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.
Read more about this topic: John Harvard (clergyman)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
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“The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday. Things must not be done in him which are venial in the week-day classes. He is paid for this business of leading a stricter life than other people. It is his raison d’être.... This is why the clergyman is so often called a “vicar”Mhe being the person whose vicarious goodness is to stand for that of those entrusted to his charge.”
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“‘Tis of the essence of life here,
Though we choose greatly, still to lack
The lasting memory at all clear,
That life has for us on the wrack
Nothing but what we somehow chose;
Thus are we wholly stripped of pride
In the pain that has but one close,
Bearing it crushed and mystified.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)