It soon became apparent to his family that Jacob had little desire to learn a craft; in fact, in his autobiography, he did not even specify the trades he attempted to learn. His real passion was for books and reading, and Jacob’s family and friends came to recognize his intellectual abilities. When he turned sixteen, Jacob began to think about attending college—an audacious dream, because no one in his immediate family had ever gone to college and because he lacked the money to pay for it. His half brother Bixby Barret came up with a clever plan, however: when Jacob turned twenty-one, he was to inherit land from his father’s estate, and Bixby suggested selling this land immediately and using the proceeds to pay for Harvard.20
To execute this plan, though, Jacob would need a new guardian, who would then sell the land for him. The probate court approved the arrangement, and “the thing was accomplished,” Jacob reported in his autobiography. He marveled at his good fortune. “I viewed it as a favorable providence, that three times I missed being bound out till I was twenty-one years old, which would doubtless have prevented a liberal education.” With the money in hand, the seventeen-year-old’s next challenge was to prepare for Harvard, and that involved enrolling in a grammar school, where Jacob boarded with a minister and undertook the study of Latin—standard practices at the time for those students interested in attending college.21
Students seeking admission to Harvard had to pass an oral exam given by the college’s president and its tutors shortly before commencement was held for graduating college seniors. The exam tested whether an applicant could, in the words of the college’s laws, “read, construe, and parse Tully, Virgil, or such like common classical Latin authors.” The incoming freshman was also expected to be able to read Greek and be able to “decline the paradigms of Greek nouns and verbs.” These entrance requirements reflected conventional notions of what constituted a classical education: scholars should be able to read the ancients. If the applicant passed the exam, he received a copy of the college laws and was required to pay all expenses for one quarter.22
Jacob did not record his experiences, but he likely passed the exam easily because the test focused on languages, his core strength as a student. Six weeks after taking the test, he returned to Cambridge for the fall term. He received his housing assignment and met his two “chums,” or roommates. Then he braced himself for the arrival of the upper classmen, who treated freshmen like plebes in a military academy. The upper classmen made them run errands and serve as their servants. Tasks included fetching bread and beer and washing clothes. Decorum also dictated that the freshmen not wear hats at meals or “lean” at prayers or toss a ball in the yard.23
Harvard in 1740 was becoming a modern college, albeit slowly. Founded in 1636 in a cow pasture, the college was located in a struggling frontier town, then known as New Town, that had been abandoned earlier that year by most of its Puritan inhabitants, who migrated to the Connecticut frontier under the leadership of the Reverend Thomas Hooker. By the time of Jacob’s enrollment, Harvard consisted of three main buildings grouped in a courtyard called the College Yard. The original Harvard Hall, completed in 1677, was a four-story brick building with a gambrel roof that was both imposing and practical. It was a self-contained structure, holding classrooms, library, buttery/kitchen, and living quarters for two tutors and for students. Twelve years later the college constructed the middle building, called Stoughton Hall, and in 1720 it built Massachusetts Hall. The latter faced Harvard Hall and was erected for the princely sum of 3,500 pounds, Massachusetts currency. Harvard’s leading historian praised the craftsmanship of these buildings: “These ‘colleges’ . . . were built of the best materials and in the best style of which the colonists were capable. They contained every comfort known to the times, for the notion that college students should ‘live like gentlemen’ came over with our founders.” Indeed, college life did carry a whiff of gentility—heady stuff for a farm boy from Stoneham. Students were trained to take their place among New England’s elite, and they lived and dined in some comfort (although, like their modern counterparts, they complained incessantly about the food): the college laws specified that the tables in the “scholars’ Commons,” as the dining hall was known, “shall be covered with clean linen cloths of a suitable length and breadth . . . and furnished with pewter plates.”24
In its aspirations for gentility, Harvard had an Old World feel to it. The college, however, did not forget its Puritan roots. The Harvard of 1740 still served to train Puritan ministers (as well as to prepare leaders for the colonies), and religion still dominated academic life despite the arrival of Enlightenment values. The college laws informed the class of 1744 that “all scholars shall behave themselves blamelessly, leading sober, righteous, and godly lives.” All students were to “seasonably attend the worship of God in the hall morning and evening.” Those late to prayers would be fined four pence per infraction. “And every scholar shall on the Lord’s Day carefully apply himself to the duties of religion and piety,” strictures that Michael Wigglesworth and Joseph Emerson surely would have approved.25
Harvard’s record in living up to these lofty ideals was mixed. Out of Jacob’s graduating class of thirty-three, eleven did go on to become ministers. One noteworthy example was Jonathan Mayhew, the famed Boston minister. Yet Jacob described religion at Harvard as being “at a very low ebb” during his years there, and his comment hints at just how complex the college’s intellectual atmosphere was in 1740.26
“Liberalism” was steadily gaining a foothold on campus. A milestone of sorts had occurred in 1708, when John Leverett assumed the presidency at Harvard. Leverett was the first person to lead the college who was not a minister. Although he made few changes in the curriculum, Leverett did much to establish the college’s liberal tradition, strengthening Harvard’s finances and overseeing an ambitious expansion in course offerings and enrollment during his seventeen years in office: establishing the first endowed chair, the first student club, and the first student publication (The Telltale, which was largely secular in tone).27
Yet when Jacob Green took his place at Harvard, the traditional educational system remained largely intact and would have been familiar to a student of 1640. A single tutor, who served three-year terms, taught all subjects to the entire class of 1744. (It was not until January 1767, during the presidency of Edward Holyoke, that Harvard tutors specialized in a particular subject.) Jacob’s first tutor was Daniel Rogers, himself a Harvard graduate, who began teaching at the college in 1732. Rogers was not particularly popular on campus or respected. His very presence at Harvard, in fact, was a symbol of his failure—after graduating, he was unable to land a job as a minister despite numerous tryouts and New England’s perennial need for men of the cloth. In the 1730s, mischievous students stole his wine, beer, and silver tobacco box. A fellow tutor, meanwhile, derided Rogers as an “Ignoramus [and] Blockhead.”28
Harvard, like Yale, based its curriculum on European models, and both colleges used virtually the same texts. Harvard’s laws explained that “the Undergraduates shall be brought forward by their respective Tutors, in the knowledge of three learned Languages [Latin, Greek, and Hebrew] . . . and also in the knowledge of Rhetorick, Logick, natural Philosophy, Geography, Ethicks, Divinity, Metaphysicks, and . . . Mathematicks.”29
To aid them in the study of the Old Testament, freshmen studied the grammar of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. By the end of the year, their tutor expected them to be able to translate biblical passages from the original. Sophomores studied logic; juniors “natural philosophy” (basic sciences, such as physics, astronomy, and biology) and math; seniors “metaphysics” (the study of the “existence of things, their natures and causes”). Several subjects were constants for all four years: theology, ethics, oratory.30
The curriculum was designed to produce ministers who fully understood the Bible and possessed the ability to think and speak on their feet. To hone their skills as preachers and debaters, students delivered recitations and public disputations, culminating in the commencement exercises when the graduates delivered theses summarizing what they had learned during their time at Harvard. Yet the study of natural philosophy, math, and metaphysics also took the class of 1744 deep into the Enlightenment.
Jacob found life at Harvard demanding, even health-threatening. Part of the fault was