jority are from the Cambridge and
neighboring high-schools. The institution occupies this year for
the first time a building which has been conveniently arranged for
its purposes. The endowment of the association which manages the
work now amounts to $85,000.

[146] This lady was Lucy Downing, a sister of the first governor of
Massachusetts. She was the wife of Emanuel Downing, a lawyer of the
Inner Temple, a friend of Governor Winthrop and afterward a man of
mark in the infant colony. In a letter to her brother, Lucy Downing
expresses the desire of herself and husband to come to New England
with their children, but laments that if they do come her son
George cannot complete his studies. She says: "You have yet noe
societies nor means of that kind for the education of youths in
learning. It would make me goe far nimbler to New England, if God
should call me to it, than otherwise I should, and I believe a
colledge would put noe small life into the plantation." This letter
was written early in 1636, and in October of the same year the
General Court of the Massachusetts colony agreed to give L400
towards establishing a school or college in Newtowne (two years
later called Cambridge). Soon afterwards Rev. John Harvard died and
left one-half of his estate to this "infant seminary," and in 1638
it was ordered by the General Court that the "Colledge to be built
at Cambridge shall be called Harvard Colledge."

Early in 1638 Lucy Downing and her husband arrived in New England,
and the name of George Downing stands second on the list of the
first class of Harvard graduates in 1642. The Downings had other
sons who do not seem to have been educated at Harvard, and
daughters who were put out to service. The son for whom so much was
done by his mother, was afterwards known as Sir George Downing, and
he became rich and powerful in England. Downing street in London is
named for him. In after life he forgot his duty to his mother, who
so naturally looked to him for support; and her last letter written
from England after her husband died, when she was old and feeble,
tells a sad story of her son's avarice and meanness, and leaves the
painful impression that she suffered in her old age for the
necessaries of life.

It is hard to estimate how much influence the earnest longing of
this one woman for the better education of her son, had in the
founding of this earliest college in Massachusetts. But for her
thinking and speaking at the r