Henry Dunster: Harvard's First President
In November 1654, as the night watchman made his rounds through the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, candlelight still flickered inside the big house next to Harvard College. There at the president’s residence sat Henry Dunster, close to the hearth to keep his ink from freezing, while the only sounds were the scratch of his quill pen against parchment and the raspy coughs of his sick wife and child in their bed chamber across the hall. Instead of preparing the next day’s Latin lecture for his Harvard scholars, as Dunster normally spent his evenings, he was composing a petition to the Massachusetts General Court. After years of devoted service as the respected head of this first American college, Dunster was no longer Harvard’s president; he had been forced to resign, and he was threatened with banishment from the colony in a matter of days. Worried about his bleak future prospects, Dunster wrote one final humiliating appeal to the magistrates, begging to stay in the house through the coming winter until he could settle his family elsewhere.
https://etseq.law.harvard.edu/2007/10/harvards_first_president/
In November 1654, as the night watchman made his rounds through the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, candlelight still flickered inside the big house next to Harvard College. There at the president’s residence sat Henry Dunster, close to the hearth to keep his ink from freezing, while the only sounds were the scratch of his quill pen against parchment and the raspy coughs of his sick wife and child in their bed chamber across the hall. Instead of preparing the next day’s Latin lecture for his Harvard scholars, as Dunster normally spent his evenings, he was composing a petition to the Massachusetts General Court. After years of devoted service as the respected head of this first American college, Dunster was no longer Harvard’s president; he had been forced to resign, and he was threatened with banishment from the colony in a matter of days. Worried about his bleak future prospects, Dunster wrote one final humiliating appeal to the magistrates, begging to stay in the house through the coming winter until he could settle his family elsewhere.
https://etseq.law.harvard.edu/2007/10/harvards_first_president/