John Harvard (1607–1638) was an English minister in America,
"a godly gentleman and a lover of learning",
whose deathbed
bequest to the
"schoale or Colledge"
founded two years earlier by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that it was consequently ordered
"that the
Colledge
agreed upon formerly to
bee
built at
Cambridg shalbee
called Harvard
Colledge."
The institution considers him the most honored of its founders – those whose efforts and contributions in its early days "ensure[d] its permanence."