Lionel de Jersey Harvard
As a Harvard senior
Born	(1893-06-03)3 June 1893 Lewisham, London[1]
Died	30 March 1918(1918-03-30) (aged 24) Arras, France
Cause of death	Killed in action
Resting place	Boisleux-au-Mont[1]
Education	Harvard University (BA)
Known for	The first Harvard to attend Harvard
Spouse	May (Barker) Harvard
Children	John Peter de Jersey Harvard
Parent(s)	Thomas Mawson Harvard Maud de Jersey (Thompson) Harvard[1]
Relatives	John Eric de J. Harvard (brother,b. & d. 1892) [1]: 200 [2][better source needed] Kenneth O'Gorman Harvard (brother)
Awards	Boylston Prize Class poet Baccalaureate Hymnist
Signature

Lionel de Jersey Harvard (3 June 1893 – 30 March 1918) was a young Englishman who, discovered to becollaterally descended fromHarvard CollegefounderJohn Harvard, was consequently offered the opportunity to attend that university, from which he graduated in 1915.The first Harvard to attend Harvard, he died in theFirst World War less than three years later, leaving a wife and infant son.

After his death a fellow Army officer wrote, "If Harvard College made him what he was, I want my sons to go there that it may do the same for them."Harvard'sLionel Hall, and its Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholarship, are named in his honour.

In 1908 editorMark A. De Wolfe Howe discovered an 1847 letter^[1]in which Harvard PresidentEdward Everett makes reference to a "Reverend John Harvard" living at the time inPlymouth, England, calling him "aWesleyan clergyman whose ancestor ... was a brother of our founder".^[3]Inquiries led to the identi­fi­cation of London business­man^[4]Thomas Mawson Harvard as the youngest son of this nineteenth-century Reverend John Harvard (1819–1888),^[1][2]through whom he was descended from Thomas Harvard (1609–1637), brother^[5]of Harvard University founderJohn Harvard (1607–1638), who had died childless.^[4]

Thomas Mawson Harvard's elder son Lionel de Jersey Harvard (called "Leo" by his family)^[6] was at the time attendingSt Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School inSouthwark‍—‌the successor toSt Saviour's Grammar School, which John Harvard had himself attended.^{[note 1]}Many in Lionel's line had (again as had John Harvard) attendedEmmanuel College, Cambridge and become ministers.^[5]On his leaving St Olave's, however, the family's finances ruled out any ambition to attend Emmanuel College himself, and so he took employment with a firm ofmarine insurance brokers.

In 1910 a group of Harvardalumni offered to underwrite Lionel's attendance at Harvard College,^{[note 2]}which itself waived the tuition of $150 per year.^{[citation needed]}He failed his first attempt at the entrance exam, but after a year of refresher study he qualified, and "set out forCambridge, Massachusetts in lieu ofCambridge, England", as his friend John Paulding Brown put it later.^{[note 3]}

The "sentimental and romantic" ^[4]story of "how Mother Harvard sought and found one of her own" ^[9]was reported throughout the United States,^[10]and on 26 September 1911 theBoston Transcript announced, "Harvard of Harvard Here".^[11]"He had the time of his life getting safely ashore [past] reporters and camera artists", saidThe Cambridge Tribune. "Apparently the one thing he does not wish is notoriety of any kind." ^[12]Howe later wrote that "it seemed like the realization of a fairy-tale ... Our local newspapers did everything in their power to spoil him, if he had been spoilable. His arrival and history were glaringly chronicled."^[1]His freshman rooms were inWeld Hall.^[11]

He was a good student if not brilliant, and one of the most popular members of his class;^{[13][5]: 13-14}Brown called him "a little different from the boys who come up each year as Freshmen, more gentle, perhaps, and more self-controlled." ^[14]: 531He belonged to theHasty Pudding andD.U. Clubs,Delta Kappa Epsilon, theSignet Society, theGlee Club, the Dramatic, Musical andCosmopolitan Clubs, the Social Service Committee ofPhillips Brooks House, the Chapel Choir, theMemorial Society, and the Christian Associ­ation; and was an officer of several of these.^[1]Though on arrival he had told reporters that he played soccer and tennis, and wanted to learn baseball andAmerican football,^[11]his participation in organized athletics was limited to classcrew.^{[1]: 201 [5]: 13}

His junior-year recitation ofAlfred Noyes' "The Highwayman" won him the Boylston Prize,^[15]and after he portrayed John Harvard in a pageant celebrating the 150th anniversary ofHollis Hall^[16][17]his classmates began calling him John.^[1]"Great was the applause whenever the [Harvard Glee Club] broke into, 'Here's to Johnny Harvard, fill him up a glass, Fill him up a glass to his name and fame,' for there he was in person. [He] seemed a living symbol of all that was best and brightest in Harvard itself, manifested to us briefly after three hundred years."^{[note 4]}

Graduatingcum laude in English^[20]in June 1915, he was selected to compose both the Class Poem and the Baccalaurete Hymn.^[6]His poem was "a stirring lyric adjuring all Harvard men in the present crisis of civilization [i.e. World War I] to stand for their historic ideals of freedom":^[21]

