IV. Reminiscences of life as an undergraduate at Harvard College from 1793 to 1797, 1837

This memoir, written by White in 1837, describes his undergraduate years at Harvard from 1793 to 1797. It contains lengthy passages about a wide variety of experiences White had as a student. He wrote about his classes and professors, student life, American politics, politics in the world at large, food, his classmates, and many other topics. The memoir includes passages from a diary that White seems to have kept as a student, as well as reflections clearly written later in life. White wrote this memoir in 15 separate notebooks, each embossed with "Platner & Porter, Congress" in the upper left-hand corner. Platner & Porter was the manufacturer of the notebooks.

An abridgment of what I extracted while an undergraduate at Harvard College, 1766-1769

The bound volume contains excerpts copied by Benjamin Wadsworth from books he read as a student at Harvard in the late 1760s. The volume includes almost no personal commentary on the readings. The excerpts are arranged by year of study for the academic years 1766-1769, beginning when Wadsworth was a sophomore. Each entry begins with a title indicating the book title and author for the passage, and there is an alphabetical index at the end of the volume. Wadsworth selected “extracts” from both religious and secular texts including several histories of England, American histories (with a focus on Puritans), the Bible, and in his senior year, “the Koran of Mohammed.” He also read several books on the art of speech and the art of preaching. There are few science texts included, though the final five-page entry is titled, “What I thought fit to note down from Mr. Winthrop’s experimental Lectures” and contains notes both on the content of Professor John Winthrop’s lectures as well as the types of experiments being performed in class. Wadsworth’s commonplace book offers a window on the state of higher education in the eighteenth century and offers a firsthand account of academic life at Harvard College.