Americans -- England -- Oxford; Education -- United States; Education, Higher -- England -- Oxford; University of Oxford
after its founding the two terms are used as synonymous; an appendix
to what is called the charter of Harvard "College" calls the
institution a "University." This confusion of terms still persists,
and is found at most other American institutions, the constitutions of
which were largely modeled after that of Harvard. For generations the
endowments and the teaching force of the American college and
university were identical. Thus as regards its constitution the
typical American university is a single English college writ large.
Almost from the outset, however, there were, in one sense of the word,
several colleges. In "An Inventory of the whole Estate of Harvd
Colledge taken by the President & Fellows as they find the same to be
Decemb. 10, 1654," the first two items are as follows:--
"Imprs. The building called the old colledge, conteyning a Hall,
Kitchen, Buttery, Cellar, Turrett & 5 Studeys & therin 7 chambers for
students in them. A Pantry & small corne Chamber. A library & Books
therin, vallued at 400lb.
"It. Another house called Goffes colledge, & was purchased of Edw:
Goffe. conteyning five chambers. 18 studyes. a kitchen cellar & 3
garretts."[3]
It is to be noted that "Old Colledge," which was Harvard's building,
had a kitchen, buttery, and cellar, a pantry and a small corn chamber,
and was thus primitively modeled after an English hall or college.
Presumably the inmates, like their cousins across the water, dined in
the hall. As for "Goffe's colledge," granting that the punctuation of
the inventory is intentional, it had a kitchen cellar, which would
seem to imply a kitchen; and it is not impossible that there should be
a comma after "kitchen." No hall is mentioned, and it is hardly likely
that there could have been so imposing a room in what was built for a
private house; but it would have been possible and natural to serve
meals in the largest of the five "chambers." A third building
Hutchinson's history describes as "a small brick building called the
Indian Colledge, where some few Indians did study, but now it is a
printing house," the first printing house in British America. The two
earliest buildings at Harvard would thus be the abodes of separate
communities, and though I can find no intimation as to the Indian
College, it can scarcely be doubted that since it was established for
the separate use of the redskins, it contained a separate
living-plant. A later record shows that there was a separate kitchen
in the first Stoughton Hall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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