Henry Dunster (baptized November 26, 1609, died February 27, 1658/1659) was an Anglo-American Puritan clergyman and the first president of Harvard College.
He was born at Bolholt, Bury, Lancashire, England to Henry Dunster Sr. (1582–1626) and Isabel Kaye (1583–1643).
Dunster studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge,[1] specializing in oriental languages. He earned bachelor's degree (1630) and his master's degrees (1634) and taught at Magdalene. He served as a master of Bury Grammar School and was a clergyman at Saint Mary's Church in Bury.
Dunster emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts in 1640. When Nathaniel Eaton was dismissed in 1639 as master of the recently-established Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dunster was appointed as his successor. Thus on August 27, 1640 Dunster became the first president of Harvard. (For a discussion of Dunster's choice of the title "president" see President, history of the term.) He modeled Harvard's educational system on that of the English schools such as Eton College and Cambridge University.
When Dunster abandoned Puritanism in favor of the Baptist faith in 1653, he provoked a controversy that highlighted two distinct approaches to dealing with dissent in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony's Puritan leaders, whose own religion was born of dissent from mainstream Church of England, generally worked for reconciliation with members who questioned matters of Puritan theology but responded much more harshly to outright rejection of Puritanism. Dunster's conflict with the colony's magistrates began when he failed to have his infant son baptized, believing, as a newly converted Baptist, that only adults should be baptized. Efforts to restore Dunster to Puritan orthodoxy failed, and his apostasy proved untenable to colony leaders who had entrusted him, in his job as Harvard's president, to uphold the colony's religious mission. Thus, he represented a threat to the stability of society. Dunster exiled himself in 1654 and moved to nearby Plymouth Colony, where he died in 1658.[2]
Dunster House, one of the twelve residential houses of Harvard University, is named after Henry Dunster.
Dunster married twice; both his wives were named Elizabeth. His first wife was Elizabeth (Harris) Glover, the widow of Jospeh Glover. They married on June 21, 1641. She died in 1643, leaving Dunster with land and property, including the first printing press in the colony, and leaving him shared responsibility for her estate and her five children by her first marriage. Dunster married Elizabeth Atkinson (1627–1690) in 1644. Together they had five children.
Links to digital facsimiles of the Papers of Henry Dunster and the Dunster and Glover Families held in the Harvard University Archives.