Questiones propositae pro modulo discutiendae Comitiis publicis Harvardini Collegii quod est divin. provid. Cantabrigiae Nov-Anglorum a Laureae Magistralis candidatis, 1660-1753

The bound volume holds handwritten transcriptions of selected Harvard Commencement Quaestiones copied by Isaac Mansfield (Harvard AB 1742). The manuscript volume includes from the 1708 Quaestiones onward, the notation "N.B." next to questions performed by the candidate during the Commencement exercises; the original printed Quaestiones sheets do not note this information. The volume includes Quaestiones transcriptions for which no original broadsides are known to still exists.

1660 -- 1664 -- 1665 -- 1669 -- 1666 -- 1670 -- 1672 -- 1673 -- 1674 -- 1675 -- 1676 -- 1678 -- 1679 -- 1680 -- 1682 -- 1683 -- 1684 -- 1686 -- 1688 -- 1689 -- 1692 -- 1693 -- 1694 -- 1695 -- 1696 -- 1697 -- 1699 -- 1701 -- 1703 -- 1705 -- 1706 -- 1707 -- 1708 --1709 -- 1710 -- 1712 -- 1713 -- 1715 -- 1717 -- 1718 -- 1720 -- 1723 -- 1724 -- 1725 -- 1728 -- 1738 -- 1739 -- 1740 -- 1742 -- 1743 -- 1744 -- 1745 -- 1746 -- 1747 -- 1751 -- 1753 -- 1716

"Isaac Mansfield's MS. The gift of Thaddeus Mason Harris DD of Dorchester. Withdrawn from the Corporation Papers for the College Library 1 June 1858"--bookplate inscription.

Includes table of contents.

Isaac Mansfield was born on March 6, 1719/20 in Marblehead, Massachusetts. He received an AB from Harvard in 1742, and an AM in 1745. He became a Justice of the Peace in 1761, and in 1777 was appointed a Justice of the Peace and Quorum for the revolutionary government. Among his public positions, he later served as Clerk of the Maritime Court for the Middle District of Essex County, as a single-term member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and as a Selectman. He died on April 12, 1792. His son, also named Isaac, graduated from Harvard in 1767.

The Quaestiones, part of Harvard's master's degree Commencement exercises, were single questions chosen by each candidate, to be discussed in the affirmative or negative; each year the questions were compiled and printed for public display. Quaestiones covered scientific, medical, religious, political, and legal, and philosophical subjects. They were printed from 1642 through 1791. Sibley's Harvard Graduates explains, "Apparently he [Mansfield] found in the library of his wife's [Ruth Cheever] grandfather, Joseph Gerrish (A.B. 1669), a file of Thesis and Quaestio sheets on which the parts actually performed over a period of many years were marked. He copied off the Quaestiones and the Theses which were presented, preserving information which otherwise would have been lost" (Volume XI, 1741-1745, p. 158).

A similar volume ofTheses transcriptions created by Mansfield is also held in the Harvard University Archives. The volume was separated from the Commencement Theses, Quaestiones, and Order of Exercises collection in April 2010. Formerly classified as HUC 6642.3.