William Stoughton Class of 1650, was a "prominent, wealthy and unpopular" leader in Massachusetts life during the later half of the seventeenth century. His grandiloquent sermons and the leading role he played in the witchcraft trials led a contemporary to describe him as a "pudding faced, sanctimonious, and unfeeling witch-hanger."

Like later "malefactors of great wealth." Stoughton turned in his declining years to repairing the reputation he had earlier destroyed. The result was the donation in 1699 of 1,000 pounds to the College for the first edifice in Harvard history to be built through the gift of an alumnus. This sum did not completely cover construction cost, and it was necessary for the College to petition the Massachusetts General Court for the right to use brick from an Indians Coming to study would be domiciled free of charge in the structure. No Redskin ever exercised the privilege until a band of Dartmouth Indians stormed Stoughton Hall in 1939.

Following its completion in 1700, the building led a comparatively sedate existence until the Revolutionary War, when General Washington quartered 240 troops there, and the New England Chronicle and Essex Gazette were printed within its walls. Apparently the War was too much for Stoughton's unsubstantial construction, for crumbling masonry necessitated the destruction of the building in 1780.

As both the College and the Commonwealth found themselves in strained financial circumstances, no attempt was made to build a new Stoughton until the General Court authorized a state-wide lottery in 1794 to raise money for the building.

Over the years Stoughton housed such famous and dignified men as Edward Everett 1811, and Oliver Wendell Holmes 1829, but one night in December, 1870, its prim, Puritan Peace was shattered, when a bomb exploded under Room 17, damaging the entire north wing. The culprit was never caught.

If this year's Stoughton residents find themselves completely cut off from civilization they have the class of '53 to thank. Back in the spring of '50 radios and newspapers as far west as Seattle, Washington carried news of the antics at Stoughton Hall.

It seems the Stoughton men never liked to pay for phone calls. For several moths they had been spinning pennies into coin slots but finally the phone company caught on and put in a spinproof chute. This didn't work either, as the ingenious men of '53 made over a hundred more penny phone calls before the company pulled the instrument from the wall. One national magazine had a few choice things to say about the incident.

"Stoughton men were annoyed last week when newspapers said they hit the phone with a baseball bat--'It was always a brick." After the spinproof chute was installed "one forehanded genius was practicing spinning nickels into the quarter slot in preparation for a call to his home in Texas."