COLLECTIONS--and--CRITIQUES

There is at present on exhibition in a corner of the Widener Treasure Room a display which holds a great deal of interest through its Harvard associations. This consists of several books owned by President Dunster during his presidency here from 1640 to 1654, and in addition, the one surviving book from John Harvard's library which was destroyed by fire in 1764.

John Harvard's gift of his library of 400 volumes in 1638 has been represented since the fire by this one book, "Christian Welfare" by Downame. There is in the possession of the Treasure Room, although not now on exhibition, a manuscript resembling a handbill which bears the date of January 25, 1764, and gives the following account of the fire:

"Last night the most ruinous fire since the foundation of the College visited Harvard. It was a cold, wintry night, when about midnight we were awakened by the cry of-'Fire'. Harvard Hall, 42 feet wide, 97 feet long, and four stories high, built in 1672 was in flames....

Describes Fire

"Throughout the evening the other Colleges, Stoughton and Massachusetts were in utmost danger. They caught fire numerous times and could not have been saved by all the help that the town could afford had it not been for the assistance of the Gentlemen of the General Court. His Excellency the Governor, who in spite of the rigor of the weather was most active in exerting himself in supplying the town engines with water which had to be fetched from a distance, the two college pumps being then rendered useless....

"....The Library and Apparatus which had for many years been growing and were now judged to be the best furnished in America, were annihilated."

In order that this precious survivor of that disaster might be preserved more carefully and treated more reverently, eight Harvard graduates united to secure a silk-lined, levant morocco-covered, asbestos box in which it is kept in the Library Treasure Room. The donors were G.H. Norcross '75, E.H. Baker '81, J.P. Parmenter '81, Albert Matthews '82, Percival Merritt '82, J.A. Noyes '83, G.L. Kittredge '84, and S.W. Phillips '95.

For many years Mr. Potter has been trying to identify and restore the works of the John Harvard library. In 1919, he printed in the Transactions of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts the Catalogue of that library, so far as he was able to reconstruct it. Of the 329 thought to be of the same editions as the ones originally in the John Harvard library. Eighty-five more are also contemporary editions he might have possessed.

Other Interesting Books

Other volumes of interest in the same case include one entitled "New England's First Fruits". This is the first printed account of Harvard and was published in London in 1643. There is also on display President Dunster's Hebrew and Greek Bible, printed by Plantin in Antwerp in 1573. Dunster, who was Harvard's first president, had his bookplate in Greek pasted at the foot of the title page, and as it is dated 1638, it shows that it was printed while he was still in residence in the University of Cambridge. The Dunster family Bible is another volume on exhibition in this case. It is a loan by the John Dunster Kettelle.