A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about the religious roots of
my hometown (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/02/wolcott-history-new-england-religious.html).
In this blog I briefly mentioned Harvard and Yale in the context of the overall
religious development of New England in the 1600s. But this got me started
thinking about some of the men involved, as it appeared that certain families
were responsible for filling many of the pastorates of the time. So I went back
through that research, this time focusing on individuals instead of the overall
movement.
The Organization of
American Culture, 1700-1900: Private Institutions, Elites, and the Origins of
American Nationality, pages 47-50, put it this way:
The
clergy, unlike farmers or artisans, were relatively successful in developing
effective local and trans-local alliances which, in turn, led to patterns of
collective action and to formal corporate institutions. This is not surprising,
for the clergy were, by their very nature, a group with clearly defined common
interests, a group whose members had been trained together at either Harvard or
Yale (thus having shared an intensive common socialization experience), who
were often sons of clergymen themselves (thus having kin-continuity), and who
presided over a social institution, the church, whose interests they had a
vital interest in preserving. The clergy, as earlier suggested, followed
simultaneously two patterns of alliance-making, a bifurcation dictated by the
non-inheritable nature of the clerical office. On the one hand, they cultivated
close ties with important lay families in the communities in which they served,
which strengthened their power in their congregations and opened up occupational
opportunities for their sons. On the other hand, they cultivated trans-local
alliances with other clergymen (to consolidate professional identity) and with
powerful laymen (to further the interests of the church).
Harvard
Harvard was established in 1636 in the middle of the “Great
Migration” of individuals, most of them Puritans, from England to New England –
specifically to Massachusetts Bay. While there was a small amount of teaching
in the first few years, they did not own any property until 1638, the same year
that John Harvard, a graduate of Cambridge in England, willed the school his
library of 300-400 books. The first college president was appointed in 1640 and
the first graduates were from 1642. Harvard was the first college in the US,
predating the second oldest, William & Mary by over 50 years, and Yale by
65 years. So for that period of time it was the only place to get a college
education in America.
Its original purpose was to train ministers. As some of the “elite”
of society, there was a tendency for the offspring of ministers to follow in
their family tradition, so many of those who attended were the sons of other
ministers. Also, the faculty of the college were also trained ministers. While
those in these positions in the beginning were educated elsewhere, such as John
Harvard, it would not be many years before their own graduates would become the
faculty and administration. I’d like to focus on the first several presidents
of Harvard, their background and families, especially as it relates to New
England history and genealogy.
·
Henry Dunster (1609-1658), president from
1640-1654, educated in Cambridge. He came to America under the sponsorship of
Rev. Richard Mather (see further information below on the Mather family)
·
Charles Chauncy (1592-1672), president from
1654-1672, educated in Cambridge. He originally served as the pastor at
Plymouth, MA, then Scituate. But he had issues because he insisted on baptism
by immersion only. When he was hired by Harvard he had to promise the leaders
in Boston that he would keep his views on baptism quiet. His 6 sons all went to
Harvard (see Israel Chauncy in section on Yale).
·
Leonard Hoar (1630-1675), president from
1672-1675, Harvard class of 1650. He had no sons to carry on his tradition.
·
Urian Oakes (1631-1681), president from
1675-1681, Harvard class of 1649.
·
John Rogers (1630-1684), president from
1682-1684, Harvard class of 1649. Came from a long line of ministers, the most
well-known of whom was his great-great-grandfather, John “The Martyr” Rogers
(1505-1555), who completed the translation work of William Tyndale and
published his bible in 1537 and who was subsequently martyred. (He is my 3rd
cousin 10 times removed, and the 1st cousin 6 times removed of my
grandmother’s second husband (i.e. my step-grandfather))
·
Increase Mather (1639-1723), president from 1685-1701,
Harvard class of 1656. He was the youngest of six brothers, three others
besides himself becoming ministers. See further information below on the Mather
family.
·
Samuel Willard (1640-1707), acting-president
from 1701-1707, Harvard class of 1659.
It is of interest to note how many of these presidents died
in office. Samuel Willard was the last of the college presidents to also be a
minister. See section below on Harvard-to-Yale transition for further
information on this.
Yale University
Yale was founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School of
Connecticut. For this section I’d like to focus on the founders of the college.
There were ten men, all ministers of the Congregational Church in Connecticut,
who met at the home of Samuel Russell (another minister) in 1701 to pool their
books (some 400 in all) as the basis for a library and then to present a
proposal to the government of Connecticut Colony for the establishment of what
would eventually become Yale. All but one of these men were graduates of
Harvard, the only institution of higher learning in New England at the time.
·
Samuel Andrew (1656-1738), Harvard class of 1675,
pastor in Milford, CT – Rector in 1707-1719, while at Harvard was a tutor to
James Pierpont, Samuel Russell, Noadiah Russell, and Joseph Webb. He and Samuel
Mather married sisters. His granddaughter married the grandson of Noadiah
Russell and James Pierpont.
·
Thomas Buckingham (1646-1709), the only non-Harvard
graduate, pastor in Saybrook, CT – the founders originally agreed to locate the
Collegiate School in Saybrook and it was only with much resistance that it was
relocated to New Haven.