A call to arms rings out today / Far loftier than of steel,

The arms of the strong man girt with truth / To guard God's commonweal.^[22]

His hymn reflected similar themes:

Forward we go from out these hallowed walls, / Fearless with Thee where'er our duty calls;

Sundered in body, make us one in Thee, / One in the truth that makes Thy children free.^[23][24]

Speaking to the Alumni Association immediately after receiving his diploma he said, "I have had four years here full to the brim of happiness and ever-increasing joy ... I can never say enough in gratitude. When I say 'Thank you!' that word was never charged with more fervor." ^[25] He later wrote to Howe:

I have never been able to find out who were the gentlemen who have been so generously looking after me in money matters whilst I have been in Cambridge. It has been awfully generous of them, and I do appreciate it. I hope I shall be able to repay the kindness of you all in many more ways than one.^[1]

Lionel Harvard (left) and Kenneth Harvard.

Harvard planned to become a medicalmissionary, but on returning to London immediately after graduation he enlisted in theBritish Army.^[5]: 14 "It is all of a piece with the devotion which the best young men of Europe are rendering to their flags," said theHarvard Alumni Bulletin.^[26] He joined theInns of CourtOfficers' Training Corps on 12 July 1915^[27] and was commissioned asecond lieutenant in theGrenadier Guards on 28 September.^[28] He was promoted tolieutenant in January 1916^[29] and joined the 1st Battalion in France on 8 March 1916.^[30]

On 11 September 1915^[1] he married childhood friend (Edith) May Barker,^[5]to whom he had been quietly engaged since before leaving for America.^[31] A son, John Peter de Jersey Harvard,^[1][32]was born 4 September 1916.^[33]Lionel was shot in the chest on 25 September 1916 atLesboeufs during theBattle of the Somme^{[34]: 125 [35]}but after a long convalescence he returned to combat in June 1917, as company commander.^[1]

At the outbreak of the war, Lionel's younger brother Kenneth O'Gorman Harvard (born 4 June 1897)^[2]gave up his intention to attend Harvard College.^[14] He was commissioned August 1915^[36] and, with Lionel, was promoted to lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards in January 1916.^[14][29] He was killed atPilckem Ridge, during theBattle of Passchendaele, on 1 August 1917;^[1] Lionel, who had been fighting nearby, helped bury him.^[5]

By March 1918 Lionel Harvard was commander of Number One Company, designated the King's Company‍—‌as Brown put it, "a high honor for a lieutenant, and usually a fatal one".^[5]: 16 On the morning of 30 March 1918 he was killed by aminenwerfer shell^[34]nearArras during theGerman spring offensive, just before a promotion to captain became effective.^[1][37] He was buried atBoisleux-au-Mont.^[38]

Lionel Harvard in uniform, and the family gravestone atBrockley and Ladywell Cemeteries

In 1919 poetHarry Webb Farrington published a hymn, "Lionel de Jersey Harvard", including the lines:

For hallowed halls, which bear his name, / Have felt his foot and heard his voice,

And sent him forth, not gowned / In student black and mortar board

But khaki-clad with helmet steel.^[39]

Harvard PresidentAbbott Lawrence Lowell called Lionel Harvard's death "a great personal loss", noting that Lionel, like John Harvard, died just three years after taking his degree;^[14]Lowell's personal gift of $110,000^[40] builtLionel Hall (1925) as a memorial.^{[note 5]}In his 1923 Commence­ment address, Lowell related a letter written by a British Army officer seeking advice on preparing his sons for Harvard College. In Lowell's telling, this officer explained that near the end of the war, he had

come into contact with an officer in the next sector of the line who told me that he was a graduate of Harvard College, whose name he bore. He told me what it had done for him. I never saw his face clearly while he was alive, for I met him only at night, and I never saw him by daylight until after he had been killed, a few days later. But if Harvard College made him what he was, I want my sons to go there that it may do the same for them.^[43]

Lionel and Kenneth were remembered on the memorial at their first school, Malvern House School, Lewisham Park (destroyed in an air raid duringWorld War II) and on a memorial at the Wesleyan Church (now demolished)at Sydenham.^[44]In 1923 theAssociated Harvard Clubs established the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholarship,^[45]which annually funds a year's study at Emmanuel College by a Harvard College graduate.^{[note 6]}

There was discussion of arranging for Lionel's son John Peter to follow his father to Harvard,^[13]but after he attended theschool's tercentenary celebration as a guest in September 1936,Time reported that he would likely continue his education in England.^{[note 7]}As a major in theRoyal Artillery during World War II he survivedimprisonment by the Japanese after being captured in theBattle of Singapore.^[5]

A second Harvard, John Harvard ofAndes, New York, graduatedcum laude from Harvard College in 1969.^[49][50]

Wikimedia Commons has media related toLionel de Jersey Harvard.

• "Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. The Harvard-Cambridge Scholarships. Lionel de Jersey Harvard (Emmanuel College)".

• 1893 births
• 1918 deaths
• People educated at St Olave's Grammar School
• English expatriates in the United States
• Harvard University alumni
• British Army personnel of World War I
• British military personnel killed in World War I
• Grenadier Guards officers
• Burials in Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in France
• Military personnel from the London Borough of Lewisham
• People from Lewisham

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