Yale Graduate Donates Original Manuscript of Address Delivered at Commencement Here Century and Half Ago

The original manuscript of the salutatory oration delivered at a Harvard commencement more than a century and a half ago by Jonathan Trumbull, 1759, has been presented to Widener Library by an anonymous donor.

The manuscript has had an interesting history. After lying in some obscure private collection for some 160 years, it was offered for sale at a public auction in New York City. Among the bidders were a Harvard graduate and a Yale graduate, the former desiring to present it to the University library. The Yale man outbid the Harvard man, but when he learned that a Harvard man had been the under bidder, he declared that Harvard had the prior claim to the manuscript. Wishing to remain anonymous, he gave it to Mr. Keough, the Yale librarian with the request that it be sent as a gift from Yale to the Harvard library. Mr. Keough writes that while he does "not agree with the donor's desire to remain anonymous," he is "heartily in sympathy with his wish to give the manuscript to Harvard."

It is interesting to note that the same Jonathan Trumbull (he spelt his name Trumbull at this time) delivered the Valedictory Oration in 1762 when he came back for his Master's degree, and the library has the two letters which President Holyoke wrote him inviting and urging him to deliver the oration. These were received in 1905 from Mr. Grosvenor S. Hubbard of New York, great-grandson of Governor Trumbull. Mr. Hubbard also gave the library a few years later a manuscript containing Judah Monts' "Hewbrew Grammar" and William Brattle's "Enchtridion Logicae," text-books then used in Harvard College, with other notes and lectures on natural philosophy written out by Jonathan Trumbull 8r., 1727.