Letters to John Lowell relating to Harvard College faculty salaries

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Harvard College received annual grants from the Massachusetts General Court to partially fund faculty salaries. During the Revolutionary War, the depreciating value of money in Massachusetts made it difficult for the Harvard Corporation to provide College officers with adequate salaries. Between 1756 and 1778, salaries tripled in response to inflation but remained inadequate, and President and the faculty regularly petitioned the Corporation for salary increases.

In 1778, the Corporation had directed College Treasurer Ebenezer Storer to invest most of the College's money in Continental certificates and Massachusetts treasury notes. These investments coincided with the beginning of a period of rapid depreciation of paper money. As the College's Treasury was diminishing, the new state government was growing increasingly unresponsive to the faculty and Corporation's petitions for additional grants. In its attempt to support the faculty, the Corporation charged students additional fees (known as assessments) to provide pay raises, and in December 1781, the Corporation advanced cash to each professor. In 1784, the Corporation began providing loans to College officers with the expectation that the General Court would provide reimbursement. While the General Court did pay the President's salary from 1784 to 1786 and provided some additional grants for the professors in the early 1780s, the General Court did not provide regular grants as it had previously in the colonial era, and the last grant issued to any of the College officers by the General Court was made on May 31, 1786.

Even as the Corporation increased salaries, both the tutors and the professors continued to request additional money into the 19th century. By 1810, inflation had started to decrease in Massachusetts, and the repeated requests for salary increases by Harvard faculty and staff ceased.

John Lowell (1743-1802), a Massachusetts lawyer and judge, was born on June 17, 1743 in Newburyport, Mass. He received an AB from Harvard in 1760, an AM in 1763, and an LLD in 1792. Lowell began practicing law in 1763 in Newburyport. In 1778, he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and between May and August 1782 represented Massachusetts in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Lowell was appointed first Judge of the Court of the District of Massachusetts in 1792, and in 1801, the Chief Justice of the First United States Circuit Court. In 1784, Lowell was elected as a Fellow of the Harvard Corporation and served until his death on May 6, 1802.