Triennial Catalogue annotated by Jeremy Belknap, 1791

The collection holds a heavily interleaved 1791 Triennial Catalogue annotated, in part, by Jeremy Belknap. A note by Harvard Librarian John Langdon Sibley, on the verso of the flyleaf, indicates a second annotator: "It should be observed that this catalogue is in the handwriting of two persons, Dr. Belknap & probably interlineations & additions by Rev. Dr. [John] Eliot. The interlineing part should not be too confidently relied on for accuracy. J. L. Sibley, April 14, 1848." The volume contains biographical notes, newspaper clippings, excerpts from manuscript and printed sources such as New England's First Fruits, the manuscript memoirs of Charles Chauncey, and John Winthrop's Journal, and a 1795 letter from Isaac Mansfield. In the letter, Mansfield references an item he believed to be written by his grandfather, Ames Cheever (Harvard AB 1707), and briefly describes his grandfather. A list of election sermon orators with dates is also pasted into the inside back cover, along with an obituary of the Rev. John Wales (Harvard AB 1728) from the Boston Post-Boy, March 4, 1765.

Title supplied by cataloger.

Detailed inventory available on paper in the Harvard University Archives or electronically: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.ARCH:hua14010

Belknap, Jeremy, 1744-1798. Triennial Catalogue annotated by Jeremy Belknap, 1791. HUM 29, Harvard University Archives.

Jeremy Belknap was born in Boston on June 4, 1744. He received an AB from Harvard in 1762 and an AM in 1765. He became the minister of the First Congregational Church of Dover, New Hampshire in 1767, and later served as the minister of the Church in Long Lane, Boston. As a historian, Belknap published the History of New Hampshire and American Biography. His work on American Biography encouraged an interest in Harvard's history, and he explained in a letter two months before his death that he had "formed a design to go thru' the whole Catalogue of the graduates of Harvard College, & relate all that is proper to be related, of what can be known or can be recovered of each & every one of them." Belknap founded the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1791 and also served on the Harvard Board of Overseers. He died on June 20, 1798.