Biography of John the Younger

It's tentatively called His Excellency but I'm open to other possibilities. Subtitle would be: Biography of John Leverett, Imperious President of Harvard 1708-1724. I figure getting Harvard into the title or subtitle would make it appear a little higher on some google searches but part of my natural audience would be people who live in Leverett Hall at Harvard. Not that they would necessarily care about John the Younger. But someone there would be glad I wrote the book.

I've learned a lot from reading and writing about his life. One thing I learned is that he died broke, and his family had to sell off the old Leverett mansion in the center of town just to pay off his debts. He had been squeezed by the corporation which gave him a miserly salary in a time when depreciation was taking its toll on everyone. He had to keep up a royal bearing as the man who owned Cambridge. He had lots of property out in the hinterlands that was being squatted on and in fact if people squatted on it long enough or well enough, it became theirs and he was too busy to do anything about it. He looked up and it was gone. So all his attention to Harvard finances meant basically that he'd been paying no attention to his own, and I can certainly relate to that problem. His second wife ended up marrying his prize pupil, the guy who had adored him all those years, but I haven't really got there and haven't read so much about that.

Tonight I tried to get a handle on his nine kids, of whom only two lived to come of age. And of those two, both girls, one died childless at the age of 27; the other had ten kids herself but outlived maybe seven of them. Outrageous! The babies were dying left and right at the time, apparently. How heartbreaking! I have it even in their own words, what it's like to have a baby and then just lose it. It shouldn't happen to anyone, much less seven times.

The relationship with Cotton Mather is really a little more complex than I thought. Cotton Mather was very openly jealous of him, as he very vocally wanted the job as President of Harvard. John's having and keeping the job, from 1708 to 1724 when he died, was one big fat stuff it to Cotton Mather. But there's more to it even then. It's easy enough to make Cotton Mather into a villain as he already did himself in in the witch trials, and history will never forgive him. All that means is that it's not necessary for me to forgive him either. But the book is not about the witch trials. It's more about Harvard, and the general conflict on all campuses between studying hard and hardly studying. Divinity students shouldn't need or want to go out partying at night, should they?

You live and learn. I remember going to visit Harvard once and expecting it to be just like other colleges only more so. Instead I found it a fairly serious, busy place. The only kids who were hanging out were some kids who had figured out how to beat the pinball machine that was provided for them in their dorm. The dorm snack bar had a cool sign that said ve ri tas ty which I thought was enormously clever. In general they make way too much of a big deal out of such things as tradition, appearance, ceremony, etc. Such were things that Leverett, my distant relative, did his best to perpetuate. At least he put the college on life support, revived it and brought it back to a place where we can talk about it.