[Admittatur of Joseph Estabrook], 1818 February 16

Published copy of the 1816 College Laws with the admittatur of undergraduate Joseph Estabrook signed by President John Kirkland on February 16 , 1818.

Records of the Geographical Society, ca. 1796

This small blue-covered paper notebook contains four leaves with the handwritten records of the Geographical Society, an undergraduate organization at Harvard in the late 1790s. The records consist of ten handwritten "Laws of the Geographical Society" and a short list of fines dispensed on October 7th. A list of six student surnames is written on a scrap of paper and attached with pins to the notebook's inside front cover. The surnames likely correspond to six members of the Harvard Class of 1798: John Abbot (1777-1854), Isaac Adams (d. 1807), Francis Brigham (d. November 14, 1796), Humphrey Devereux (1779-1867), Joseph Emerson (1777-1833), and Artemas Sawyer (d. 1826). The notebook is undated but was presumably kept in 1795 or 1796 around the time of Brigham's death on November 14, 1796. While Brigham's surname appears in the list of fines, it is crossed out on the inside front cover.

[ Bond of Edward Williams and John Black], 1764

Williams was accused of assault and battery against John Black. Bond signed by Joseph Hartz, (justice of the peace for Bucks County, Pennsylvania); dated 30 October 1764.

Notebook of John Allen, 1772

Paper-covered notebook containing handwritten poems and verse by Harvard graduate John Allen. Some of the poems refer to Allen’s illnesses in October 1772. The notebook also contains a short list titled “The Gentleman that I wrote diplomas for," with a list of sixteen individuals who received degrees from Harvard. The inside cover includes the inscription: “John Allen – November 4, 1772. Poetic Composition.” “Dr. T. C. Gilman” is stamped on cover.

Commonplace book of John Bullard, 1775-1779

This bound volume contains excerpts copied by Jonathan Bullard from books he read as a student at Harvard in the mid 1770s. Excerpts include an unattributed poem titled "On Friendship," which appeared in the "poetical essays" section of Volume 36 of the London Magazine in 1767; Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, 1736; The Quaker's Grace; a history of England; Newton's laws; Plutarch's Morals; Benjamin Franklin's writings on the Aurora Borealis. The volume also includes several extracts from articles about the death of John Paddock (Class of 1776), who drowned in the Charles in the summer of 1773, sheet music for two songs, "The Rapture," and "A Song" from Henry Harington's "Damon and Chlora," and a transcription of the satirical "Book of Harvard," written in response to the Butter Rebellion of 1766. Interleaved in the middle of the volume is a transcription from an ecclesiastical event moderated by Ebenezer Bridge in Medford, Mass. on November 20, 1779. The variety of texts suggests the commonplace book was not used solely for academic works.

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.

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.

John Chase, University of Michigan football captain, 1880

Cropped from 1879 team photo.

John L. Duffy, University of Michigan football captain 1887

Cropped from 1887 team photo.