BIOGRAPHY OF HENRY DUNSTER
FIRST PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE
Henry Dunster was my gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-(7)grandfather. I wanted to do a Biography on him. But as he was 7 generation's back I only know what other people have reported on him. Below you will find a few of the interesting facts I found about him. I copied the sources with each article.
Name: Henry Dunster
Birth Date: c. 1609
Death Date: 1659
Place of Birth: Bury, Lancashire, England
Place of Death: Plymouth, Massachusetts
Nationality: American
Gender: Male
Occupations: clergyman, college president
Encyclopedia of World Biography on Henry Dunster
Henry Dunster (ca. 1609-1659), an English-born American clergyman, was distinguished as the innovative and forceful first president of Harvard College.
Henry Dunster was born in Bury, Lancashire, England, the fifth child of a yeoman farmer. At 17 he entered Magdalene College at Cambridge University and, upon completion of requirements, received a bachelor of arts degree. He returned to Bury as a teacher and curate, studied Oriental languages, and in 1634 was granted a master of arts degree from Cambridge. Under spiritual stress, Dunster gravitated to Puritanism and emigrated to New England.
Although relatively unknown, Dunster was chosen president of Harvard College upon his arrival in Boston in 1640. He revived an institution that was virtually defunct, reuniting the scattered student body and establishing degree requirements. With Cambridge and Oxford as models, he was determined to put Harvard on secure foundations. The college laws were first codified in 1646, a charter obtained in 1650, and the holdings of the library increased through gifts. Dunster and Thomas Shepard, the eminent Puritan and theologian, petitioned the New England Confederation for contributions from the inhabitants, obtaining £250 in gifts of wheat by 1653. Dunster advocated 4 years residence for the bachelor of arts degree, and although protesting students refused to pay commencement fees, he successfully instituted the change. Edward Johnson in his Wonder Working Providence (1654) observed that "the learned reverend, and judicious Mr. Henry Dunster [was] fitted from the Lord for the work."
In 1641 Dunster married Elizabeth, the widow of Jose Glover. Marriage brought President Dunster financial security and also Glover's printing press. Operated for years in Dunster's house, this press was the first one in the Colonies and was later acquired by Harvard. His wife's death in 1643 led to conflict between her children and Dunster over the estate. In 1644 he chose a second wife, Elizabeth Atkinson, who outlived him.
While a member of the Cambridge church, Dunster refused to have an infant son baptized. Public hostility to his Baptist views led to demands for his resignation from Harvard. On Oct. 24, 1654, he resigned, later becoming a minister at Scituate in Plymouth Colony. He died there in 1659.
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Henry Dunster
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henry Dunster (November 26, 1609 – February 27, 1659) was an Anglo-American Puritan clergyman and educator. Born at Bolholt, Bury, Lancashire, England to Henry Dunster Sr (1582–1626) and Isabelle Kaye (1583–1643), Dunster studied and graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England specializing in oriental languages and temporarily became a teacher there until he emigrated to Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts in 1640. When Master Nathaniel Eaton was dismissed in 1639 as the first leader of the recently-established Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dunster was appointed as his successor. Thus on August 27, 1640 Dunster became the first president of Harvard. (For a discussion of Dunster's choice of the title "president" see President, history of the term.) He modeled Harvard's educational system on that of the English universities, which included that of Eton College as well as Cambridge University.
In 1653, Dunster refused to have his child — Jonathan (1653–1725) — baptized, confessing himself an antipaedobaptist. For this heterodoxy, he was forced to resign from Harvard in 1654, although it was with much regret that he was sent away, since he was universally well-respected there. He spent the last few years of his life as a pastor in Scituate, Massachusetts, before passing away in 1659.
Dunster House, one of the twelve residential houses of Harvard University, is named after Henry Dunster.
Dunster had at least two wives: Elizabeth (Harris) Glover, the widow of Josse Glover, whom he married on June 21, 1641, but who died without issue in 1643; and Elizabeth Atkinson (1627–1690) whom he married in 1644 and bore to him five children. Samuel Dunster, who wrote the exhaustive biography of the descendants of Henry Dunster in 1876, infra, is his direct descendant.
Sources
Samuel Dunster, Henry Dunster and His Descendants (1876) [exhaustive biography by a direct descendant, cf. especially pp. 1–19]
Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony (1930) [chapter entitled "Henry Dunster, President of Harvard", pp. 183–216]
William Thaddeus Harris, Epitaphs From the Old Burying Ground in Cambridge (1845) p. 169 [Henry Dunster, "d. 12.27.1658"]
INTERESTING FACTS
On June 9, 1650, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts approved Harvard President Henry Dunster's charter of incorporation. The Charter of 1650 established the President and Fellows of Harvard College (a.k.a the Harvard Corporation), a seven-member board that is the oldest corporation in the Western Hemisphere.
Seven presidents of the United States – John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Rutherford B. Hayes, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and George W. Bush – were graduates of Harvard. Its faculty have produced more than 40 Nobel laureates.
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