HARVARD, JOHN: Congregationalist minister of the Massachusetts colony, after whom Harvard College was named; b. in Southwark, London, Nov., 1607; d. at Charlestown, Mass., Sept. 14, 1638. He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (B.A., 1631; M.A., 1635), and probably was ordained as a dissenting minister shortly after leaving the university, though there is no record of this fact. He removed to New England in 1637, settled at Charlestown in August of that year, and became a freeman of Massachusetts on Nov. 2 following. For some time he filled the pulpit of the First Church at Charlestown as assistant to the Rev. Z. Symmes. Compared with his fellow colonists, he was a man of wealth; and that he was held in high esteem is shown by the fact that on Apr. 26, 1638, he was placed upon a committee to formulate a body of laws. He died of consumption after a residence of little more than a year in the colony, leaving his library of 320 volumes and about £400, half of his fortune, to the proposed college at New Towne, later Cambridge, for which the General Court had made an appropriation of £400 in Sept., 1636. With the aid of this legacy the building was begun; and in Mar., 1639, in commemoration of the young philanthropist, it was ordered that the new institution should be called Harvard College. Harvard was justly styled by Edward Everett the " ever-

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memorable benefactor of learning and religion in America."

Bibliography: Important documents are reprinted in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, July, 1885, cf. October, 1886. Consult: H. C. Shelley, John Harvard and His Times, Boston, 1908; W. I. Budington, History of the First Church of Charlestown, Boston, 1845; J. Winthrop, Hist. of New England, ii. 105-419, ib. 1853; Life and Letters of John Winthrop, 2 vols., ib. 1864-67; F. 0. Vaille and H. A. Clark, Harvard Book, 2 vols., ib. 1875; J. F. Hunnewell, Records of the First Church, ib. 1880; G. G. Bush, Harvard: the first American Univer sity, ib. 1886; W. R,. Thayer, Harvard University, ib. 1893; C. E. Norton, Four American Universities, New York, 1895; J. L. Chamberlain, Universities and ,heir Sons; Harvard University, vol. i., Boston, n.d.; A. Davis, John Harvard's Life in America; or social and political Life in New England, 1887-1888, Cambridge, Mass., 1908; DNB, xxv. 77-78.