Scriniary

The College Organization • The Student and His Day • College Amusements • The Curriculum • References

This page is about life at Harvard College before 1700. It exists primarily so I don’t lose my research notes. I am not a scholar; this is not an extensive discussion of the topic and the sources given at the bottom — currently, chapters from Morison’s Harvard in the 17th Century, vol. 1. — are by no means a comprehensive list. (I’m aiming for a plausible pseudo-colonial background.) Feel free to notify me of glaring errors.

The College Organization

Everything in this section is from chapter 4.[1]

Staff

The steward, cook, and butler were officers. The steward was like a bursar, caterer, and major-domo. The cook and butler (an older undergraduate) ran the kitchen and buttery (where the beer and bevers came from) and the public rooms. The treasurer handled funds and property.

Servants included the brewer, baker, cook’s assistant, bed makers, and temporary employees like a smith, bricklayer, carpenter, glazier, etc.

Academic Calendar

Quarters:

• 1st began in early December.
• 2nd in early March.
• 3rd in early June.
• 4th in early Sept.

Quarters were used only for billing, not for academics, and didn’t coincide with commencement. There were no vacations.

Charges

• Tuition: 8s
  
• Bed-making: 1s7d
  
• Study rent
  
• Commons and sizings
  
• Detriments
  
• Overhead fee if a student was gone part of the term.

Lodgings

Some students lodged off campus. That was rare during Dunster’s term, common during Chauncy’s.

Students

Young graduates called tutors were in charge of one or more classes of students. They were assigned for the whole four years, but very few tutors stayed for more than 3 years.

Tutors were with the students most of the day and slept in their chambers at night.

Seniority

Names posted in order of seniority on the “buttery tables” – bulletin boards hanging against the buttery wall. When a student was expelled, his name was “cut out of the tables”.

Order:

• The President of Harvard College
• The Senior Fellow of the House
• Resident Masters of Arts, if former Fellow-Commoners or knight’s sons
• Junior Fellows, Masters of Arts
• Other Resident Masters of Arts
• Fellow-Commoners
• Senior Bachelors (bachelors have bachelor’s degrees. Rank includes graduating rank.)
• Middle Bachelors
• Junior Bachelors
• Senior Sophisters
• Junior Sophisters
• Sophomores
• Freshmen

Orders (economic classes) of students:

• Fellow-commoners – paid more and got higher rank and privileges
• Ordinary students
• Sizars – got reduced tuition for clerical and menial work (but there’s no records that there actually were any)

Seniority within class was very important. It affected seating in the hall, being served at table, and choice of studies.

Degradation in seniority (either suspension or permanent) was very serious. Permanent reduction was just short of expulsion.

Students were ordered during the first quarter of freshman year, and the order was made permanent later in the year. One’s rank could never be improved. Not sure if it was determined from social or intellectual standing. (?)

Brothers in the same class were always (except for two occasions) placed together, the older first.

Exams

No written exams until the 1800s. Promotions and degrees by oral exam (Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Rhetoric, Logic, Physics)

Monday and Tuesday, 9-11 and 1-3, for two or three weeks.

Junior sophisters were exempt.

Commencement

Fees – two or three pounds. Also 5-15 s to the officers (a tip that was divided between the steward, the cook, and the butler).

Bachelor’s in morning, masters in afternoon.

M.A. Degree

An MA took 3 years after the BA.

Early, the MA was the normal goal and end of an academic career.

Students with BA’s were addressed as ’sir’. They had charge of a chamber, paid no tuition, and received no tutorial instruction.

Mostly they read Divinity under the president’s guidance.

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The Student and His Day

Unless otherwise noted, this refers roughly to the years 1640 – 1672. Everything in this section is from Morison chapter 5 [2], unless otherwise noted.

Who they were

Later, fewer students were sons of ministers. More were sons of artisans and tradesmen. At least a third were sons of college-educated men.

Age: For the first 10 classes, the median age was about 17, with at least 12 students between ages 19 and 29. Later, the median dropped to a bit over 15.

Most came from the Bay, but Connecticut, New Haven, and Long Island sent the same percentage of their population. Many others came from (old) England.

Freshmen

Needed to pay ? 1/4 expenses to enter.

Entrance exam: A brief oral exam conducted by the president. Students had to be able to read and understand the classics, Latin and Greek, prose and poetry.

Next, students made a copy of the laws (”procure for himselfe a true Coppy of the Lawes”), which the president signed.

By 1734, the sophomores read a set of College Customs aloud to the entering freshmen. These involved a complicated system of errand-running.

