Commonplace book of Jonathan Belcher, 1725-1727

This leather-bound volume contains excerpts copied by Jonathan Belcher from books he read while he was a student at Harvard. The excerpts come from a variety of sources including periodicals and contemporary publications. The inside cover has Belcher's bookplate with the motto, "Sustine. Abstine." The back cover has some additional personal information including reference to French lessons with "Mr Law Merciers," and notes of the dates when he began certain books/essays.

Student notes of Elijah Dunbar, 1792-1793

Three unlined pages with notes written by Harvard undergraduate Elijah Dunbar. The documents consist of two pages of chemistry notes compiled in September 1792 when Dunbar was a junior and an undated, untitled list of theological themes. The chemistry notes include a summary of the discipline and a set of laws regarding the "affinity of composition." The verso of the second page was later annotated: "Borrow- He that discerneth Youth & Beau[ty] Elij. Dunar 2'd 1793. Rec'd David Tappan, Professor of Divinity in the University--Elijah Dunbar, jun." followed by a list of students identified as "Alchemists" in the "Ridiculous Society": Joseph Perkins, Isaac Braman, William Biglow, and Elijah Dunbar. The second document is an untitled list of 27 theological themes beginning "1. Doctrine of the Trinity," and ending "27. Family worship," and may refer to sermon or lecture topics.

Collection of Harvard College bills sent to George Wingate, 1792-1796

This collection of bills, sent to George Wingate while he was an undergraduate at Harvard College from 1792 to 1796, includes quarter bills, butler's bills, and bills and receipts of payment from two women, Mary Hilliard and Mary Kidder, who provided Wingate room and board ("board and chamber"). The butlers bills were created by the two men who held that position during Wingate's time as a student, John Pipon and Timothy Alden. Caleb Gannett was the steward the entire time, and thus creator of all the quarter bills. Some of the bills indicate charges for sizings and fines for punishments, and a bill from Mary Hilliard indicates that Wingate purchased candles, blank books and sheets of paper from her.

Letters from Daniel Bates to William Jenks, May 1795-September 1798

Daniel Bates wrote these five letters to his friend and classmate, William Jenks, between May 1795 and September 1798. In a letter written May 12, 1795, Bates informs Jenks, who was then employed as an usher at Mr. Webb's school, of his studies of Euclid, the meeting of several undergraduate societies, and various sightings of birds, gardens and trees. In a letter written in November 1795 from Princeton, where he was apparently on vacation with the family of classmate Leonard Jarvis, he describes playing the game "break the Pope's neck" and tells Jenks what he was reading (Nicholson, Paley?, and Thompson) and what his friend's father was reading (Mirabeau and Neckar).

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.

Papers of William Merchant Richardson, 1797-1806

The collection contains a four-page handwritten poem titled "Invention" composed by graduate William Richardson for the 1797 Harvard College Commencement, and an 1806 letter of introduction written by Richardson. The rhyming poem begins, “Long had creations anthem peal been rung…” and contains classical references, and mentions scientists and philosophers including Voltaire, Franklin and Newton. The poem is accompanied by a one-page handwritten letter of introduction for lawyer Benjamin Ames (Harvard AB 1803) written by William M. Richardson to Reverend William Jenks (Harvard AB 1797). The letter is dated November 10, 1806.

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.

Mathematical notebook, and commonplace book, circa 1689-1769

Manuscript notebook, possibly kept by Harvard students, containing 17th century English transcriptions of arithmetic and geometry texts, one of which is dated 1689-1690; 18th century transcriptions from John Ward’s “The Young Mathematician’s Guide”; and notes on physics lectures delivered by John Winthrop, the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard from 1738 to 1779. The notebook also contains 18th century reading notes on Henry VIII, Tudor succession, and English history from Daniel Neal’s “The History of the Puritans” and David Hume’s “History of England,” and notes on Ancient history, taken mainly from Charles Rollin’s “The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Grecians.” Additionally included are an excerpt from Plutarch’s “Lives” and transcriptions of three articles from “The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle,” published in 1769: “A Critique on the Works of Ovid”; a book review of “A New Voyage to the West-Indies”; and “Genuine Anecdotes of Celebrated Writers, &.” The flyleaf contains the inscription “Semper boni aliquid operis facito ut diabolus te semper inveniat occupatum,” a variation on a quote of Saint Jerome that translates approximately as “Always good to do some work so that the devil may always find you occupied.” In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Harvard College undergraduates often copied academic texts and lecture notes into personal notebooks in place of printed textbooks. Winthrop used Ward’s textbook in his class, while the books of Hume, Neal, and Rollin were used in history courses taught at Harvard in the 18th century.

Letters from Timothy Pickering to his brother and father, 1797-1798

These two handwritten letters by Timothy Pickering were written on February 14, 1797 and June 14, 1798 to his brother John Pickering and his father Timothy Pickering, respectively. The letter to his brother, John, discusses mutual friends, classmate Thomas Lee, and John’s recent attendance at a sermon by Dr. Joseph Priestley. The letter from Timothy to his father includes a discussion of Timothy’s expenses and the amount of money needed to pay his debts, a request for new shoes for commencement, the news of Timothy’s invitation to join honor society Phi Beta Kappa, and a few comments on his forensics course at Harvard.

