Letter to John Kean, 8 December 1787

Letter to Kean, member of the Continental Congress, regarding the filing of a bill.

Lawyer's commonplace book, 1774-1783

Contains entries on a variety of topics arranged alphabetically and compiled by several individuals. Includes an index at the end.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley (fragment), 1783

One folio-sized leaf containing a one-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley briefly mentioning certain library acquisitions and including a transcription of a description of English Parliamentarian John Bourchier (1595-1660) from the Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow. The top of the leaf is torn and text is missing.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1783 December 1

Two leaves containing a four-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley providing a biographical description of English judge John Bradshaw (1602-1659).

III. Biographical notes on John Stark, [1810 March]

One leaf containing a page of handwritten biographical notes on Revolutionary War hero General John Stark in Bentley's hand. The note is written on the verso of a short letter from J. Pitcairn regarding a deliver for the "Rev. D. Bently" dated March 2, 1810. The notes were likely copied from the biographical sketch published in the Essex Register May 1, 1810.

Letters from Benjamin Welles to John Henry Tudor, 1799-1801

Benjamin Welles wrote these six letters to his friend and classmate, John Henry Tudor, between 1799 and 1801. Four of the letters are dated, and the dates of the other two can be deduced from their contents. Welles wrote Tudor four times in September 1799, at the onset of their senior year at Harvard, in an attempt to clear up hurt feelings and false rumors that he believed had caused a chill in their friendship. The cause of the rift is never fully explained, though Welles alludes to "a viper" and "villainous hypocrite" who apparently spread rumors and fueled discord between the two friends. In one letter, Welles asserts that "College is a rascal's Elysium - or the feeling man's hell." In another he writes: "College, Tudor, is a furnace to the phlegmatic, & a Greenland to thee feeling man; it has an atmosphere which breathes contagion to the soul [...] Villains fatten here. College is the embryo of hell." Whatever their discord, the wounds were apparently eventually healed; in a letter written June 26, 1800, Welles writes to ask Tudor about his impending speech at Commencement exercises. In an October 29, 1801 letter, Welles writes to Tudor in Philadelphia (where he appears to have traveled in attempts to recover his failing health) and expresses strong wishes for his friend's recovery and return to Boston. This letter also contains news of their classmate Washington Allston's meeting with painters Henry Fuseli and Benjamin West.

Records of the Society for the Promotion of Theological Education at Harvard University, 1788-1853 (inclusive), 1816-1853 (bulk)

Includes minutes and other records, 1816-1829, of the trustees of the Society and other correspondence relating to the founding of the Society; treasurer's reports, 1843-1844, of J.G. Palfrey; lists of beneficiaries, 1824- 1830; and subscription receipts, 1819-1823. Also records regarding subscriptions for a professorship, 1828, an extract from the will of J.D. Williams, and legal matters. For more detailed information about records, see Harvard Archives LOCATION below.

John Warren's copy of votes from a meeting of the Boston Medical Society, 1784 May 3

This document lists the eleven votes cast at a meeting of the Boston Medical Society on May 3, 1784. It was authorized as a "true coppy" by Thomas Kast, the Secretary of the Society. The following members of the Society were present at the meeting, all of them doctors: James Pecker, James Lloyd, Joseph Gardner, Samuel Danforth, Isaac Rand, Jr., Charles Jarvis, Thomas Kast, Benjamin Curtis, Thomas Welsh, Nathaniel Walker Appleton, and doctors whose last names were Adams, Townsend, Eustis, Homans, and Whitwell. The document indicates that a meeting had been held the previous evening, as well (May 2, 1784), at which the topics on which votes were taken had been discussed. The votes, eleven in total, were all related to the doctors' concerns about John Warren and his involvement with the emerging medical school (now Harvard Medical School), that school's relation to almshouses, the medical care of the poor, and other related matters. The tone and content of these votes reveals anger on the part of the members of the Boston Medical Society towards Warren. This anger appears to have stemmed from the perceived threat of Warren to their own practices, exacerbated by a vote of the Harvard Corporation on April 19, 1784. This vote authorized Warren to apply to the Overseers of the Poor for the town of Boston, requesting that students in the newly-established Harvard medical program, where Warren was Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, be allowed to visit the hospital of the almshouse with their professors for the purpose of clinical instruction. Although Warren believed that the students would learn far more from these visits, in regards to surgical experience, than they could possibly learn in Cambridge, the proposal provoked great distrust from the members of the Boston Medical Society, who accused Warren of an "attempt to direct the public medical business from its usual channels" for his own financial and professional gain.

Relation de la conversion de Mr. Jean Thayer: autrefois ministre protestant à Boston, en l'Amérique Septentrionale, converti à la religion catholique à Rome, le 25 de mai 1783 et prêtre depuis la Trinité 1787 / manuscript, [after 1788]

écrite par lui-même en 1788 :

Nares Strait region, Canada and Greenland, 1853 (Raster Image)

This layer is a georeferenced raster image of the historic paper map entitled: Chart exhibiting the discoveries of the second American-Grinnell-Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin : unrevised from the original material and projected on the spot by E.K. Kane. It was published by Lith of J. Bien in [1855]. Scale [ca. 1:400,000]. Covers the Nares Strait region, Greenland and Canada. The image inside the map neatline is georeferenced to the surface of the earth and fit to the 'NAD 1983 CSRS UTM Zone 19 North' projection. All map collar and inset information is also available as part of the raster image, including any inset maps, profiles, statistical tables, directories, text, illustrations, index maps, legends, or other information associated with the principal map. This map shows coastal features such as drainage, islands, capes, bays, tides, lines of ice, camps, and more. Relief shown by hachures. This layer is part of a selection of digitally scanned and georeferenced historic maps from the Harvard Map Collection and the Harvard University Library as part of the Open Collections Program at Harvard University project: Organizing Our World: Sponsored Exploration and Scientific Discovery in the Modern Age. Maps selected for the project correspond to various expeditions and represent a range of regions, originators, ground condition dates, scales, and purposes.

The works of John Owen /

"Life of Dr. Owen, by Rev. A. Thomson": volume 1, pref. pages [21]-122.

Population and utilzation of land and sea in Hawaii, 1853,

Mode of access: Internet.

Das Einhorn vom geschichtlichen und naturwissenschaftlichen Standpunkte betrachtet von John [sic] Wilhelm von Müller, ...

Mode of access: Internet.

The Iliad of Homer.

Mode of access: Internet.

Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, esq., F. R. S., secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II and James II, comprising his diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. John Smith ... from the original short-hand ms. in the Pepysian library, and a selection from his private correspondence. Edited by Richard Lord Braybrooke.

Mode of access: Internet.