1839 INSCRIBED HARVARD UNIVERSITY CATALOG OF STUDENTS, FACULTY, CAMBRIDGE MASS

Description

Offered is an 1839, 36pp. paper wrapper catalog listing the students, faculty, courses, admission requirements and expenses of Harvard University for the academic year 1839-40. It is inscribed by a significant Harvard graduate who was a prominent missionary in Madras, India. The formal title is:
A Catalogue
of
the
Officers
and Students
of
Harvard
University
for
the
Academical
Year
1839
-
40.
It was printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Folsom, Wells, and Thurston. But this catalog contains much more than lists of officers and students.  The catalog first lists members of the “Government” of the university which includes the president, the fellows, the treasurer and the overseers. Among the overseers listed are John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster. This is followed by a listing of faculty members. Members of the divinity, and law schools are listed by class and their hometowns and college residences locations are provided. Medical students and their instructors are listed. A listing of the “College” faculty includes Henry W. Longfellow. Undergraduates are listed by class and their home residence and college rooms are specified. The total number of students (undergraduate and graduate) is shown to be 426. There is a section specifying the requirements for admission to various departments—Latin, Greek, Mathematics. There are sections consisting of detailed outlines of the courses of instruction for both undergraduate and graduate students. The University Library is described and had an estimated 46,200 volumes. Annual attendance expenses are “broken down” by category, with an estimated annual cost of 5.00. This copy is inscribed to a “Miss Nancy Whihidge affectionately yours C.H.A. Dall” in old iron gall ink on a blank page, preceding the title page. Page 7 of this catalog shows Charles Henry Appleton Dall was a senior class member of the Divinity School and that he was from Baltimore. A short biographical sketch follows:
“Charles Henry Appleton Dall was born in Baltimore, February 12, 1816. His parents were from Massachusetts, his mother being a sister-in-law of Dr. Horace Holley, minister of the Hollis Street Church in Boston. In his seventh year Charles Dall was adopted by his bachelor uncle and maiden aunt, William and Sarah Dall of Boston, and prepared for college in the Boston Latin School. He graduated at Harvard in 1857[ this is not correct, it should read 1837–see below where he is ordained to the ministry in 1841] and from the Divinity School three years later. His college life was marked by conscientious diligence and fidelity to every duty. It is recorded of him that he often found himself in disagreement upon matters of college interest with the majority of his classmates; and, as he had an almost morbid desire for approbation, his experiences were sometimes painful. They served, at least, to display the firmness of his moral decisions. He always spoke of his college experience with warm gratitude, but his years there were certainly not years of unmixed happiness.
Upon leaving the Divinity School, he enlisted at once in the ministry-at-large, and was ordained to this ministry in St. Louis in 1841. Under the direction of Dr. Eliot he labored in the free schools and was the founder of the still existing Mission School. He continued these labors at Baltimore, his birthplace, from 1843 to 1845, and there married Caroline Healey, who carried on much of his work during his frequent illnesses. Ill-health, which had previously obliged him to take a long sea voyage to Europe, necessitated his withdrawal from the ministry-at-large. For two years he was minister of the Unitarian society in Needham; and then, after eighteen months of sickness, he accepted a call to Toronto, Canada, where he passed four happy years. Ill-health again prostrated him; and, after a long brain fever, he was forced to resign and to abandon all active work.
It was at this time that the Rev. Charles T. Brooks, of Newport, returned from a journey round the world with his mind and heart quickened to the importance of a Unitarian mission at Madras, India. He appealed to the American Unitarian Association to establish a mission in India. Mr. Dall was very much interested in this proposition, and volunteered for the proposed mission. His commission from the Association bore date of February 22, 1855— a good day on which to begin an American Enterprise—and six days later he sailed from Boston for Calcutta in the ship “Napoleon.” His instructions were of the broadest character, and he was free to build up his work according to his own plans and desires.
Five times during his thirty years of missionary life he returned to America, but only to secure new resources and to go back to his mission. His work consisted of preaching, Sunday-school instruction, lectures, preparation of newspaper articles, leaflets, and little books, the foundation of industrial schools, the distribution of literature. He was able to interest many wealthy individuals in America in his plans and in his work for the education and relief of the people in his charge. He himself inherited a considerable fortune, but spent nearly all of it on his work. He died, greatly lamented, at Calcutta, July 18, 1886.“ harvardsquarelibrary dot org
An interesting artifact of early Ivy League education.
Size: 4.5" X 7.5"
Condition: Very good, with an old vertical fold. This catalog is complete but shows evidence of having been bound into a pamphlet cover long ago. The evidence is old glue marks on a blank stiff paper at the very back, probably not original to the catalog and the blank, inscribed page in front of the title (actual cover) page. In addition, although there is evidence of a sewn binding, the catalog is now firmly held together by three rusted staples.
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