LIBRARIANS OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 19
first wife, whom he married 10 May, 1729, was
Mary Cabot. They had three daughters. By his
second marriage, 10 January, 1743, to Elizabeth
Price, he had one daughter and two sons. Jonathan Mitchel Sewall, the youngest child of this
marriage, was a lawyer and poet, whose ode,
"War and Washington," was sung in the revolutionary army.
AUTHORITIES: Essex inst. Hist, collections, iii. 3; vi. 106. W. E. hist, and gen. Register, v. 48. Salisbury, Family -memorials, 1885, pp. 188-189.
1723-1726.
John Hancock, Jr., minister at Braintree, Mass., was the son of Rev. John Hancock (H. U. 1689) of Lexington, and Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. Thomas Clark. He was born 1 June, 1702, graduated at Harvard in 1719, taking his A.M. in course, and served as Librarian 1723-1726. During his term a supplement to the Catalogue was printed. It was a small pamphlet of only five leaves, without a title-page, and paged continuously with the Catalogue of 1723. The heading of the first page reads : "Continuatio Supplementi Catalogi Librorum Bibliothecæ Collegij Harvardini, quod est Cantabrigiae in Nova Anglia"; the colophon is "Bostoni Nov-Anglorum : Typis B. Green, Academiæ Typographi. MDCCXXV." There is a copy of this supplement in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, but the College Library does not possess a copy.
Some years previously Thomas Hollis of London, the first of the benefactors of that name, had begun his long series of gifts of money and books to the College. His letters still preserved contain frequent references to the Library. The following extract from a letter written in June, 1725, presents a sorry picture of its condition at that time: "Your library is reckoned here to be ill managed, by the account I have of some that know it, you want seats to sitt and read, and chains to your valluable books like our Bodleian library, or Sion College in London, you know their methods, wch are approved, but do not imitate them, you let your books be taken at pleasure home to Men's houses, and many are lost; your (boyish) students take them to their chambers, and teare out pictures & maps to adorne their Walls, such things are not good; if you want roome for modern books, it is easy to remove the less usefull into a more remote place, but not to sell any, they are devoted."
Mr. Hancock was ordained at Braintree 2 November, 1726, and proved himself an able minister, a counsellor of moderation, yet a forcible defender of his belief, industrious and hospitable. His reply to the Rev. Joshua Gee's attack upon the assembly of ministers which met at Boston in 1743 is clear, concise, and not with- out cutting repartee. He baptized President John Adams. His brother Thomas founded the Hancock professorship of Hebrew and other Oriental languages.
John Hancock married Mary Hawke, widow of Samuel Thaxter, and died at Braintree (now Quincy) 7 May, 1744. Of his three children, his son, Governor John, was president of the continental congress, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a donor of five hundred pounds to the College towards replacing the Library and philosophical apparatus after the fire in 1764.
AUTHORITIES : Gay, Sermon preach'd at the funeral of the Reverend Mr. John Hancock. 1744. pp. (2), 25. Hollis, Letters (MS.). Hudson, History of Lexington, 1868, p. 85 (of geneal. reg.). Pattee, History of Old Braintree and Qitincy, 1878, pp. 217-220. Quincy, Hist, of Harvard, 1840, i. 432. Sprague, Annals of Amer. pulpit, 1857, i. 240.
1726-1728.
Stephen Sewall, the twenty-fourth Librarian
of Harvard, and chief justice of Massachusetts,
was a nephew of Samuel Sewall, the second
Librarian of the College, chief justice of the
colony in 1718. His brother Mitchel was Librarian 1722-1723, and Stephen, son of his cousin
Nicholas, held the position in 1762-1763.
Stephen was born at Salem 18 December, 1702, the ninth child of Major Stephen Sewall and Margaret, daughter of Rev. Jonathan Mitchel. He graduated with the class of 1721, took his A.M. in course, and for a time kept a school at Marblehead, devoting much of his leisure to preaching and to the study of divinity. Returning to Cambridge, Sewall became Librarian at Harvard in 1726. In 1728 he withdrew from the Library, but held a tutorship until 1739. "As a tutor he proved that there was a perfect consistency between the most rigorous and resolute exertion of authority and the most gentle and complacent manners."
Turning his attention, meanwhile, to the study of law, for which his mind seemed especially fitted, he accepted in 1739 a seat on the bench of the supreme court of Massachusetts. In 1752 he was appointed chief justice to succeed Paul Dudley (H. U. 1690) ; he became also a member of the council. These positions he held until his death, 10 September, 1760.
Mr. Sewall doubted the legality of granting general writs of assistance upon which the cus toms officers depended for their power to suppress illicit trading. This view of the question brought him into great favor with the patriotic party. He died before passing final judgment.
