Joseph Willard

For the New York state senator, see Joseph A. Willard.

Joseph Willard (29 December 1738–25 September 1804) was an American Congregational clergyman and academic. He was president of Harvard from 1781 until 1804.

Biography

He was educated at the Dummer Academy (now known as The Governor's Academy). He was left fatherless at an early age, and made several coasting voyages. Through the generosity of friends he entered Harvard College, where he received a B.A. in 1765, and an M.A. in 1768. He was a tutor at Harvard until 1772, when he began serving as pastor at the First Congregational Church in Beverly, Massachusetts. In 1780 he was appointed first corresponding secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1781, he became president of Harvard, and served until his death.

Willard was the father of Cambridge Mayor Sidney Willard.^[1]

Works

He published a few sermons, a Latin address on the death of George Washington, prefixed to David Tappan's Discourse (Cambridge, 1800), and mathematical and astronomical papers in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. He was a sound Greek scholar, and left a Greek grammar in manuscript.

Notes

References

•  "Willard, Joseph". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. 
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John, eds. (1889). "Williard, Simon, settler". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton  This source gives his birth date as January 9, 1738.