The court met on October 28, 1636, and ordered that a sum of money be given toward a school, though the college had no name or walls yet. The General Court acted because the settlers wanted to teach their children and to train ministers who could read the Bible in the tongue of the day. The need was clear.
The school took shape in Cambridge, across the river from Boston, and it grew around a gifted library left by John Harvard, a young minister who died in 1638 and left it half his estate. The college took his name, and it opened with a handful of students and one master. The books mattered most.
The aim was plain. The founders feared a learned ministry would die, and they wrote that the college existed so that the church might have light, in a phrase of the old charter, while Greek and Latin ruled the early course and the faith drove the plan for a century. The faith drove the plan.
Harvard became the oldest university in the United States and a model for those that followed. It trained judges, presidents, and scholars, and its name now draws students from across the world. The vote of 1636 started more than a school. The idea outgrew its creed. The school still teaches in the old yard.