Wadsworth, Benjamin, 1670-1737

Wadsworth was president of Harvard College, 1725-1737.

Congregational clergyman at Boston's First Church and president of Harvard.

Wadsworth (A.B. 1690, M.A. 1693) was the pastor of the First Church of Boston. He was president of Harvard College from 1725 until his death.

Benjamin Wadsworth (1669/70-1736/37) was a clergyman and the eighth President of Harvard College. He served as President from July 7, 1725 to March 16, 1736/37.

Benjamin Wadsworth (1670-1737), eighth president of Harvard College, graduated in 1690, was appointed a Harvard Fellow, and became the "teaching officer" for the First Church of Boston, Mass., in 1693. He was ordained its pastor in 1696 and served until 1725, when he was installed as president of Harvard.

Benjamin Wadsworth was the eighth president of Harvard College, serving from 1725 to 1737.

Born in Milton, Massachusetts in 1670, Wadsworth attended Harvard, receiving an A.B. degree in 1690 and an A.M. degree in 1693. Soon thereafter he was appointed pastor of the First Church of Boston, considered at the time to be one of the most important pulpits in New England. A religious moderate, Wadsworth was popular with the congregation and held the post for more than thirty years. In 1696, Wadsworth married Ruth Boardman (d. 1745). Although the Wadsworths had no children of their own, they boarded and taught boys and girls at their home throughout Wadsworth’s years as pastor.

Wadsworth served as a Fellow of Harvard College from 1697 to 1707 and from 1712 to 1725, when he was appointed president. As president, Wadsworth balanced the various religious and political factions in the College’s two governing boards and the colonial administration. During his administration, he established a new code of College laws, improved the curriculum, and appointed the first Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Wadsworth devoted considerable attention to record-keeping, establishing a separate set of faculty records and formal lists of admitted students and graduates. He was also able to recoup College property that had been lost through the negligence of earlier College administrators or to squatters.