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John Harvard (1607–1638) was an English dissenting minister in colonial New England whose deathbed bequest to the "schoale or colledge" founded two years earlier by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that it was consequently ordered "that the Colledge agreed upon formerly to be built at Cambridge shalbee called Harvard ...
John Harvard (born November 1607, London, Eng.—died Sept. 14, 1638, Charlestown [part of Boston], Mass. [U.S.]) was a New England colonist whose bequest permitted the firm establishment of Harvard College.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
On his 400th anniversary, a look back at the bequest, the fire, and the ‘lone survivor’. This November, Harvard University will mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Harvard, not the institution’s founder as he is sometimes credited, but rather its first major benefactor.
On this day in 1638, John Harvard, a 31-year-old clergyman from Charlestown, Massachusetts, died, leaving his library and half of his estate to a local college.
May 17, 2018 · Encyclopedia of World Biography. John Harvard >Little is known about the short life of John Harvard (1607-1638). Yet his >legacy has continued down through the centuries as the principal benefactor >of Harvard University [1], arguably one of the world's most highly respected >centers of learning.
Jan 1, 2000 · Thanks to this bequest, John Harvard eventually became the most famous member of Puritan New England's first generation, yet the best tools for sketching him are inference, informed speculation, and the genealogist's most useful friends, vital records.
So who was the real John Harvard? While the school's namesake is certainly well known today, his fame is almost entirely posthumous.
