Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1787 September 2

Two folio-sized leaves containing a one-page brief handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley mentioning the receipt of certain items and Winthrop's presentation of a geometric solution at an Academy meeting.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1787 November 10

Two octavo-sized leaves containing a two-and-a-half-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley discussing the Federal Constitution and the balance of power between the states and federal government. The second leaf is torn.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1787 December 26

Two octavo-sized leaves containing a one-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley briefly discussing Winthrop's progress on geometric problems.

A discourse on natural religion: delivered in the Chapel of the University at Cambridge, September 5, 1787

The hand-sewn notebook contains a 35-page manuscript draft of the Dudleian lecture delivered by Simeon Howard on September 5, 1787 at Harvard College. The sermon begins with the Biblical text Acts 17:28. The copy includes a small number of edits and struck-out words. The covers are no longer with the item. The lecture was not printed.

" Lines upon the late proceedings of the College Government" collection, 1787-1917

This collection contains various manifestations of a humorous poem, most often called "Lines upon the late proceedings of the College Government," written by classmates John Quincy Adams and John Murray Forbes in 1787. Both Adams and Forbes were members of the class of 1787, and the poem recounts events surrounding the pranks and ensuing punishment of two members of the class behind them, Robert Wier and James Prescott. Wier and Prescott had been caught drinking wine and making "riotous noise," and they were publicly reprimanded by Harvard President Joseph Willard and several professors and tutors, including Eliphalet Pearson, Eleazar James, Jonathan Burr, Nathan Read, and Timothy Lindall Jennison. The poem mocks these authority figures, but it spares Samuel Williams, whom it suggests was the only professor to find their antics humorous.