Student lectures notes on chemistry and materia medica, and medical recipes, of Lyman Spalding, 1795-1799 (inclusive)

Contains notes taken by Harvard student Lyman Spalding during eleven chemistry lectures delivered by Harvard Professor Aaron Dexter (1750-1829) in the fall of 1795 and recipes prepared and used by Spalding in his medical practice in 1797. The recipes include elixir vitriol, containing liquor, Jamaica pepper, cinnamon, and ginger, and an electuary for a cough, containing oxymel squills (sea onion in honey), licorice, antimonium tartaricum potash (a compound of the chemical element antimony and a potassium-containing salt), and opium. The volume also contains writings about chemistry by Spalding, some of which appear transcribed from published sources, in undated entries, and a diary entry from 1799 regarding an experiment with water.

Notebook of Moses Appleton, 1794-1837 (inclusive)

Contains notes taken by Moses Appleton (1773-1849) on anatomy lectures delivered at Harvard by John Warren (1753-1815). Other lecture topics included midwifery and surgery. Also includes a transcript of an examination given by Warren to his students on anatomy and surgery, as well as exams given by Harvard Professor Benjamin Waterhouse (1754-1846) and Harvard Professor Aaron Dexter (1750-1829) on the theory and practice of physic, and chemistry, respectively. There are additionally patient case notes and transcriptions of notes and correspondence from physicians Appleton consulted, and a list of operations Appleton performed between 1796 and 1828, primarily repairing dislocated joints and fractured bones. Also includes obituaries of citizens of Waterville, Maine, from 1807 to 1837.

Student notes from medical lectures by Benjamin Rush, undated

The volumes contain student notes on a course of medical lectures given by Dr. Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) while he was Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Clinical Practice at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, likely in circa 1800-1813. The notes indicate Rush often referenced the works or teachings of contemporaries such as Scottish physicians William Cullen, John Brown, John Gregory, and Robert Whytt, and Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave. He frequently included anecdotes and case histories of his own patients, as well as those of other doctors, to illustrate his lecture topics. He also advised students to take notes on the lectures after they ended to allow them to focus on what they were hearing. Volume 1 includes notes on: physician conduct during visits to patients; human and animal physiology; voice and speech; the nervous system; the five senses; and faculties of the mind. Volume 2 includes notes on: food, the sources of appetite and thirst, and digestion; the lymphatic system; secretions; excretions; theories of nutrition; differences in the minds and bodies of women and men; reproduction; pathology; a table outlining the stages of disease production; “disease and the origin of moral and natural evil”; contagions; the role of food, drink, and clothing in producing disease; worms; hereditary diseases; predisposition to diseases; proximate causes of diseases; and pulmonary conditions. Volume 3 includes notes on: the pulse; therapeutics, such as emetics, sedatives, and digitalis, and treatment of various illnesses like pulmonary consumption, kidney disease, palsy, and rheumatism; diagnosis and prognosis of fever; treatment of intermitting fever; and epidemics including plague, smallpox, and yellow fever, with an emphasis on the yellow fever outbreaks in Philadelphia in 1793 and 1797.

Mr. Cline's lectures on anatomy & surgery, 1799-1800 (inclusive)

Volume containing notes on the lectures of Henry Cline (1750-1827), a surgeon at St. Thomas's Hospital, London, England, that were kept by American medical student John Collins Warren in 1799 and 1800. The lectures were on topics including blood, blood vessels, absorbents, cellular membranes, and the nerves. There are annotations in pencil in an unknown hand throughout the volume.

Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, 1858 (Image 1 of 4) (Raster Image)

This layer is a georeferenced raster image of the historic paper map entitled: Map of Hillsboro Co., New Hampshire, from actual surveys by J. Chace, Jr. It was published by Smith, Mason & Co. in 1858. Scale [ca. 1:53,000]. This layer is image 1 of 4 total images, representing the northwest portion of the four sheet source map. The image inside the map neatline is georeferenced to the surface of the earth and fit to the New Hampshire State Plane coordinate system (NAD 1983 in Feet) (Fipszone 2800). 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 features such as roads, railroads, drainage, public buildings, schools, churches, cemeteries, industry locations (e.g. mills, factories, mines, etc.), private buildings with names of property owners, town and school district boundaries, and more. Relief shown by hachures. Includes table of distances, agricultural goods, religious affiliations, business directory, statistics of education and other information, and a list of county officers.This layer is part of a selection of digitally scanned and georeferenced historic maps of New England from the Harvard Map Collection. These maps typically portray both natural and manmade features. The selection represents a range of regions, originators, ground condition dates, scales, and map purposes.

Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, 1858 (Image 2 of 4) (Raster Image)

This layer is a georeferenced raster image of the historic paper map entitled: Map of Hillsboro Co., New Hampshire, from actual surveys by J. Chace, Jr. It was published by Smith, Mason & Co. in 1858. Scale [ca. 1:53,000]. This layer is image 2 of 4 total images, representing the southwest portion of the four sheet source map. The image inside the map neatline is georeferenced to the surface of the earth and fit to the New Hampshire State Plane coordinate system (NAD 1983 in Feet) (Fipszone 2800). 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 features such as roads, railroads, drainage, public buildings, schools, churches, cemeteries, industry locations (e.g. mills, factories, mines, etc.), private buildings with names of property owners, town and school district boundaries, and more. Relief shown by hachures. Includes table of distances, agricultural goods, religious affiliations, business directory, statistics of education and other information, and a list of county officers.This layer is part of a selection of digitally scanned and georeferenced historic maps of New England from the Harvard Map Collection. These maps typically portray both natural and manmade features. The selection represents a range of regions, originators, ground condition dates, scales, and map purposes.