In 1657, the steward’s accounts had two entries for 6s8d for freshmen “alowed…for the abuse he suffered.”

The Class

The class lived, studied, and ate together, leading to a strong social unit. After graduation, they tended to keep in touch by letter, went to later commencements, and to funerals.

They were supposed to speak only Latin or Greek, but didn’t.

Freshmen were assigned to a tutor and a chamber as soon as they were admitted. Students could rarely rent a study before their sophomore year.

The average student had a wooden chest with a lock for storing spare clothes and other belongings. Clothes probably included a coat (deep-skirted doublet), cloak (long cape), gown (academic gown).

The College Day

It began at dawn. Students were not allowed to show a light in their studies before 4 a.m.

Washing: They may have had an earthen or pewter basin in each chamber, and a pail of cold water from the college well, supplied by the porter.

In 1642, rules stated “every Schollar shall be present in his Tutors chamber at the 7th houre in the morning” for Scripture and prayer. In 1655, prayers were instead at 6 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Morning bever (beer and bread). (Not sure if this was before or after prayers.)

At 8, 9, and 10 a.m., students had lectures for different classes.

Dinner was at 11 a.m., though by the end of the century, it had shifted to noon.

After dinner, students had disputations in the hall at 2, 3, and 4 p.m.

Afternoon bever was at 5 p.m.

Evening prayer.

7:30 – 9 p.m. Supper.

Food

Two meals, dinner and supper, were consumed commons, or from communal dishes. Two bevers, or beverage periods, in the morning (usually before dawn) and afternoon, were consumed sizings, which referred to the portions and quantities.[5].

Morning bever, served by the butler at the buttery hatch, was a pot (pint) of beer and a hunk of bread; it cost about a halfpenny. Students could buy butter, cheese, etc. from the steward. Students provided their own mugs. They ate in their chambers or in the Yard. Freshmen would have been sent to get seniors’ bevers.

At dinner, the fellows, fellow-commoners, and resident bachelors dined at high table. From the English custom that a fellow-commoner should donate a piece of plate, they had a “great salt” (big dish), a silver bowl for mulled beer, a fruit dish, a silver-topped stone jug, and silver beakers(?).

Dinner was generally bread, beef, and beer. Bread was wheat, or a mix of corn (maize), rye, and rye meal. Sometimes, they got veal, mutton, lamb, or pork. Seasonings included salt, pepper, and chives. Produce included apples and peas.

Supper was lit by fireplace and candles. The food was probably meat pie, hasty pudding with bacon, oatmeal porridge, and eggs.

It began and ended with a prayer, and students couldn’t leave early. They were seated and served in order of seniority.

Students ate from wooden trenchers, used their own knives and spoons, and drank from pewter cans or cue-cups (half-pints). They had no china or crockery. The only person who got a chair was the president.

Servitors, students who were paid, waited the tables.

Food often came from tuition payments, as many students paid in food.

Coffee and chocolate were unknown in Boston until the 1670s, and tea until the next century. Cider shows up in the records for the first time in 1683.

The college had its own brew-house by 1674. Students also frequented a local tavern and bakery run by Vashti Bradish, who complained to President Dunster that the students spent too much time there. (The location is the west corner of Massachusetts Ave. and Holyoke St.)

The only annual feast day was Commencement.

Students generally thought they didn’t get enough to eat.

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College Amusements

Everything in this section is from chapter 6.[3]

There were no official vacations, but most students were absent sometimes.

During the day, they were free during meals from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 7:30 to 9 p.m., and during the two half-hour-long bevers.

Activities

Students enjoyed conversation, light reading, music, walking, swimming, or skating. Playing cards were forbidden. English colleges had bowling greens, tennis courts, and bathing pools.

Musical instruments were rare in New England before the close of the century, but not unknown: base vyol, treble viall, gittarue, viall.

Seaborn Cotton, AB 1651, had three ballads in his commonplace book: The Love-sick Maid, The Last Lamentation of the Languishing Squire, and The Two Faithful Lovers.

Outdoor sports were engaged in on Saturday afternoons before dusk. They included fishing, fowling, and hunting.

John Eyre and William Maxwell drowned in Fresh Pond while skating, 1696.

Pranks, Brawls, and Riots

Brief List

June 1644. James Ward and John Weld robbed two houses of money and gunpowder.

1658: fight between students and townies.

Students tried black magic, and a joker impersonated the devil. President Dunster lit a trail of gunpowder at him. (No date given.)

1666: Three students expelled for hanging a dog upon a signpost.

Lots of window-breaking.

