Harvard College Records

PART III

Preface

TEN years ago, in Volumes XV and XVI of our Publications, we printed certain records of Harvard College: viz., College Books I, III, and IV, including all the extant Corporation records for the period 1637 to 1750, with some others. The present volume is supplementary to these. It includes certain records that were not incorporated in the College Books, together with other documents on Harvard history, for the period 1650–1767. They fall into five main classes: (1) the Charter of 1650; (2) the Steward’s Book for 1650–1660, extraordinarily rich in social, economic, and biographical data, both for the college and for the colony; (3) three codes of college laws and one of college “customs” which, with what has already been published, complete the codified college legislation for the first century and a quarter of Harvard; (4) unofficial records and memoirs by two presidents and a senior fellow of the college; and (5) two Latin Commencement orations, as specimens of Harvard Latinity and collegiate wit in the seventeenth century. The originals of all but Mitchell’s Modell and the Rogers Oration are in the Harvard University Archives.

This volume is the Society’s contribution to the tercentenary of Harvard College; and the expense has been borne by a son of Harvard, one of our oldest members, whose modesty prevents me from mentioning his name.

For the Committee of Publication

SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON, Chairman

Boston, May 1, 1935