Oratio valedictoria: [Delivered at Harvard Commencement, 1736, before Ew. Belcher &c. With copy on blue paper.]

The notebook contains the original six-page manuscript of the valedictory address composed in Latin by graduate Edward Winslow at the 1736 Harvard Commencement enclosed within 19th century blue notebook paper on which a second handwritten copy of the address is written. The original text includes edits and struck-through words.

Received April 28, 1880 as the gift of E. S. Dixwell of Cambridge.

Edward Winslow (1714-1784), a town officer in Plymouth, Mass., was born in Marshfield, Mass. on June 7, 1714. He received an AB from Harvard in 1736 and an AM in 1739. In 1738, he was appointed Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas for Plymouth County and Notary Public for the Port of Plymouth. Winslow was elected Town Clerk in 1740. He served in various Plymouth offices until the beginning of the Revolutionary War. In December 1781, he left for New York and remained there until 1783 when he and his family moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Winslow died on June 8, 1784.