Willard, Joseph, 1738-1804

University president, clergyman, and educator.

Joseph Willard was born on 29 Dec. 1738, the youngest son of the Rev. Samuel and Abigail Willard of Biddeford, Me. Upon the death of his father, his mother remarried, and he grew up in the household of the Rev. Richard Elvins of Scarborough, Me. Intent upon a medical career, and encouraged by a local schoolmaster, he entered Harvard University, where his tuition was defrayed by a classmate's father. In his studies, Willard acquitted himself as "unquestionably the best geometrician, the best astronomer, and the best classical scholar of his class." Upon graduation in 1766, he remained at Harvard as college butler, and then tutor, and only finally decided upon a life in the ministry at the urging of the professor of divinity, Edward Wigglesworth. In 1772 he answered a call to the First Church in Beverly, Mass., where he served as minister until 1781. While there, Willard did "much to kindle and keep alive the general flame of patriotism," and it has been stated that Beverly's deployment of two militia companies to the battle of 19 Apr. 1775 was due in "no small part to his exertions and influence." In 1781 he was installed as President of Harvard University, and remained in that capacity until his death on 25 Sept. 1804. Willard did not speak well extemporaneously, and this perhaps accounts for the care with which he prepared his sermons. He is known to have prepared over 325 sermons between 1768 and 1792, about three-quarters of which survive, either at the Cambridge Historical Society or the Harvard University Archives.