Annotated almanac, 1773

Almanac with minimal and sporadic annotations on the calendar pages by John Winthrop. The title page is inscribed "Man wants but little here below, / nor wants that little long" in Winthrop's hand. There are a few entries noting household activities and the weather including a drought.

Annotated almanac, 1773

Almanac containing two laid-in pages and calendar pages typically annotated with one or two notes at the bottom recording household activities in Hannah and John Winthrops' hands. Laid into the volume are two pieces of paper with a tabulation of butter in Hannah Winthrop's hand, and baptisms and deaths in the community, and a bill of mortality for 1773 in John Winthrop's hand, and a chart of burials and baptisms for the first parish in Cambridge for the years 1764-1771.

1773, Catalogus eorum qui in Collegio-Harvardino, quod est Cantabrigiæ, Nov-Anglorum, ab anno MDCXLII, ad annum MDCCLXXIII, alicujus gradûs laureâ donati sunt.

Consists of the 1773 published broadside cut into strips and pasted into a blank volume. Names are annotated with biographical notes, most often location of residence, and occasionally professional information and death dates. Bound in brown paper cover.

[Letter from Nathaniel Robbins to the Corporation of Harvard College], 1780 July 15

Handwritten letter from Nathaniel Robbins regarding Philip Draper.

Letter from Dr. Nathaniel Lardner to Jasper Mauduit listing books donated to Harvard, July 12, 1764, and manuscript copy of the letter

A pencilled note in the hand of John Langdon Sibley reads: "Probably the handwriting of Dr. Lardner." Sibley based his attribution on a letter from Nathaniel Lardner to Edward Wigglesworth, also written July 12, 1764, in the Houghton Library's autograph file during the nineteenth century. Verso of letter contains list, in another hand, of books donated to Harvard by Joseph Jennings.

List of books donated by Nathaniel Lardner, Daniel Neal, and Joseph Jennings, ca. 1766 (2 versions)

The contents of these two lists are very similar but not identical.

Letter from David Phips to Colonel Jonathan Snelling regarding escort of Governor Hutchinson to Harvard Commencement, 1773 July 12

David Phips wrote this letter to Colonel Jonathan Snelling from Cambridge on July 12, 1773, to inform him that Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson had requested the accompaniment of guards during his travels from Milton to Cambridge on July 21, 1773, to attend the Harvard College Commencement exercises. In the letter, Phips informs Snelling that he has issued warrants to the guards, instructing them to congregate at the Sign of the Grey Hound in Roxbury, Massachusetts at eight o'clock on the morning of the 21st. He explains that twelve other men will march, under the command of Sub-Brigadier Sumner, to the Governor's home in Milton to escort him to Roxbury, where the larger party will assemble. These heightened security measures were certainly prompted by political unrest, although this is not stated explicitly in the letter. Phips concludes by saying: "I shall order a dinner for us at Bradish's, where I hope to have the pleasure to dine with you."

Ledger book of a court clerk, 1768-1773

Ledger book of Isaac Rindge, chief clerk of the court of common pleas in New Hampshire, listing charges to various individuals for writs and fines.

Commonplace book of Nathaniel Freeman, 1786-1787

Nathaniel Freeman made entries in this commonplace book between 1786 and 1787, while he was an undergraduate at Harvard College. The book includes the notes Freeman took during three of Hollis Professor Samuel Williams' "Course of Experimental Lectures," and cover Williams' lectures on "The Nature & Properties of Matter," "Attraction & Repulsion," and "The Nature, Kind, & Affections [?] of Motion." These notes also include one diagram. The book also includes forensic compositions on the subjects of capital punishment, the probability of "the immortality of the soul," and "whether there be any disinterested benevolence." It also includes a poem Freeman composed for his uncle, Edmund Freeman; an anecdote about Philojocus and Gripus; an essay called "Character"; a draft of a letter to the Harvard Corporation requesting that, in light of the public debt, the Commencement ceremonies be held privately to lower expenses and exhibit the merits of economy; and an "epistle" to his father, requesting money. This epistle begins: "Most honored sire, / Thy son, poor Nat, in humble strains, / Impell'd by want, thy generous bounty claims."