Harvard

Harvard by Bill Federer

John Harvard's grandfather lived in Stratford-upon-Avon and was an associate of Shakespeare's father. His father was a butcher and owner of Queen's Head Inn and Tavern.

John Harvard was born in London and baptized on November 29, 1607, in the old St. Savior's Parish near the London Bridge (present-day Southwark Cathedral). Most of his family died when a plague swept England in 1625. John Harvard's mother and surviving brother died not long after the plague, leaving John the entire family estate.

John is believed to have attended the grammar school at St. Savior's, where the rector, Nicholas Morton, would have diligently prepared him for acceptance into Cambridge, a amazing achievement for someone of the commoner class.

John Harvard entered Cambridge's Emmanuel College, known for its Puritan views, the same school Connecticut founder Rev. Thomas Hooker attended. Harvard received his bachelor's degree in 1632 and his master's degree in 1635.

John Harvard fell in love with Ann Sadler and they were married at St. Michael the Archangel Church in 1636, the same year the College at Cambridge was founded in Massachusetts.

In 1637, John and Ann Harvard sailed for Massachusetts where he took "the freeman's oath," and served as a teaching elder and an assistant pastor at the First Church of Charlestown, under Rev. Zechariah Symmes.

At age 31, Rev. John Harvard contracted tuberculosis and died on SEPTEMBER 14, 1638. The record of where his grave was located was lost during the Revolutionary War. Having no male heir, John left half of his 1,600 pound estate to the College at Cambridge, along with a library of over 400 volumes.

John Harvard's library included Bible commentaries, volumes in Hebrew and Greek, an Aramaic lexicon of the Talmud, and
books by Homer, Plutarch, Aquinas, Bacon, Calvin, and Luther.

After his library was used by colonial scholars for over a century, a fire in 1764 destroyed all John Harvard's books, except one, The Christian Warfare Against the Devil, World and Flesh And Means to Obtain Victory (1634), written by John Downame.

The General Court of Massachusetts Bay voted in 1639 to rename the College at Cambridge after John Harvard. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in America.

On the wall by the old iron gate at Harvard University's main campus entrance, and also noted in Harvard Divinity School's catalog, is the statement of Harvard's founders:

"After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for God's worship, and settled the Civil Government:

"One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning and to perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust ...

"... And as we 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 half of his estate ... towards the erecting of a college and all his Library."

Harvard's declared purpose was: "To train a literate clergy."

This was consistent with 106 of the first 108 schools in America, which were founded on Christianity.

Ten of the twelve presidents of Harvard prior to the Revolutionary War were ministers.

Fifty percent of the 17th-century Harvard graduates became ministers.

Harvard College was founded in "In Christi Gloriam" as its founders believed: "All knowledge without Christ was vain."

In 1692, the motto of Harvard was: "Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae" ("Truth for Christ and the Church").

The word "Veritas" on the college seal referenced divine truth, and was embedded on a shield, which can be found on Memorial Church, Widener Library, and numerous Harvard Yard dorms.

The shield has on top two books facing up and on the bottom a book facing down, symbolizing the limits of reason and the need for God's revelation.