Strange Gifts Help Students In University

Is your name Murphy? Are you a descendant of Ann Radcliffe or Ebenexer W. Cook? Were any of your ancestors members of the classes of 1844 or 1902? Do you live within 15 miles of Fitchburg? Were you over a Boston newsboy?

If you can answer affirmatively to any of these questions, you have a claim to proceeds of one of the special funds which have been set up through the years to provide scholarships to students in the University.

Most of the money which has been donated for scholarship aid has been given with the understanding that the University would see to it that the most deserving students received the benefits of the funds.

Some scholarship donors, however, have set up specifications according to which students should receive preference.

Religion and Grants

Certain scholarships can be given only to students of a specified religion. The Mary Saltonstall scholarships established in 1730 were to be given only to "dissenters."

Still other scholarships call for "students of Anglo-Saxon parontage," or for students who are "descendants from at least two grandparents, or more remote ancestors, who were natives of the United States or of Great Britain."

A fund set up in 1696 by Samuel Sewall 1671 and his wife stipulated that scholarships were to be given to needy students, "especially such as shall be sent from Petaquamscot (in the Narragansett Country), English or Indians, if any such there be."

Many scholarships give preference to members of a certain family, or direct descendants of a certain person. In such cases applicants must prove their membership in the family or trace their ancestry back to this individual.

The University takes great pains checking on the accuracy of such applications. In a case in which an applicant for a scholarship attempts to prove his relationship to the nephew of a man who died in 1698, the scholarship office has a job on its hands.

20 Mile Limit for Bostonians

All of the Harvard Club scholarships, and many of the National Scholarships stipulate that the holder must be a resident of a given area. Sometimes this area is a region as inclusive as the South, often a certain state or country, but sometimes the area is narrowed down to include only a certain town or "the region within 20 miles of the State House."

One National Scholarship calls for a candidate from "that part of the State of Iowa now served by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad." The donor of the fund held the controlling interest in the line in 1909 when he gave the scholarship.

Other funds give preference to graduates of certain high schools or preparatory schools. Still others prescribe that the applicant must be a Greek major, a Geologist, or "an instructor or student in the Egyptian and Semitic Department."

Scholarships founded by, or named after, certain classes usually give preferences to descendants of the members of the class. The Class of '41 has established a fund which will provide, first of all for sons of War Dead of the Class of '1 and, secondly, for other sons of the class of '41.

Naxi Brutality

Following both world wars many funds were set up in memory of service men who were killed in battle. In 1946 one was named in memory of Jean Gaillard, a student of Ecole Contrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris, who served in the French Air Forces, was arrested by the Gestapo, and died in the German concentration camp of Ravensbruck in 1945.

This stipend enables one French youth every year to study in any department of Harvard or M.I.T.

H. V. Kaltenborn '09 of radio fame has left a scholarship for a budding newspaper or radio news analyst, who must also be a Long Island, New York resident.

Students who can't pay their bills at Stillman Infirmary may derive benefit from still another scholarship, and last but not least, the freshman resident of Stoughton Hall who makes the best permanent improvement in his living quarters this year will be in line for a tidy little sum come June.