John Harvard (clergyman) - Life

Life

Harvard was born and raised in Southwark, England, the fourth of nine children of Robert Harvard (1562–1625), a butcher and tavern owner, and his wife Katherine Rogers (1584–1635), a native of Stratford-upon-Avon whose father Thomas Rogers (1540–1611) may have been an associate of Shakespeare's father. He was baptised at what is now Southwark Cathedral and attended St Saviour's Grammar School, where his father was a member of the governing body.

In 1625 the plague reduced the immediate family to only John, his brother Thomas, and their mother. Katherine was soon remarried—first to John Elletson (1580–1626), who died within a few months, then (1627) to Richard Yearwood (1580–1632). She died in 1635, Thomas in 1637.

Left with some property, Harvard's mother was able to send him to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he earned his B.A. in 1632 and M.A. in 1635, and was subsequently ordained a dissenting minister. In 1636 he married Ann Sadler (1614–55) of Ringmer, sister of his college classmate John Sadler.

In the spring or summer of 1637 the couple emigrated to New England, where Harvard became a freeman of Massachusetts and, settling in Charlestown, a teaching elder of the First Church there and an assistant preacher. In 1638, a tract of land was deeded to him there, and he was appointed that same year to a committee “to consider of some things tending toward a body of laws.”

On 14 September 1638 he died of tuberculosis and was buried at Charlestown's Phipps Street Burying Ground. In 1828 Harvard alumni erected a granite monument to his memory there, his original stone having disappeared during the American Revolution.