First President of Harvard Gives College Longevity

The following history of President Dunster and his work at Harvard College is based on an article which appeared recently in the Alumni Bulletin.

There is no person to whom Harvard College owes more than to her first President, Henry Dunster. A graduate of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and minister of his native village of Bury in Lancashire, he left England at the age of thirty rather than conform to the Laudian reforms. A reputation for learning preceded him; and in August 1640, three weeks after arriving in Boston, he was elected President of Harvard College, by the Board of Overseers.

Dunster found Harvard a poor secondary school, without head, or teacher, or corporate existence. Its handful of students were "dispersed in the town and miserably distracted in their times of concourse", the College building not half completed, and the legacy of John Harvard almost exhausted. Dunster left Harvard small indeed and slenderly endowed, but well provided with buildings, conducted with dignity and efficiency by young and enthusiastic teachers, corporate independence secured by a charter, discipline regulated by College statutes. Yet the manner of his leaving was tragic, and almost a century elapsed before the College recovered the prestige it had enjoyed in Dunster's day.

Completes First College Building

Dunster's first task was to get the first College building completed. Eaton, the "schoolmaster", just removed for his obvious unfitness to conduct a college, had got the frame erected--unfortunately of green timber which opened up in the first cold snap. Dunster got the floors and roof laid, partitions erected, the building finished, and furniture procured. He had the satisfaction of bringing all the students into residence, in September, 1642, and presiding at the first Commencement, according to the dignified rites of his mother university. This completion of the building was no small feat, for Dunster had not been in office a year when a severe economic crisis struck New England. "Corn would buy nothing", wrote Governor Winthrop. "A cow which cost last year 20 pounds might now be bought for four or five pounds; then, too, many people have gone out of the country, as no man could pay his debts." The more active members of the Board of Overseers returned to England. But for the energetic leadership of Dunster in this crisis, it is probable that the College would have died before graduating a class.

Similar to New "House"

It is interesting to note that in the new residential "House" which is to be built, Harvard is returning to this old English college plan; but there is one feature of Dunster's building that we unfortunately cannot restore; the buttery, where College beer was dispensed, and about whose friendly "hatch" or Dutch door the students gathered to enjoy a social mug at "morning bever" and "afternoon bever", possibly between-times as well.

President Dunster once complained that, in addition to doing all the teaching himself, he had to be the students' steward, "and to direct their brewer, baker, buttler, cook, how to proportion their commons." But he soon had help in this, and in the teaching, too; for the best men in the class of 1642 were induced to stay on as resident bachelors and tutors until they took their master's degree. Among this first crop of tutors was the man after whom Downing Street, London, was named. George Downing had all his education in Harvard College; and as we find him, when representing Cromwell in France, carrying on a two-hour conversation in Latin with Cardinal Mazarin, we may infer that Dunster's College law of 1642, forbidding the use of the "mother tongue" even in conversation, was fairly well observed.

First Curriculum Extensive

Dunster's first curriculum was an ambitious one, including not only Greek and Hebrew but other oriental languages, in which he was himself a noted scholar. He adopted the thrifty expedient of having a student translate the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek at morning prayers, and the New Testament from English into Greek at evening prayers, so as to combine piety and scholarship. But he did much else than teach. The College was supported largely by a "country rate" laid by the General Court in the towns, whose tax-collectors sometimes needed a personal visit before they would "come across."

Board and Tuition Paid in Kind

Not only the taxes but the students' board and tuition were paid in kind--in corn and wheat, cloth and shoes, cows, and other animals including "a goat of the Watertown rate which died," so that the College steward must have conducted a wholesale store.

Cotton Mather, whose father was in College in Dunster's time paid a tribute in the "Magnalia" to the learning piety, and saintliness of the first President. Of his humaneness we have a few precious contemporary records. Dunster married the widow Glover, whose first husband brought over the famous printing, first in the English colonies. With the widow, Dunster acquired the press--which was operated in his house, on the site of Massachusetts Hall.

An amusing story of Dunster's presidency was handed down for two centuries among his descendants. The President was at Concord, visiting his relatives, when the word came that the College boys had, literally, raised the Devil. Prexy saddled his horse and hastened back to Cambridge to find that the report was true. The students were thoroughly frightened at something--whether a practical joke or a bit of black magic, the reader can best decide. Whatever it may have been, the President's remedy was masterly. Emptying his powder horn on the Hall floor, he solemnly exorcised the Evil One, and then, touching off the combustibles with a live coal, literally blew the Devil out of Harvard College.

The story of Duster's dismissal from the College has generally been related as an instance of Puritan bigotry and intolerance. Dunster, since his arrival, had been an orthodox Calvinist and member of the Cambridge Church but by careful study he reached the conclusion, some time in 1653, that the baptism of infants was unauthorized by scripture. Accordingly he refused to present for baptism his son who was horn in the fall of that year. The news that President Dunster had become a Baptist created about the same sensation in the Colony as would be aroused in the country today if President Lowell should announce his adherence to communism. For the Baptists were the Bolsheviks of that era; their wild orgies at Nunster, and the attempt of John of Leyden to overturn the State, were known to everyone. Just so today many good people see a necessary connection between denying infant baptism and destroying the basis of society. Of course the assumption that Henry Dunster would follow after John of Leyden was just as absurd as the assumption held by many loyal Harvard graduates, that liberal professors were in league with Moscow.

A Jesuit historian has recently called the early history of Harvard "one of the brilliant pageants of American history," a pageant of which the "real theme is courage and devotion; courage under conditions which would seem to stifle all human effort save an avid grubbing for food and housing, devotion to the fine ideal of disciplining the human intellect and human will." One might add that the courage was largely Dunster's, and in devotion no one was his equal. Harvard College might even have followed its founder to an early death and oblivion, but for the lively faith, the serene courage, and the steadfast devotion of Henry Dunster.