On This Day in History

Harvard Voted in.

"One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." So said an early New England pamphlet.

On this day, October 28, 1636, Salem's general court "...agreed to give 400? towards a school or college..." If the sum of 400? seems trivial, remember that it represented fully 1/3 of Salem's town revenue. No action was taken that year because of the Anne Hutchinson controversy and an Indian war.

About that time, John Harvard a wealthy member of the English middle class migrated to the new world. He died in 1638, willing half his estate and his entire library for the establishment of a college. Harvard received about 850?, a very large sum by New England standards.

In 1639 Salem's leaders met again. In gratitude for Harvard's bequest, they named the college after him. It became one of the preeminent universities of the world although it soon lost sight of its Christian purpose. Fittingly, in light of John Harvard's donation of books, Harvard boasts one of the largest libraries in the world, with tens of millions of items.
Read more about Harvard at Christian History Institute. ©2004.