Student notebook of Marston Cabot, ca. 1720-1735

This leather-bound volume contains excerpts copied by Marston Cabot from books he read while he was a student at Harvard in 1723. The volume includes extracts from Charles Morton's 1687 Compendium Physicae (titled "of Phisicks" by Cabot), Dr. Adriani Heereboord (Adrianus Heereboord), Philosophia Naturalis and Johanne-Henrico Alstedio’s (John Henry Alsted) geometry text Compendium Geometria. The excerpts from Compendium Geometria include both figures and text, primarily in Latin with some Greek. The volume also includes “Theses quaedam extractae potissimum ex Enchiridio Metaphysico Domini Johannis Clerici" a précis of Jean Le Clerc's Ontologia et Pneumatologia made by Jonathan Remington, a Harvard Tutor from 1703 to 1711, to serve in place of printed textbooks. The names Jonathan Jackson and Edward Jackson are written on the inside cover, suggesting the book may have been handed down to Edward Jackson (Class of 1726) and his son Jonathan Jackson (Class of 1761). The text of the volume is in Marston Cabot's hand.

Received in the Harvard College Library in January 1951; the gift of the wife of Edward Jackson Holmes (Harvard Class of 1895). Edward Jackson Holmes was a descendant of Edward Jackson (Class of 1726) who's name is written on the volume's inside cover.

There are four Latin prompts, similar to the Harvard Commencement Quaestionnes written on the back inside cover.

Title supplied by cataloger.

Marston Cabot was born February 20, 1705/6 in Boston. He graduated with an AB from Harvard in 1724. Cabot was the first minister of Thompson, Conn. Cabot died on April 8, 1756.

The undergraduate students of Harvard College followed a structured program of study in the early 1700s. Certain key texts were adopted as textbooks at Harvard, and students often copied them into personal notebooks in place of purchased books. Textbooks created by Harvard Tutors Henry Flynt and William Brattle, Instructor Judah Monis, and Fellow Charles Morton were among the earliest used in the colonies.