Tribunal, and to have made possible a settlement of the dispute on a basis which was consistent with the dignity of Great Britain and the rights of the United States. I quote from a recent letter of Mr. Frank Warren Hackett, who was one of the Alabama Claims Commission, published in the Nation of January 31, 1907: It was the tact and the stamina of Bancroft Davis that actually rescued the treaty from failure. The world may never know how large a measure of credit is due to the sagacity and nerve of both Lord Tenterden and Bancroft Davis. Mutual confidence and unity of purpose enabled the Englishman and the American to work together in preparing a way by which the "Indirect Claims" could honorably be disposed of and the treaty saved. After these two men, upon their own responsibility, had struck hands, it was agreed that Mr. Davis should ask Mr. Adams to take the open and visible step leading to action by the Tribunal. Mr. Adams acted with equal skill. . . . It was this initiative act, the honor of which belongs equally to the respective Agents, that constitutes the crowning merit of Bancroft Davis's inestimable services to his country (lxxxiv. 102). Count Sclopis, the President of the Geneva Tribunal, is reported to have afterward said: "It was the Case prepared by Mr. Davis which won the cause." Mr. Davis's subsequent career is well known, -as Assistant Secretary of State in 1873 and 1881; as Minister to Germany in 1874; as Judge of the Court of Claims in 1877; and as Reporter of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1883 till 1902, when he resigned the office at the age of eighty. His most important published works are his volume of Treaties and Conventions Entered into by the United States (1871 and 1873), and the volumes containing his Reports of the Decisions of the Supreme Court. In 1887 Columbia University conferred on Mr. Davis the degree of Doctor of Laws. Mr. Davis was elected a Corresponding Member of this Society December 20, 1899. Mr. ANDREW MCFARLAND DAVIS read the following paper: JOHN HARVARD'S LIFE IN AMERICA, OR SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND IN 1637-1638.1 The subject treated in this paper practically deals with the conditions of Harvard's life for a single year. Even this brief time cannot be restricted within exact limits. We do not know the date of Harvard's sailing from England. We do not know on what day he arrived in the Colony. The only date in this connection of which we are certain is, alas! that of his death, and for that knowledge we are dependent upon a casual entry in an almanac. His name is not mentioned by Winthrop in his Journal and, except for a memorandum found among Winthrop's papers and published by Savage in the Addenda to the Journal, we should not know that the Governor had ever heard of him. In justice, however, to Winthrop it should be added that the mere existence of the memorandum suggests that it was made with intent to incorporate its substance in the Journal, and then by oversight the entry was omitted. The various contemporaneous publications which mention Harvard's name, while they speak of him as a scholarly and pious man, add nothing to our knowledge of his life, and it is not until we reach the verbose and pedantic Magnalia of Cotton Mather that we learn from one who wrote sixty years after Harvard's death, that the disease which carried him off was consumption. When Mather wrote, the College had already acquired renown. Increase Mather, the father of the author of Magnalia, was glad, when the occasion came his way, to assume charge of its affairs, and he availed himself of the opportunity to acquire from his Alma Mater the degree of D.D. Cotton This paper was originally prepared to be read as a part of the memorial exercises at Cambridge which were held under the auspices of the Harvard Memorial Society, in honor of the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard's birth. The material then collated relative to the construction of houses, etc., when worked into shape proved to be far in excess of the demands for the occasion, so that the paper had to be much abridged in reading; but in submitting it to the Colonial Society with a view to publication, the rejected matter has been restored. Winthrop's Journal, ii. 88, note by Savage. Ibid. ii. 342. • Magnalia (1853), ii. 10. * Cotton Mather gives his father's argument in full, as to the power of the College to confer degrees, in Magnalia, ii. 19, 20, and the degree itself, ii. 26. Mather himself is supposed to have aspired to the Presidency of the College of which he also was a graduate. This testimony to the high estimate of the institution at that time by the Mathers was not perhaps needed, but its recital will bring before us the important fact that the author of Magnalia, when he omitted John Harvard from the list of worthies whose lives he undertook to write, and contented himself with a mere reference to him in his description of the College, must have been conscious of his offence. A tithe of the diligence which he bestowed in gleaning facts about the lives of the governors, the clergymen of New England, and the Harvard graduates, would have enabled him to preserve upon his pages many facts concerning the Charlestown life of the founder of the College which we should treasure to-day. The only new item concerning Harvard himself to be obtained from Magnalia is that which I have quoted. It must be added, however, that the author states the amount of Harvard's bequest to the College in pounds, shillings and pence; that he speaks of Harvard as a minister of the Gospel, and that he prints an elegiac poem by John Wilson which, although it contains some errors of statement, is nevertheless helpful.1 For what information Mather gave, let us be thankful, and from that let us turn to what we can positively ascertain from the records, and what we may infer from current history. Harvard's presence in England February the sixteenth, 1637, can be demonstrated. On the fifth of May of the same year the will of his brother Thomas, of which he was one of the executors, was duly probated. The will was allowed and power to execute it was conferred upon his co-executor, with a reservation of like power for Harvard "when he should come to seek it." The inference is plain that he was not on hand to resign the executorship, and the presumption is that this absence was to be explained by the fact that between February sixteenth and May fifth he had sailed for New England. On the other hand, the Charlestown Records bear testimony to his presence in that place on the first of August of the same year, when he was admitted a townsman." It is quite certain that this affiliation with the settlers a necessary concomitant at that time for the residence in Charlestown of one of his profession - must have been taken 1 Magnalia, ii. 10, 30. 2 Boston Record Commissioners' Reports, vol. iii. p. iv. promptly after arrival. There was a statute of the General Court then in force which prevented inhabitants of any of the towns from harboring for a longer period than three weeks, strangers who came with intent to reside, except under allowance of certain designated authorities.1 Obviously, newly arrived immigrants would, if their consciences permitted, hasten to put themselves on record as being in sympathy with the governing powers. It is safe, therefore, to assert that Harvard must have arrived at Charlestown in the latter part of July, 1637. Assuming that he sailed early in May, this would make his voyage cover a period of about twelve weeks. This would not have been considered a very long ocean trip in those days. Hence, we may rest assured that this estimate of the time of sailing and arrival is reasonably close, so that the discovery of the name of the vessel in which he sailed and the publication of her log would not alter materially our conception of the dates connected with the voyage. The third of these dates, that of his death, is fixed at September 14, 1638. The entire term of his life in America was, therefore, about thirteen and one-half months. About four weeks after his arrival, on the thirtieth of August, 1637, a Synod was held at Cambridge or Newtown, as it was then called. We are told that "all the teaching Elders through the Country were present, and some new come out from England, not yet called to any place here." The meeting is described as having been "peaceable and concluded comfortably in love." We may infer from the stress put upon these words that this conclusion was probably unexpected. Harvard was at that time "new come out from England," and it is quite certain that he could not then have been called to any place here. The statement that some of those similarly situated with himself were present at the Synod is practically equivalent to saying that he was there. No newly arrived clergyman whose health and circumstances permitted could have failed to avail himself of the opportunity to meet there the assembled pastors of the Colony, and to hear them discuss the doctrinal points which were disturbing themselves and their congregations. It necessarily follows that he must at that time have seen the spot with which his name has since become so conspicuously associated. His route from Charlestown to Cambridge 1 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 196. 'Winthrop's Journal, i. 237. |