History of Harvard University - Colonial

Colonial

With some 17,000 Puritans migrating to New England by 1636, Harvard was founded by ministers who realized the need for training clergy for the new commonwealth, a "church in the wilderness." It was named for John Harvard, its first benefactor. It received its corporate charter in 1650 and became a university in 1780.

An early, anonymous description of the college, New England's First Fruits (1643) recalled:

"After God had carried us safe to New England, and we ... rear'd convenient places for God's worship ... dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust ... it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard, a godly gentleman and a lover of learning ... to give the one half of his estate ... towards the erecting of a college and all his Library."

When the college's first president Henry Dunster abandoned Puritanism in favor of the Baptist faith in 1654, he provoked a controversy that highlighted two distinct approaches to dealing with dissent in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony's Puritan leaders, whose own religion was born of dissent from mainstream Church of England, generally worked for reconciliation with members who questioned matters of Puritan theology but responded much more harshly to outright rejection of Puritanism. Dunster's conflict with the colony's magistrates began when he failed to have his infant son baptized, believing, as a newly converted Baptist, that only adults should be baptized. Efforts to restore Dunster to Puritan orthodoxy failed, and his apostasy proved untenable to colony leaders who had entrusted him, in his job as Harvard's president, to uphold the colony's religious mission. Thus, he represented a threat to the stability of society. Dunster exiled himself in 1654 and moved to nearby Plymouth Colony, where he died in 1658.

In 1692, the leading Puritan divine Increase Mather became president of Harvard. One of his acts was replacing pagan classics with books by Christian authors in ethics classes, and maintaining a high standard of discipline. The Harvard "Lawes" of 1642 and the "Harvard College Laws of 1700" testify to its original high level of discipline. Students were required to observe rules of pious decorum inconceivable in the 19th century, and ultimately to prove their fitness for the bachelor's degree by showing that they could 'read the original of the Old and New Testament into the Latin tongue, and resolve them logically.'

During Harvard's early years the town of Cambridge maintained order on campus and provided economic support; the local Puritan minister had direct oversight of Harvard and ensured the orthodoxy of the its leadership. By 1700 Harvard was strong enough to regulate and discipline its own people, and to a large extent the direction in which support and assistance was reversed, Harvard now providing financial support for local economic expansion, improvements to public health, and construction of local roads, meetinghouses, schools.

The early motto of Harvard was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, meaning "Truth for Christ and the Church." In the early classes half the graduates became ministers. By the 1760s the proportion was down to 15%. Ten out of the first twelve presidents were also ministers. Systematic theological instruction was inaugurated in 1721 and by 1827 Harvard became a nucleus of theological teaching in New England.

When Mather stepped down as president in 1701 it marked the beginning of a long term struggle between orthodoxy and liberalism. Harvard's first secular president was John Leverett, who began his term in 1708. Leverett left the curriculum largely intact and sought to keep the College independent of the overwhelming influence of any single sect.

During the American Revolution, Loyalist alumni were outnumbered seven to one by Patriots—seven alumni died in the fighting. (Until the Blizzard of 1978 the Revolution marked the only instance that—in the judgment of Harvard officials—external events justified cancellation of classes.)