The college was named for the Reverend John Harvard, who came to this country from England in 1637, settled In Charlestown, and died the following year.  He left a legacy, including his library, to the new institution of learning, which was a princely benefaction for the time.  As a suitable recognition for this first large donation, the institution was called Harvard College.  The exact place of Mr. Harvard’s burial is unknown.  It was somewhere “about the foot of Town Hill.”  It was in the old burial-ground near the old prison in Charlestown, in all probability, and the monument to his memory, if not over his grave, is likely very near it.  The inscriptions on this monument explain the time and cause of its erection.  On the eastern side of the shaft, looking toward the land of his birth and education, we read:—­

“On the twenty-sixth day of September, A.D. 1828, this Stone was erected by Graduates of the University of Cambridge in honor of its founder, who died at Charlestown, on the twenty-sixth day of September, A.D. 1638.”

This is in his mother-tongue.  On the side looking toward the seat of learning which bears his name is the following inscription, in classic Latin: 

“In piam et perpetuam memoriam Johannis Harvardii, annis fere ducentis post obitum ejus peractis, Academiae quae est Cantabrigiae Nov-Anglorum alumni, ne diutius vir de literis nostris optime meritus sine monumento quanivis humili jaceret, hunc lapidem ponendum curaverunt.”  The following is a literal translation:—­

“In pious and perpetual remembrance of John Harvard, nearly two hundred years after his death, the alumni of the University at Cambridge, in New England, have erected this stone, that one who deserves the highest honors from our literary men may be no longer without a monument, however humble.”

Edward Everett delivered the address at the dedication of the monument.  The closing passage of his oration is as follows:—­

“While the College which he founded shall continue to the latest posterity, a monument not unworthy of the most honored name, we trust that this plain memorial also will endure; and, while it guides the dutiful votary to the spot where his ashes are deposited, will teach to those who survey it the supremacy of intellectual and ’moral desert, and encourage them, too, by a like munificence, to aspire to a name as bright as that which stands engraven on its shaft,—­

    ’Clarum et venerabile nomen
  Gentibus, et multum nostrae quod proderat urbi.’”

The citizens of New England entered most heartily into the idea of establishing this college and contributed whatever they could; utensils from their homes, stock from their farms, their goods, merchandise, anything, in fine, which they had to give, so anxious were they to educate their youth, and especially to provide for an educated ministry.  Peirce, in his History of the college, says:—­