The New International Encyclopædia/Harvard, John

HAR'VARD, John (1607-38). An English clergyman in New England, the principal founder of Harvard College, born in Southwark, London. His father, Robert Harvard, was a butcher. His mother, who married twice after her first husband's death, became possessed of considerable property, which enabled her to give John Harvard a good education, and he was accordingly sent to Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, where he graduated in 1631, studied theology, and took his master's degree in 1635. In 1637 he married Ann Sadler, the daughter of a clergyman of Sussex, and removed to New England. There he settled at Charlestown, on Massachusetts Bay, where he was admitted a freeman in August, and where he became an assistant pastor of the First Church, of which the Rev. Z. Symmes was in charge. His health soon gave way, however, and he died of consumption on September 18, 1638, after a residence in the Colony of little more than a year. By his will he left his library of 260 volumes and a sum of about £400 to the college at ‘New Towne,’ later Cambridge, for which the General Court of the Colony had made an appropriation of £400 in 1636. A year after the young clergyman's death, in commemoration of his benefaction, the name of Harvard was conferred upon the institution. Consult Rendle, John Harvard (London, 1885).