Abstracts of sermons preached at Harvard College, 1728-1729

Small notebook containing notes kept by John Winthrop on sermons he attended between September 1, 1728 and October 19, 1729, while he was an undergraduate at Harvard College. The volume contains one-to-two page entries on specific sermons and provides the biblical text and related doctrines, questions, and conclusions. The inside back cover contains a handwritten index of the minister who gave the sermon, most often Nathaniel Appleton.

Bill of mortality for ten years at Cambridge (manuscript chart), [1768]

One folded leaf containing a chart in John Winthrop's hand listing the number of deaths by month for 1759-1768 and listing the chief causes of mortality. The verso contains a list of the number of deaths by year according to age groups.

The Summary of a Course of Experimental Philosophical Lectures, 1746-1747

Leather hardcover notebook containing a handwritten copy of John Winthrop's course of experimental and philosophical lectures presented between March 10, 1746 and June 16, 1746. The first one-hundred pages of the volume are divided into twenty chapters which were presented in thirty-three lectures. The chapters contain text and diagrams on mechanical powers, the lever, the pulley, the axis in peritrochio, the inclined plane, the wedge, the screw, compound engines, the laws of motion, gravity, attraction of cohesion, the power of repulsion, magnetism, fluids, electricity, opticks, and astronomy. There is a five-page addenda to the course summary added in 1747, and a sixty-page text titled "The Method of Astronomical calculations" containing thirteen problems related to calculating distances with a list of astronomical characters, and followed with charts related to the eclipse of Jupiter's satellites.

Annotated almanac, 1789

Almanac interleaved with pages containing household account entries and containing annotations on the calendar pages. Some of the annotations are illegible. The interleaved pages contain entries of baptisms and burials, accounting records and notes of household activities, including entries related to boarders.

Correspondence with James Sullivan, 1789-1792

Includes one bill to James Sullivan for fees incurred by William Sullivan (AB 1792). Also includes receipt for payment.

Address, 1789 May 21

Handwritten four-page draft of an address by Eliphalet Pearson. The address, made on behalf of the Harvard Corporation, relays the resolution of the Board of Overseers regarding the hours during which students should be in their chambers, restrictions on their ability to go into town, and emphasizing the College government's "fervent wish to see virtue & order prevalent among the students of this society." The introduction discusses the expectations of parents for their children to receive "a polite, virtuous, & religious education" instead of "sending him to a place, which is said to be noted for rudeness, vice, & irreligion."

[Address made to the class of Freshman], 1805 March 8

4-page handwritten copy of an address by Eliphalet Pearson to "my young Friends & Pupils," made to the Freshmen class on March 8, 1805 "the day, oh which Adams 2, a Senior Sophister, was interred at Londonderry." The address focuses on the "unbecoming noise" made by students going to class and mentions "this mark of inconsideration" in the context of "this day of sorrow, which commits to the tomb another of your number."

[Address by the Government of the College on disorderly behavior at public declamations], undated

4-page handwritten copy of an address to the students.

Exhortation read to 27 of the Sophomore class, 1797 July 1

9-page handwritten copy of an address by Eliphalet Pearson read to twenty-seven members of the sophomore class after an incident on June 27, 1797 in which "in direct violation of College law a majority of the sophomore class repaired to the house of Richard Boardman in this town; that they did then & there indulge to a free use of wine" that incited them to drunkenly parade through town and disturb the evening church services of the College.