Calor est de essentia lucis. Probatur, 1759

Two-page handwritten copy of a thesis composed in Latin by graduate Paine Wingate for the 1759 Harvard Commencement.

Note on verso: "Thesis Calor est de Essentia Lucis. Read at Commencement in Cambridge, [?] July 1759 pr Paine Wingate."

The item was received in the Harvard College Library on January 19, 1901 from Walter R. Benjamin, New York.

An oration composed by Jonathan Trumbul (Harvard AB 1759) for the 1759 Harvard Commencement ceremonies is also available in the Harvard University Archives (HUC 6759.87).

Paine Wingate (1739-1838), a Congregational minister, legislator, and judge, was born on May 14, 1739 in Amesbury, Mass. He received an AB from Harvard in 1759 and an AM in 1762. Wingate was ordained the pastor of the Congregational Church in Hampton Falls, N.H. in 1763. He was a delegate to the New Hampshire constitutional convention in 1781, and later served in the state legislature and the U.S. House and Senate (1783-1797). From 1798 until 1809 he was a judge of the New Hampshire Superior Court. Wingate died on March 7, 1838.