Only one specimen of the hand writing of John Harvard has been known to be in existence, and is his signature to a document deposited in the Registry of the English University of Cambridge. Another document containing his signature and that of his brother Thomas has just been brought to light. Of this a correspondent of the Athenaeum writes:-

"I ask a small portion of your space for the purpose of recording the discovery of an autograph of John Harvard, and also of his brother Thomas, of whom I believe no other writing has been found. The brothers, as is known, held certain property by lease from the Hospital of St. Katharine, near the Tower of London. Communications were, therefore, opened with the present authorities of the Hospital, by whom they were very kindly received, and a thorough search of the very numerous monuments of the hospital was made by direction of Sir Arnold White, the Chapter Clerk of St. Katharine's. The result, now first made public, was the bringing to light of the original counterpart lease from the hospital to 'John Harvard, Clerke, and Thomas Harvard, Citizen and Cloth worker of London,' of certain tenements in the parish of Allhallows, Barking, the lease bearing date July 29th, 1635, and the counterpart being executed by John Harvard and Thomas Harvard. A feature of no little interest is that this is not an antiquarian curiosity whose history has to be traced, with more or less of uncertainty and doubt, from one hand to another during a period of 250 years, but a document which not only is in legal custody, but in the self-same custody into which it passed so soon as the ink of the signatures to it was dry, and in which, I may add, it will remain so long as it shall endure. Custody is a point the supreme importance of which will be recognized without the need of further remark from me. Thanks to permission courteously given, a facsimile of the full size of the original-some 17 in, by 20 in.- and in the very best style, is now being executed, copies of which will very shortly be procurable."