·
Israel Chauncy (1644-1703), pastor in Stratford,
CT – son of Charles Chauncy, president of Harvard, he and James Webb married
sisters. In addition to his father, a brother and nephew were also ministers.
·
Samuel Mather (1650-1727), Harvard class of 1671,
pastor in Windsor, CT – cousin of Cotton Mather
·
Rev. James Noyes II (1640-1719), Harvard class
of 1659, pastor in Stonington, CT – a cousin to Timothy Woodbridge, father,
grandfather, and other relatives were also ministers.
·
James Pierpont (1659-1714), Harvard class of
1681, pastor in New Haven, CT – related to Abraham Pierson by one marriage and to
Thomas Buckingham by another marriage. His children married descendants of Noadiah
Russell, Samuel Russell, and James Noyes. Five of his children either became
ministers or were married to one. (See http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/02/genealogy-story-james-pierpont.html
for further details).
·
Abraham Pierson (1646-1707), Harvard class of
1668, pastor in Killingworth, CT (later renamed Clinton) – first Rector of the
Collegiate School, was supposed to teach in Saybrook, but due to his pastoral
duties, taught at his parsonage in Killingworth. Son of a minister.
·
Noadiah Russell (1659-1713), Harvard class of
1681, pastor in Middletown, CT – two of his sons also became ministers.
·
Joseph Webb (1666-1732), Harvard class of 1684, pastor
in Fairfield, CT
·
Timothy Woodbridge (1655-1732), pastor in
Hartford, CT – son of a minister, his brother and son were also ministers. His daughter
married a son of Abraham Pierson.
·
Samuel Russell (1660-1731), Harvard class of
1681, pastor in Branford, CT – 2nd son of Rev. John Russell
(1626-1692) of Hadley, MA, Harvard 1645, ministered in Wethersfield CT
1650-1659, then left CT and founded Hadley MA
The Mather Family
The Mather family had some considerable influence in the
Puritan community. Rev. Richard Mather was a preacher of great reputation in
England, but advised by letters of John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, he was persuaded
to join the company of pilgrims in May 1635 and left for the New England with
his wife and children. He was desired by several communities, but decided to
settle in Dorchester. As noted above, he was the sponsor of Henry Dunster and
convinced him to move to America in 1640 and take the role of the first
president of Harvard. A book written in 1890, Lineage of Richard Mather, gives a list of 80 clergymen descended
from Richard Mather, of whom 29 bore the name Mather and 51 other names such as
Storrs and Schauffer.
Richard’s son, Increase Mather, received his education at
Harvard and became its president in 1701. Increase also married Maria Cotton,
the daughter of another prominent minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John
Cotton. He was greatly involved, not only in the church, but the government of
the colony, and, most notoriously, the Salem witch trials, although his son,
Cotton, was the most principally involved.
Their son, Cotton Mather, named after his grandfather, while
not following in his father’s footsteps as a college president, was also very
prominent in the community. During his life he wrote more than 450 books and
pamphlets and helped set the moral tone in the colonies. He also influenced
early American science with some of the first recorded experiments on corn
hybridization in the colonies. In 1689, Mather published a book detailing the
supposed afflictions of several children in a Boston family. This laid the
groundwork for the Salem witch trials which were in 1692. While Mather called
himself a historian and not an advocate, his writing largely presumed the guilt
of the accused. Only two of Cotton Mather’s children survived him.
A grandson of Richard Mather, Rev. Samuel Mather, was one of
the founding members of the Collegiate School of Connecticut.
Shifting focus
from Harvard to Yale
By 1701, and coincident with the founding of the Collegiate
School, there were some individuals who were getting disenchanted with Harvard.
In particular, Increase Mather, then the 6th president of Harvard,
viewed Harvard clergy as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax and overly
broad in church polity. So he championed the Collegiate School hoping it would
maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy.
In some ways this was similar to the reasoning of John
Davenport in 1639 who took a large group of men with him as he moved from the
Boston area to New Haven because they felt that the Puritans in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony were not appropriately distant from the Church of
England (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/02/wolcott-history-new-england-religious.html).
In 1716, with the Collegiate School growing, Cotton Mather
contacted Elihu Yale for financial help. It was these funds that prompted the
movement of the school from Saybrook to New Haven, the building of the first permanent
buildings, and the renaming of the school to Yale.
Pierpont
Connections
Besides James Pierpont mentioned above, there were a number
of my other individuals who are connected to these men. Here are just a few:
Jonathan Edwards, son of Timothy Edwards (minister at East
Windsor CT) and Esther Stoddard (daughter of Rev. Solomon Stoddard of
Northampton, MA), entered Yale in 1716 at age 13. He married Sarah Pierpont in
1727. Solomon Stoddard died in 1729 and left Jonathan the sole ministerial charge
of one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the colony. With the
growing influence of Yale in the Puritan faith, he had considerable influence.
One of the children of Samuel Mather, Abigail, was a
maternal great-great-grandmother to Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906). Samuel’s
paternal grandmother was Emily Montague Pierpont, the great-great-granddaughter
of Ebenezer Pierpont, a younger brother of James Pierpont above. Samuel
attended Boston Latin like many of the men above. He was an American
astronomer, physicist and pioneer of aviation as well as the founder of the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Langley Air Force Base and the NASA
Langley Research Center are named after him.
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