Coventina's History Thread: Harvard's rocky start!

The tiny college soon faced its first crisis. In its earliest years, Harvard featured a student body of 9, a space liberated from cows, and a single, hated instructor.

Harvard's 30-year-old schoolmaster, Nathaniel Eaton, was known to beat wayward students. Other students charged Eaton's wife, Elizabeth, of putting goat dung into their cornmeal porridge, or "hasty pudding." (Harvard's theatrical society would later be named after the dish). Finally, Master Eaton went too far and was hauled into court after clubbing a scholar with a walnut-tree cudgel. He was also accused of embezzling 100 pounds (about $20,000 in today's money).

In 1639, Eaton and his wife were sent packing. Master Eaton eventually returned to England, was made a vicar, then died in debtor's prison. Following the Eaton affair, Harvard's reputation lay in tatters; its operations were suspended, and its students were scattered.

Would it ever recover?

Harvard's first building, no longer in existence: