Harvard Grads

Harvard's oldest surviving building, Massachusetts's Hall
(built long after John Bowers graduated)

While looking for something else, I came across Sibley's Harvard Graduates an 18-volume work detailing the lives all all the early graduates of Harvard University, from its inception (as Harvard College) in 1642. I was fascinated that someone took the time to do such a time-consuming and, frankly, rather useless piece of research, but of course I wanted to know if we had any Harvard grads among our ancestors.

The earliest close relative (although not direct ancestor) I could find was John Bowers, a graduate of Harvard's sixth class, in 1649 (Sibley 1873). He was the son of George and Barbara Bowers of Plymouth (later Cambridge) Massachusetts. After graduation, he moved to Connecticut to take up a parish there. Through the Kinney line, we are descended from George and Barbara Bowers through their daughter -- John's sister -- Ruth Bowers Knowles.

There were several clergymen in our Kinney ancestry, some of whom were likely Harvard graduates, but Sibley's second and third volumes are not readily available on-line, and with classes beginning, I don't have the time to search the other sixteen volumes!
________
Sibley, John Langdon. 1873. Sibley's Harvard Graduates, I. Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College in the Classes 1642-1658. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.