little more than a year elapsed between the summer of
1637, when the Harvards arrived in Massachusetts, and September
14, 1638, when John died of consumption. During this period he
became a valued resident of Charlestown, where he was called to
be the church's "teacher," one of its two clergymen.
In Harvard, Charlestown had a passionate preacher who in the brief
time left to him spoke "with teares [of] affection strong."
By the time the Harvards settled in Charlestown John must already
have been in failing health. It is easy to imagine his clerical
colleagues, perhaps including old Emmanuel friends, visiting him
with updates on the progress of the new college in Cambridge.
They were aware that he had an imposing library--some 400 volumes.
They might even have known about the wealth he had inherited from
his family.
Consumption kills slowly. By the time Harvard died, he knew
what he wanted to do with his estate. Of course he had to take
care of his wife, who received half his money. The remainder,
£800 (twice the sum granted by the colony's General Court
in 1636 for the establishment of a college) and his entire library,
he gave to the new school in Cambridge. The bequest ensured that
his name would never be forgotten.
Conrad Edick Wright '72 is the Ford editor of publications
at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where he is also director
of the Center for the Study of New England History. His entry
on John Harvard will appear in the forthcoming New Dictionary
of National Biography (Oxford).
