|
|
Article: Harvard University
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
Puritans so dreaded an uneducated ministry that in 1636, only six years after the founding of Massachusetts Bay, the colony's General Court voted money "towards a schoale or colledge." Named after the Reverend John Harvard, a private benefactor, Harvard College opened in 1638 in a house inside a cattle yard donated by the town of Cambridge, and in 1642, it graduated the first class of nine men. In 1650, the legislature granted an official charter providing for governance by a small, self-perpetuating corporation and a larger board of overseers to be chosen by the magistrates; half were to be ministers.
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The ...