John Harvard (1607–1638) was an English Puritan minister in colonial New England whose deathbed bequest to the
founded two years earlier by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that the colony consequently ordered "that the
Harvard was born in Southwark, England, and earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
In 1637 he emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony – one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America – where he became a teaching elder and assistant preacher of the First Church in Charlestown.
Harvard died of tuberculosis in 1638, leaving a large sum of money and his 400-volume scholar's library to the colony's new school, which the colony then voted to name in his honor.
Harvard University considers him the most honored of its founders—those whose efforts and contributions in its early days "ensure[d] its permanence"—and a statue in his honor is a prominent feature of Harvard Yard.
Harvard was born and raised in Southwark, Surrey, England, (later part of London), the fourth of nine children of Robert Harvard (1562–1625), a butcher and tavern owner, and Katherine Rogers (1584–1635), a native of Stratford-upon-Avon. Her father, Thomas Rogers (1540–1611), served on the borough corporation's council with John Shakespeare. Harvard was baptised 29 November 1607 in St Saviour's Church (later Southwark Cathedral) and attended St Saviour's Grammar School, where his father was a member of the governing body and a warden of the parish church. His grandparents' house in Stratford-upon-Avon, largely rebuilt after a fire of 1595, survives as 'Harvard House'.
In 1625, bubonic plague reduced the immediate family to only John, his brother Thomas, and Katherine. Katherine was soon remarried—firstly in 1626 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.
Harvard's mother was able to send him to the University of Cambridge, He was admitted as a pensioner to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, on 19 December 1627; he was awarded his B.A. in 1632 and M.A. in 1635.
Marriage and emigration to New England
On 19 April of either 1636 or 1637, Harvard married Ann Sadler (1614–55) of Patcham in East Sussex, sister of his college contemporary John Sadler, at St Michael the Archangel Church, in the parish of South Malling, Lewes.
In the spring or summer of 1637, the couple emigrated to the New England Colonies, where Harvard became a freeman of Massachusetts and, settling in Charlestown, a teaching elder of the First Church there and an assistant preacher, though it is not known whether he was episcopally ordained. 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."
He built his house on Country Road (later Market Street and then Main Street), next to Gravel Lane, a site that is now the John Harvard Mall. His orchard extended up the hill behind his house.
On 14 September 1638, Harvard died of tuberculosis and was buried at Charlestown's Phipps Street Burying Ground. In 1828, Harvard University alumni erected a granite monument to his memory there, his original stone having disappeared during the American Revolution.
Harvard's widow, Ann, is believed to have married again, to Thomas Allen, Harvard's successor as teacher of the Charlestown church and administrator of Harvard's estate.
Two years before Harvard's death the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—desiring to "advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity: dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust"—appropriated £400 toward a "schoale or colledge" at what was then called Newtowne.
In an oral will made shortly before his death the childless Harvard, who had inherited considerable sums from his father, mother, and brother,
bequeathed to the school £780—half of his monetary estate—with the remainder to his wife;