Two funds from an old stack of bad wampum are not the University's only immediate link with the past. Thanks immediately link with the past. Thanks to a $156 fund from Thomas Cotton (1727) the President gets about $7.03 a year in addition to his regular salary. Thomas Hollis in 1721 set up enough money to pay well over $20 to help defray the costs of having a treasurer.
Not exactly the bane of the financial report, but admittedly rather a nuisance are two funds that the University holds in trust for purposes unconnected with the College. Needless to say both fund dates back to the 18th country.
Daniel Williams in 1716 left 60 pounds to be divided between two persons "to preach as itinerants in the English plantations, in the west Indies and for the good of what pagans and blacks be neglected there...and the remainder to the College of Cambridge, New England to manage the blessed work of converting the poor Indians there."
In 1933 the Corporation wiggled out of obvious difficulties by giving the bulk of the money to the Mass. Baptist Convention.
Sound Slides
The 1790 fund of Mrs. Sarah Winslow pays the Treasurer to look after it. (Fifty shillings for every hundred pounds --$5.28 in this case.) Otherwise the will is more complicated, but otherwise no different from the rest.
Like many reports, the Financial Report is in dire need of spring housecleaning. Many little odd balances could be written off with ease, but I sympathize with you. Such errors as $143.40 from the National Research Council for making and testing of a series of sound slide films on a single subject, under the direction of the Late Francis T. Spaulding Professor of Education. Spaulding left Harvard in 1945, and died in 1950.
Gifts last year ranged the gamut from $1 to over a million and a half. In 1959 and '51 without explanation a Los Angelan, Myron J. Koobat, sent $1.00 to the an, Myron J. Koobat, sent $1.00 to the College and this sum is duly recorded under "gifts for immediate use." So far his 1952 contribution has not arrived.
Come Back, Winnle
The bequest of Sylia A. G. H. Wilks is the largest gift last year, $1,645,391.82.
Many odd sums are carried year after year on the books because the department on University has temporarily for gotten about them. Apparently the only feasible way to spend a 1944 gift for a memorial of the visit of Churchill to Harvard is for the Prime Minister to come back again.