Hymning Harvard's Sons

From the first class of young divines who went forth in 1642 to enlighten their congregations. Harvard College exerted an uncommon influence on the growing colonies, and John Langdon Sibley, Harvard librarian from 1856-77, was keenly aware of the record. But where, he once wrote distressedly, "was that record of this intellectual and moral power, which during more than two centuries, had been going out from the walls of Harvard?" Determined that not one whit of Veritas be lost to the future, Sibley resolved to write such a record. His project: to write a biographical sketch of every man who ever went to Harvard. Serenely oblivious to the Malthusian truth that Harvard men beget sons who go to Harvard, and that a long, geometric progression of begats had already outbegotten his best efforts to catch up. Historian Sibley set to work. He was confident, he wrote, that although his research might turn up "cases of iniquity which may have escaped punishment," it would nevertheless show the "worth and influence" of Harvard graduates.

In American Heritage, Rene Kuhn Bryant records Sibley's labors. His first volume, a record of "strange experience in childhood, brave struggles to obtain an education, of virtue and heroism under temptations of wealth and worldly honor," appeared in 1873, his second in 1881. Ailing and past 70, he draped himself in a shawl, wore three pairs of spectacles at once to help his dimming eyesight, and continued burrowing through the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 1885 he published a third volume, completing the biographies through the class of 1689. He died the same year, but Librarian Sibley was too dedicated a man to let his own death interfere with his life's work. From his underweight salary--never more than $2,000 a year--and some shrewd investments, he had scraped together an impressive estate that, by his wife's death in 1902, had swelled to $161,169. His will directed that it be given in trust to the Historical Society to continue the project.

Rare Youth. Work lapsed for 47 years. In 1932 Clifford Kenyon Shipton, a young Harvardman then teaching history at Brown, was hired to take over, has been at it ever since. At first he estimated that he could bring the biographies up to the class of 1800 in his lifetime, then revised his hopes downward to the classes of the Revolution. Now, at 55, he figures to hymn the sons of Harvard through 1765, the year of the Stamp Act. Progress so far: seven more volumes and part of the eighth, extending Sibley's sketches to the class of 1744.

Members of Harvard's first class included Henry Saltonstall, son of the founder of the Massachusetts clan, and Sir George Downing, who signed on as a ship's schoolmaster after graduation, arrived in England and soon became a confidential operative for Cromwell. His historical distinctions: he built the street on which Britain's Prime Ministers live, and a clerk in his office. Samuel Pepys, made sarcastic references to him in his diary.

An early graduate (class of 1656) was grim-souled Increase Mather, who entered Harvard at twelve, preached a sermon so forcefully six years later that his son Cotton recorded, "The whole Auditory were greatly Affected with Light and Flame, in which the Rare Youth Appear'd unto them." Of Increase's spiritual torment, Cotton wrote: "The more Early Years of his Ministry were Embittered unto him, with such Furious & Boisterous Temptations unto Atheism, as were Intolerable . . . Vile Suggestions and Injections, tending to question the Being" of God, "were shot at him as Fiery Darts from the Wicked One." As a Harvardman should, Increase rejected Old Horny with "all possible Detestation . . . Thus he tired out his adversary, and the Devil, being so Resisted, anon fled from him . . ."

Conniving with the Devil. If a man did not win his battle with the Devil in those days, his neighbors might win it for him. The Rev. George Burroughs (class of 1670), pastor at Salem Village, made himself unpopular by trying to collect his back salary, was accused of witchcraft and convicted. Among the charges: "He was a Puny man, yet he had often done things beyond the strength of a Gyant . . . Only putting the Forefinger into the Muzzle of a heavy Fowling piece, [he] did lift up the Gun, and hold it out at Arms length." On the scaffold, asked if he had anything to say. Burroughs used his rhetorical training to discuss why his captors should let him go. He made quite an impression, Sibley records, nevertheless became the only Harvardman to be executed for conniving with the Devil. Reason: Cotton Mather (class of 1678), also trained in rhetoric, convinced the Salemites that hanging Burroughs was the will of God.

Among graduates who ranked first in their professions was Thomas Bell (class of 1734) who according to one account "excelled in low art and cunning. His mind was totally debased, and his whole conduct betrayed a soul capable of descending to every species of iniquity. In all the arts of theft, robbery, fraud, deception and defamation, he was so deeply skilled, and so thoroughly practiced, that it is believed he never had his equal in this country." Harvardman Bell, Shipton reports a little shamefacedly, eventually went straight after a life of boodling. but "may have been the Tom Bell who was hanged for piracy at Kingston, Jamaica in 1771."

Fired for Drinking. But Harvard, in spite of Bell, did not neglect spiritual matters in the 18th century. Josiah Crocker (class of 1738), although fined for drinking at college, went on to become a preacher of such power that "old women were affrighted into fits of confusion" by his sermons, and one listener, a slave, was filled with "such distress that it took three men to hold him." His orations were accompanied by "loud Screiches, wringing of Hands, and Floods of Tears . . . and some cried out with Terror." Crocker was especially effective with young people, and he wrote happily that "their merry Meetings were turned into praying and singing Assemblies, their vain foolish and frothy Conversation into religious and experimental Discourse." But Crocker "was not, as he ought to have been, a thorough Temperance man," and he was fired from his Taunton, Mass, pastorate for drinking too much.

Shipton mentions that, like Crocker, Samuel Adams (class of 1740) was fined for drinking. But although Shipton confidently expects the biographical project to continue forever, members of the class of 1958 may breathe easily. At the present rate of writing (25 to 50 biographies a year), their deeds are not likely to be recorded for another 2,774 to 5,548 years.

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