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Let's take a listen. After the pilgrims landed on Cape Cod in 1620, large numbers of Puritans and separatists began arriving in New England seeking freedom for religion. The Puritans arrived in Massachusetts Bay by the boatloads during the great migration, the Puritan migration, of the 1630s. And many of them were very well educated. They were graduates of England's leading universities, especially Emmanuel College in Cambridge.
Many were theologians, pastors, and Bible scholars. One thing was paramount on the minds of those who settled into the New World. They wanted to establish a school in the colonies, especially for the training of ministerial students. As someone explained in the 1643 booklet called New England's First Fruits, after God had carried us safe to New England and we had built our houses, provided necessities for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to our posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers lie in the dust. So on September the 8th of 1636, the legislature of the colony of Massachusetts Bay voted to create the first college in America.
The records say, the court agrees to give 400 pounds towards a school or college, whereof 200 pounds shall be paid next year and 200 pounds when the work is finished. The very next year, 1637, the general court appointed 12 eminent men as trustees of that college. That very same year, a young clergyman from England arrived on American shores. His name was John Harvard and he was described as a godly man and a lover of learning. Harvard was born in 1607, the son of a butcher and a tavern owner in a village near London. In 1625, the bubonic plague wiped out most of his family. His mother survived and she was able to send him to Cambridge. John was ordained as a dissenting minister, which meant that he joined the Puritans who resisted the oversight of the Anglican church. He married a girl named Anne Sadler in 1637 and the next year they immigrated to New England where John became an assistant preacher in Boston.
But he was battling tuberculosis and he died the next year at the age of 30. He bequeathed half of his property and all of his library of 400 volumes to this new college. In appreciation for his generosity, the new school was named for him, Harvard. The doors opened and a student handbook was published.
It was called, Laws and Statutes for Students of Harvard University. Among other things it said, everyone shall consider the main end of life and studies is to know God and to know Jesus Christ, which is eternal life. John 17 verse 3. And it said, seeing that the Lord gives wisdom, everyone shall seriously by prayer in secret seek wisdom from him. Proverbs 2 verses 2 and 3. And it also says, everyone shall so exercise himself in reading the scriptures twice a day that they be ready to give an account of their proficiency therein, both in theoretical observations of language and logic and impractical and spiritual truths as their tutor shall require according to their several abilities respectively, seeing that the entrance of the word gives light.
Psalm 119 verse 130. Sometime later, Harvard adopted the motto veritas Christo ech ecclesia, Latin for truth for Christ and the church. The motto was followed by an explanatory reference to John 8 32 which provides the only sure foundation for a sound education and you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Today's educators are prone to forget the contributions to education made by those who came to this new world with a love for the Bible and the desire for boys and girls to learn to read so that they might read the Bible and with the desire that men and women be trained for godly living and for Christian service.
Just consider the contribution that Americans made to American literacy and education even before the United States became an established nation. Yale was started by the Congregationalists. William and Mary was established by the Episcopalians. Columbia was founded by the Episcopalians. Northwestern was started by the Methodists. Princeton by the Presbyterians. Brown University by the Baptist and even the University of Tennessee in my own neck of the woods was started by a Presbyterian minister named Samuel Carrick to provide students with a Christian non-denominational educational experience. Dr. Alvin Smith in his book on the influence of Christianity wrote every collegiate institution founded in the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War except for the University of Pennsylvania was established by some branch of the Christian church. 92% of all of the colleges and universities founded prior to the Civil War were founded by Christian denominations. Dr. Smith said cathedral schools, episcopal schools, monasteries, medieval universities, schools for the blind and deaf, Sunday schools, modern grade schools, secondary schools, modern colleges, universities, and universal education. All of these have one thing in common.
They are the products of Christianity. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. A special thanks to Robert Morgan who is the author of 100 Bible verses that made America. Defining moments that shaped our enduring foundation of faith. The story of the founding of Harvard University here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country. Stories from our big cities and small towns but we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
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