Students and Tutors

The class of 1663 made a set of mock Commencement theses, including “Ethics is a corrosive plaster for vices” and “Honor is a will-o-the-wisp pursuing fugitives and fleeing pursuers.”

Students nailed the tutor Thomas Graves (AB 1656) into the hall, apparently more than once.

Punishments

The earliest punishment was public admonition. After being admonished twice, young students could be “corrected with rods.”

Students could be fined. Expulsion was for robbery, burglary, or blasphemy.

“Drunkenesse, fighting, rafling, swearing, cursing, lying, filthy speaking, prophanesse, revelling, playing at Cards or dice, or such like” led to 1) private admonition, 2) public admonition, 3) public confession, 4) eating commons uncovered, 5) expulsion.

Light Reading

Students read contemporary prose, poetry, ballads, classics, Elizabethan bawdry. Topics included love, the beauty of women, and nature.

Some Specific Authors and Titles:

• Spenser
• Herrick
• Warner (Albion’s England)
• Sir Philip Sidney (Arcadia)
• “Witt’s Recreations augmented, with Ingenious Conceites for the Wittie, and Merrie Medicines for the Melancholie” (1641)
• Cleveland’s Song of Mark Anthony
• Orlando Furioso (trans. Sir John Harington)
• A Sixe-Folde Politician (Sir John Melton, d. 1640[6])
• Spare Minutes; or, Resolved Meditations (Arthur Warwick)
• The Arraignement of the Whole Creature (Stephen Jerome)
• Wisdoms Tripos (Charles Herle)

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The Curriculum

Everything in this section is from chapter 7.[4]

They studied Liberal Arts, Learned Tongues, Three Philosophies, History, Divinity, and Medicine.

The chart on p. 141 shows a schedule from 1642, with small caps = lectures, italics = recitations, small roman numbers = academic quarter.

One subject per day. Lectures, recitations, and disputations (discussions/debates (in Latin)), all by the President.

Commonplaces – short practice sermons.

Freshmen had a Saturday afternoon class.

Lectures in medieval style: readings of texts with some explanations.

Disputations: bachelors had one a fortnight, undergraduates twice a week.

Declamations: undergraduates once every two months.

(Incomplete) Curriculum, 1655:

• Year 1: 4 days/week Greek and Hebrew. Logic towards the end of the year.
• Year 2: logic
• Year 3: ethics
• Year 4: metaphisicks and mathematicks, rhetoricke, oratory, divinity

Curriculum, 1723:

(p. 146-147)

• Year 1
  • Mon-Thurs, morning and forenoon: classics
  • Sat morning: Greek, catechism
  • Friday morning: rhetoric
  • Later in the year, dispute on Ramus’s (?) Definitions, on Mon and Tues forenoon.
• Year 2
  • Recite logic.
  • Later in the year: Herebords Meletemata, logic, natural philosophy
  • Dispute logic twice a week
  • Saturday morning – recite divinity
• Year 3: physics, ethics
• Year 4: math, astronomy, grammar, logic, natural philosophy

MA requirements

• Completely elective
• Had to wait three years
• Often had a fellowship and taught two classes of undergrads.
• Disputations at regular intervals
• Present a written synopsis of some Art, to be kept in the library
• Divinity, logic, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, medicine…

Textbooks

Books were scarce and dear, so owners wrote their names in several places and bought printed book-labels (bookplates).

Students wrote notes to each other / made fun of each other on the fly-leaves, but didn’t scribble on interior pages much, except for writing their names.

Nearly all were in Latin.

By the end of the century, Boston had at least seven booksellers. No books were printed in Boston or Cambridge.

Students started by writing / copying a “system” or synopsis of each Art – like an outline.

Physical Sciences

Chemistry was considered a small and unimportant part of physics before 1687.

1687: Charles Morton’s “Compendium Physical” (written in 1680) adopted as a textbook. Also, Newton’s Principia published. The number of physical theses went up, and they became more modern. Topics included heat, light, motion, gravity, magnetism, conservation of matter, mechanics….

No laboratories or experiments, though President Hoar (1672-1675) advocated them.

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References

1. Morison. Harvard in the 17th Century, vol.1. Chapter 4.

2. Morison. Harvard in the 17th Century, vol.1. Chapter 5.

3. Morison. Harvard in the 17th Century, vol.1. Chapter 6.

4. Morison. Harvard in the 17th Century, vol.1. Chapter 7.

5. Grivetti, Louis E. “America at breakfast.” Nutrition Today, 1995.

6. Early English Books Online

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Modified July 8, 2007
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