Portsmouth's Gift Saved University From Certain Financial Ruin in 1669

Four-hundred-twenty pounds from the town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire "for the advancement of good literature" at Harvard, would not make a very large impression now, but if it had not been for such a gift in 1669, there might have been no Harvard to impress now.

In his "History of Harvard University," written in 1840, Josiah Quincy, of the Class of 1790, president of Harvard College from 1820 to 1845, tells of a time during the presidency of Charles Chauncey when the financial condition of the College was so bad that a gift from Portsmouth of 60 pounds a year for seven years was as "pennies from Heaven."

The following is an excerpt of President Quincy's work, telling of the incident:

"The particular condition of the seminary during the latter part of Chauncey's presidency was critical and apparently hopeless. Its buildings were ruinous and almost irreparable, the President was aged and the number of scholars short of what they had been in former days. All its efficient funds did not amount to one thousand pounds; without a new building its situation was desperate. The political difficulties of the colony precluded any expectation of pecuniary aid from the General Court, who, in their best estate, had never been characterized by a disposition to give aid in money. The liberality of individuals was it only resource. Even among these, there did not early appear any active spirit for its relief.

"In this emergency the town of Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, first extended a helping hand to the institution. The inhabitants of that town, in an address to the General Court, dated in May, 1669, after expressing their thankfulness for the protection extended to them by Massachusetts, and saying 'that although they had articled with them for exemption from taxes, yet they had never articled with God and their own consciences for exemption from gratitude', which 'while studying how to demonstrate, the loud groans of the sinking College came to their ears; and hoping that their example might provoke the rest of the country to an holy emulation in so good a work, and the General Court itself vigorously to act, for the diverting of the omen of calamity, which its destruction would be to New Tangled,' declare that a voluntary collection had been made among the inhabitants which authorized the town to pledge the payment of 'sixty pounds sterling a year for seven years ensuing; to be improved by the Overseers of the College for the advancement of good literature there.'"

As a result of the donation of the town of Portsmouth more than 2600 pounds were pledged to the College in the following year, "under which encouragement, in 1672, authority was given for the commencement of a new edifice."