John Harvard (film)

John Harvard is the 2007 drama based on the last few hours in the life of John Harvard, the Puritan clergyman who would become Harvard University's first great benefactor and eternal namesake. Starring Harvard College undergraduates and with music by the Harvard Glee Club. Written and directed by Michael Van Devere. Filmed at the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Presented in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Harvard (1607-2007).

Plot

On the evening of September 14, 1638, Reverend John Harvard returns to his home in Charlestown, Massachusetts for the last time. That night, he is visited by Reverend Thomas Allen to compose his will. Though comforted by his wife Ann and manservant Benjamin, he gradually weakens from tuberculosis, physically and spiritually, until he can no longer breathe except to utter his last words to friend Nathaniel Eaton, a bequest that would change The New World.

Trivia

This is the first fictional interpretation of John Harvard's life.

References

Henry C. Shelley, John Harvard and His Times, Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1907