Harvard College Founded, 1636

In 1636, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's General Court voted to establish what would become the oldest institution of higher education in the United States — an act that tied the intellectual ambitions of a young colonial settlement to a city, a region, and an emerging nation. That institution, Harvard College, was founded not by the man whose name it would eventually bear, but by the governing body of the colony itself, reflecting a broader Puritan conviction that an educated clergy and civic leadership were essential to the survival of a godly community in the New World. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just across the Charles River from Boston, Harvard's founding stands as one of the defining moments in the early history of the region and in the broader development of American civic and intellectual life.

Background: The Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Need for Education

The Massachusetts Bay Colony, chartered in 1629 and settled in earnest by 1630, was governed by Puritan leaders who placed enormous value on literacy, scripture, and formal learning. The colony's leaders were, in many cases, educated men who had attended Oxford or Cambridge in England, and they understood that the religious and civil project they were undertaking in the New World would require a continuous supply of educated ministers and magistrates. Without a local institution capable of producing such men, the colony would be perpetually dependent on England for its intellectual leadership — a dependence that ran counter to both the practical and ideological goals of the enterprise.

The General Court of Massachusetts, the colony's legislative body, moved quickly on the matter. Within six years of the colony's founding, it authorized the establishment of a college. The location chosen was the settlement of Newtowne, which was subsequently renamed Cambridge in honor of the English university city where many of the colony's leaders had studied. This renaming was itself a signal of the aspirations the colonists held for their new institution — it was meant to evoke the prestige and tradition of English learning while establishing something distinctly rooted in the American colonial experience.

The Founding Act of 1636

The formal act of founding Harvard College came in the autumn of 1636, when the General Court of Massachusetts voted to appropriate funds for the establishment of a "schoale or colledge." This was a public act, undertaken by a public body, using public funds — a fact that has bearing on later discussions of Harvard's identity and responsibilities. The institution that emerged from this vote was not a private foundation created by a wealthy benefactor, but a civic enterprise born of colonial governance.

The college was initially placed under the oversight of the colony's government and charged with educating men for ministry and public service. The curriculum drew heavily on the traditions of English university education, emphasizing classical languages, theology, rhetoric, and logic — subjects considered essential for men who would lead congregations or govern communities. Instruction was modeled on the practices of Oxford and Cambridge, adapted to the conditions of colonial life, where resources were scarce and the student body small.

The institution established in 1636 was, from its earliest days, understood to be a college of the Massachusetts Bay Colony — a public institution serving a public need in a very specific historical moment.

John Harvard and the Naming of the College

The name "Harvard" did not come with the founding act of 1636. It was bestowed in 1638, following the death of the Reverend John Harvard, a young Puritan minister who had emigrated from England to the colony. Upon his death, John Harvard bequeathed half of his estate and his personal library of approximately four hundred volumes to the fledgling college. In recognition of this donation — significant by the standards of the time and place — the General Court voted to name the college in his honor.

John Harvard's contribution was meaningful and generous, but it is important to note, as the historical record makes clear, that he did not found the institution that bears his name. The college already existed when he made his bequest, and it had been created by an act of colonial government rather than by private initiative. This distinction matters to understanding the nature of the institution and its relationship to both the public and private spheres — a relationship that has evolved considerably over the centuries but that was, at its origin, unambiguously public.

Harvard as the Oldest Institution of Higher Education in the United States

Harvard College holds the distinction of being the oldest institution of higher education in the United States, a fact that is foundational to its historical significance and to the significance of its 1636 founding for the history of Boston and the broader region. When the General Court voted to establish the college, it was acting in a landscape in which no comparable institution yet existed anywhere in the colonies that would eventually become the United States.

The next colonial college to be founded after Harvard was the College of William & Mary, established in 1693 — more than fifty years after Harvard's founding. This gap underscores the degree to which Harvard stood alone as an institution of higher learning in the colonial context for much of the seventeenth century. The nine colleges that existed in the colonies at the time of the American Revolution — often referred to as the colonial colleges — included Harvard at the head of that group, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and rooted in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Harvard's Place in Boston's History

While Harvard is located in Cambridge rather than Boston proper, its founding and its subsequent development are inseparable from the history of Boston as a city and as a regional capital. The two places — separated by the Charles River and by municipal boundaries, but connected by culture, commerce, and centuries of shared history — have shaped each other in profound and continuing ways.

In the colonial period, the relationship between Harvard and Boston was one of mutual dependence. Boston provided the economic and political infrastructure that supported the colony, while Harvard provided the educated men who staffed its churches, its courts, and its governing bodies. Ministers trained at Harvard preached in Boston's churches. Lawyers and magistrates educated at the college helped to shape the colony's legal and political culture.

As the colony expanded and as the town of Boston grew into a significant Atlantic port city, Harvard's presence in Cambridge remained a constant feature of the regional landscape. The college trained men who would play prominent roles in the events leading up to the American Revolution, including many of the figures who shaped political thought in the colony and who moved in and out of Boston's public life in the decades before 1776. The Boston Massacre of 1770 and the political upheavals of the revolutionary period unfolded in a region where Harvard-educated men were present at every level of civic and intellectual discourse.

Puritan Values and the Founding Mission

The founding of Harvard College in 1636 was not simply an educational act — it was an ideological one. The Puritans who governed the Massachusetts Bay Colony believed that ignorance was an enemy of true religion and that a learned ministry was essential for the spiritual health of the community. This conviction, rooted in the Protestant Reformation's emphasis on scripture and its interpretation, drove the creation of a college that was, from the outset, bound up with religious purposes.

The early curriculum at Harvard reflected these priorities. Students were trained in Latin and Greek in order to read scripture and classical texts in their original languages. Theology occupied a central place in the course of study, and the institution was governed by men who understood their work as a form of religious service as much as academic instruction. The college's founding thus reflected the broader Puritan project of building a godly commonwealth in New England — a project in which Boston, as the colony's principal town, played a leading role.

Over time, Harvard's mission broadened considerably. The college evolved away from its explicitly theological origins and became an institution oriented toward a wide range of academic disciplines. But the core conviction that education served a public good — that training men and women for civic and intellectual life was a responsibility worth investing in — can be traced back to the Puritan values that animated the founding in 1636.

Legacy and Continuing Significance

The founding of Harvard College in 1636 remains a landmark event in the history of Boston, of Massachusetts, and of the United States as a whole. As the oldest institution of higher education in the country, Harvard occupies a unique position in the national narrative — one that begins with a vote by the General Court of a small Puritan colony on the edge of the Atlantic world and extends forward through nearly four centuries of American history.

The college's location in Cambridge has ensured that the greater Boston metropolitan area has been, for the entirety of that history, home to what is formally the nation's oldest university. This fact has shaped the region's identity, its economy, and its culture in ways that are difficult to overstate. The concentration of educational institutions that eventually grew up around Harvard — including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and numerous other colleges and universities — owes something, at least in terms of precedent and tradition, to the decision made in 1636 to plant a college in the soil of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Harvard's founding also serves as a reminder that the history of Boston is inseparable from the history of ideas. The city and its surrounding region have, from the earliest decades of colonial settlement, been places where learning was valued, where institutions were built to transmit and advance knowledge, and where the connection between education and public life was understood to be real and consequential. That understanding began, in the formal institutional sense, with the act of 1636 that brought Harvard College into existence.

See Also

• Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Massachusetts Bay Colony
• Boston History
• Colonial Colleges
• American Revolution in Boston