Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Harvard, John

HARVARD, John, philanthropist, b. in Southwark, London, England, in November, 1607; d. in Charlestown, Mass., 24 Sept., 1638. His father, Robert Harvard, was a butcher. His mother, possessing some property, sent John to Emmanuel college, Cambridge, where he was graduated in 1635. Subsequently he was ordained as a dissenting minister, and in 1637 married Ann Sadler, the daughter of a Sussex clergyman, and sailed for New England, where he was made a freeman of Massachusetts on 2 Nov. of that year. It appears on the town-records that in 1638 a tract of land was deeded to him in Charlestown, where he exercised his ministerial functions. In April, 1638, he was appointed one of a committee “to consider of some things tending toward a body of laws.” At his death his property was worth about £1,500, one half of which he left for the erection of the college that bears his name. A part of this bequest is said to have been diverted from its original purpose. He also left to the college a library of 320 volumes, which indicated the taste of a scholar. The alumni erected a granite monument to his memory in the burial-ground of Charlestown, which was dedicated with an address by Edward Everett, 26 Sept., 1828. A memorial statue of Harvard, the gift of Samuel James Bridge to the university, was unveiled, 15 Oct., 1884, with an address by Rev. George Edward Ellis (Cambridge, 1884). The illustration represents the first Harvard hall, which was burned, and was replaced by the present structure in 1766.