Overview
This collection consists of five watercolor drawings created by Joshua Green, a judge and legislator from Wendell, Massachusetts, while he was an undergraduate at Harvard College between 1780 and 1784. Four of the drawings depict Harvard buildings, or buildings in the vicinity of Harvard, and one of these drawings includes measurements of the distances between the depicted buildings; these drawings were possibly created as part of a mathematical assignment. The fifth drawing is a map of North America.
Dates
- Creation: 1781-1784
Researcher Access
The Drawings by Joshua Green are open for research.
Copying Restriction
Copying of fragile materials may be limited.
Extent
.42 cubic feet (5 drawings)This collection consists of five watercolor drawings, created by Joshua Green while he was an undergraduate at Harvard College between 1780 and 1784. Four of the drawings depict Harvard buildings or buildings in the vicinity of Harvard, and one of these drawings includes measurements of the distances between the depicted buildings; these drawings were possibly created as part of a mathematical assignment. The fifth drawing is a map of North America.
Some of the drawings have been reproduced in published volumes, including the following:
- Hamilton Vaughan Bail, Views of Harvard: A Pictorial Record to 1860 (Cambridge, Mass., 1949).
- Samuel A. Green, Ten Fac-Simile Reproductions Relating to Old Boston and Neighborhood (Boston, Mass., 1901).
- James H. Stark, Antique Views of ye Towne of Boston (Boston, Mass., 1882).
- George Gary Bush, Harvard, the First American University (Boston, Mass., 1886).
Biographical Note
Joshua Green (1764-1847), who would later become a prominent judge in Wendell, Massachusetts, was an undergraduate at Harvard College from 1780 to 1784. He received an A.B. in 1784 and an A.M. in 1787, before moving to Wendell, where he would spend the rest of his life, around 1790. Green was described by historian Josiah Gilbert Holland as "for many years the most useful and influential man in the town [of Wendell] and its vicinity."
Joshua Green was born to Joshua Green (1731-1806) and Hannah Storer Green (1739-1811) in Boston on October 5, 1764. He was an only child. Green entered the Boston Latin School in July 1773 but had to leave the school in April 1775, due to the onset of the Revolutionary War. He returned to Boston Latin in 1778 and 1779 to complete his preparation for college. Like his father, he attended Harvard College, where he received an A.B. in 1784 and an A.M. in 1787. Green moved to Wendell, Massachusetts around 1790, and he married Mary Mosley (1768-1821) of Westfield, Massachusetts in September 1791. They had two sons, Joshua Green, who graduated from Harvard College in 1818, and Henry Atkinson Green. In 1825, several years after the death of his wife, Mary, Green married her younger sister, Nancy Mosley (1779-1856). In his career in Wendell, Green served as Selectman, Justice of the Peace, Justice of the Circuit Court, and Representative or Senator in the State Legislature.
Joshua Green died in Wendell, Massachusetts on June 16, 1847.
Arrangement
The drawings are arranged in two series:
- I. Drawings of Harvard College and vicinity, ca. 1781-1784
- II. A Map of North America, ca. 1784
Acquisition information
The collection was donated to Harvard University by Samuel Abbott Green, grandson of Joshua Green. The map of North America was given in 1898 and the other four drawings were given later, apparently following Green's publication of Ten Fac-Simile Reproductions Relating to Old Boston and Neighborhood in 1901.
References
- Samuel G. Drake, publisher, The New England Historical and Genealogical Register for the year 1861, vol. XV (Boston, Mass., 1861), 109.
- Josiah Gilbert Holland, History of Western Massachusetts, vol. II (Springfield, Mass., 1855), 458.
- Hamilton Vaughan Bail, Views of Harvard: A Pictorial Record to 1860 (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), 73-76.
General note
This document last updated 2022 March 25.
Processing Information
Items in this collection were previously cataloged separately, as individual items, or not cataloged at all. The material was re-processed in 2010, combining all of the Harvard University Archives' holdings of drawings by Joshua Green to create one collection. Re-processing involved a collection survey, re-housing in appropriate archival folders, and the creation of this finding aid.
This finding aid was created by Laura Morris in May 2010.
Preservation and description of the Drawings by Joshua Green was supported by the Arcadia-funded project Harvard in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
- Title
- Green, Joshua, 1764-1847. Drawings by Joshua Green, ca. 1781-1784: an inventory
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hua11010
Repository Details
Part of the Harvard University Archives Repository
Holding nearly four centuries of materials, the Harvard University Archives is the principal repository for the institutional records of Harvard University and the personal archives of Harvard faculty, as well as collections related to students, alumni, Harvard-affiliates and other associated topics. The collections document the intellectual, cultural, administrative and social life of Harvard and the influence of the University as it emerged across the globe.
Pusey Library
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