 John Harvard was born in Southwark, near London. He studied at Emmanuel
College, Cambridge. Because of the persecution the Puritans were under
from Archbishop Laud, he joined the Puritan emigration to the new
world. He was a teaching elder in the congregational church at Charlestown.
In his will, he left hasl his estate, as well as a library of about 400
volumes, to the new college founded by the colony in 1636. Because of
this gift, the General Court of Massachusetts named the college Harvard
College.
None of his sermons remain, and all but one of the books he donated to
Harvard were burned in a fire. |
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