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The history of Harvard University begins in 1636, when Harvard College was founded in the young settlement of New Towne in Massachusetts, which had been settled in 1630. New Towne was organized as a town on the founding of the university, and changed its name two years later to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in honor of the city in England. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. In the late 18th century, as Harvard began granting higher degrees, it began to be called Harvard University, with Harvard College referring exclusively to its undergraduate program. The university's stature became national, then international, as a dozen graduate and professional schools were formed alongside the nucleus undergraduate College. Historically influential in national roles are the schools of medicine (1782), law (1817) and business (1908) as well as the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1890). For centuries, Harvard graduates dominated Massachusetts' clerical and civil ranks. Since the late 19th century, Harvard has been one of the most prestigious schools in the world, with the largest library system and financial endowment. Founding and Colonial era With some 17,000 Puritans migrating to New England by 1636, Harvard was founded in anticipation of the need for training clergy for the new commonwealth, a "church in the wilderness". Harvard was established in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, the school received a printing press‍—‌the only press at the time in what is now the United States, until Harvard acquired a second in 1659. On March 13, 1639, the college was renamed Harvard College after clergyman John Harvard, a University of Cambridge alumnus who had willed the new school £779 pounds sterling and his library of some 400 books. In the 1640s, Harvard College established the Harvard Indian College, which educated Native American students. It was only attended by a handful of students, only one of whom graduated. The colony charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650 at the beginning of the English Interregnum. When the college's first president Henry Dunster abandoned Puritanism in favor of the English Baptist faith in 1654, he provoked a controversy that highlighted two distinct approaches to dealing with dissent in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony's Puritan leaders, whose own religion was born of dissent from mainstream Church of England, generally worked for reconciliation with members who questioned matters of Puritan theology, but responded much more harshly to outright rejection of Puritanism. Dunster's conflict with the colony's magistrates began when he failed to have his infant son baptized, believing as an adherent of the Believers baptism of English Baptists and/or Anabaptists that only adults should be baptized. Efforts to restore Dunster to Puritan orthodoxy failed and his apostasy proved untenable to colony leaders who had entrusted him in his job as Harvard's president to uphold the colony's religious mission, thus he represented a threat to the stability of society. Dunster exiled himself in 1654 and moved to nearby Plymouth Colony, where he died in 1658. Because it had been illegal for the colony to establish a college, Charles II rescinded the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter in 1684 by writ of scire facias. In 1692, the leading Puritan divine Increase Mather became president of Harvard. One of his acts was replacing pagan classics with books by Christian authors in ethics classes and maintaining a high standard of discipline. The Harvard "Lawes" of 1642 and the "Harvard College Laws of 1700" testify to its original high level of discipline. Students were required to observe rules of pious decorum inconceivable in the 19th century and ultimately to prove their fitness for the bachelor's degree by showing that they could "read the original of the Old and New Testament into the Latin tongue, and resolve them logically". Harvard's leadership and alumni (including Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather) played a central role in the Salem Witch Trials 1692–1693. The town of Dedham was founded in 1636, the same year as the college. The first minister of the First Church and Parish in Dedham, John Allen, served as an overseer, and every minister through 1861 was connected to the university. Given its population and modest means, the support the community provided to the college was generous. Allen donated two cows, presumably to provide milk for the president and tutors. During Harvard's early years, the town of Cambridge maintained order on campus and provided economic support, as the local Puritan minister had direct oversight of Harvard and ensured the orthodoxy of its leadership. By 1700, Harvard was strong enough to regulate and discipline its own people and to a large extent the direction in which support and assistance flowed was reversed, Harvard now providing financial support for local economic expansion, improvements to public health and construction of local roads, meetinghouses and schools. 18th century The early motto of Harvard was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, meaning "Truth for Christ and the Church". In the early classes, half the graduates became ministers (though by the 1760s the proportion was down to 15%) and ten of Harvard's first twelve presidents were ministers. Systematic theological instruction was inaugurated in 1721 and by 1827 Harvard became a nucleus of theological teaching in New England. The end of Mather's presidency in 1701 marked the start of a long struggle between orthodoxy and liberalism. Harvard's first secular president was John Leverett, who began his term in 1708. Leverett left the curriculum largely intact and sought to keep the college independent of the overwhelming influence of any single sect. During the American Revolution, Loyalist alumni were outnumbered seven to one by Patriots—seven alumni died in the fighting. 19th century Unitarians Throughout the 18th century, Enlightenment ideas of the power of reason and free will became widespread among Congregational ministers, putting those ministers and their congregations in tension with more traditionalist, Calvinist parties.: 1–4  When the Hollis Professor of Divinity David Tappan died in 1803 and the president of Harvard Joseph Willard died a year later, in 1804 a struggle broke out over their replacements. Henry Ware was elected to the chair in 1805 and the liberal Samuel Webber was appointed to the presidency of Harvard two years later, which signaled the changing of the tide from the dominance of traditional ideas at Harvard to the dominance of liberal, Arminian ideas (defined by traditionalists as Unitarian ideas).: 4–5 : 24  Science In 1846, the natural history lectures of Louis Agassiz were acclaimed both in New York and on his campus at Harvard College. Agassiz's approach was distinctly idealist and posited Americans' "participa.... Discover the Charles Harvey Geoffrey Jones popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Charles Harvey Geoffrey Jones books.