Thursday, March 30, 2017

Genealogy Story – Harvard and Yale

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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