Everything about John Harvard Clergyman totally explained
John Harvard (
November 26,
1607 –
September 14,
1638) was an English
clergyman after whom
Harvard University is named.
Biography
Harvard was born and raised in
London, in the borough of
Southwark, the fourth of nine children, the son of Robert Harvard (1562-1625), a
butcher and
tavern owner, and his wife, Katherine Rogers (1584-1635), a native of
Stratford-on-Avon whose father, Thomas Rogers (1540-1611), is sometimes thought to have been an associate of
William Shakespeare (1564-1616). John Harvard was educated at
St Saviour's Grammar School in Southwark, where his father Robert was a governor.
In
1625, his father, a stepsister, and two brothers died of the
plague. Of his immediate family, only his mother and one brother, Thomas, remained. She remarried to John Elletson (1580-1626) who died within months of their marriage, and then to Richard Yearwood (1580-1632) in 1627. Harvard entered
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, then a
Puritan stronghold, in December
1627 and received his
B.A. in
1632. Katherine died in
1635 and Thomas in the spring of
1637. John married Ann Sadler (1614-1655), of
Ringmer,
Sussex, in April,
1636, daughter of the Rev. John Sadler and sister of Harvard's contemporary,
John Sadler, the
lawyer and
orientalist.
In May
1637 he emigrated with his wife to
New England and settled in
Charlestown, Massachusetts, where many of his classmates had arrived before him. Charlestown made him the
minister of the Church, but within the following year he contracted
tuberculosis and died on September 14, 1638. He is buried at the Phipps Street Cemetery in Charlestown.
Childless, Harvard bequeathed
£779 (half of his estate) and his library of around 400 volumes to the New College at nearby
Cambridge, which had been founded on
September 8,
1636, and to his friend, the first
schoolmaster of this college,
Nathaniel Eaton. Eaton's Records indicate that the building of the new college began immediately in 1638 with the assistance of the carpenter Thomas Meakins and/or his son, Thomas Meakins, Jr. of
Charlestown. It was completely constructed of wood, with a stone foundation and cellar, had its own apple orchard, and was apparently equipped with live-in accommodations for some 30 students, as there were at least that many attendant within the first year.
The school renamed itself "Harvard College" on
March 13,
1639, and Harvard was first referred to as a
university rather than a
college by the new
Massachusetts constitution of
1780.
No records or illustrations remain of the earliest college, which burnt to the ground in
1674 along with all but one of Harvard's original 400 volume donation.
Statue
A statue of John Harvard, sculpted by
Daniel Chester French, sits in
Harvard Yard at Harvard University. Despite its name, the statue doesn't depict the true likeness of John Harvard, as the sculptor had no accurate image to work from. The statue, known by Harvard tour guides as
the statue of three lies, claims that it depicts
John Harvard, Founder, 1638, but in reality Harvard was merely a contributor, not the founder; the institution was founded in 1636; and the statue is actually a likeness of somebody else.
Further Information
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