Correspondence between Samuel E. Morison and Charles Mallory Williams regarding the Harvard College land grants of the 1650s

On October 19, 1652, the General Court of Massachusetts granted 200 acres of land which formerly belonged to the Pequot tribe to Harvard University. Another 800 acres were given to the school on May 18, 1653. Finally, the General Court of Massachusetts issued Harvard a third allocation of 2,100 acres of land in what is now Connecticut and Rhode Island in May 1658, following the Pequot War. Harvard Treasurer Thomas Danforth, responsible for negotiating these land grants, was awarded 300 acres. However, as Morison noted in his Three Centuries of Harvard, 1936-1936, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's authority to allocate such land grants to Harvard was challenged by the Connecticut Colony. As a result, Harvard's legal claim to the land was not validated, and as a consequence of numerous legal battles and squatting by settlers, the grants led to no financial benefit for the college.

Samuel Eliot Morison (1887-1976) was the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard, Harvard University tercentenary historian, and a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy. He is noted for his works on maritime and American history. Morison received his education at Harvard University (AB, PhD, Litt.D.) and Oxford University (MA) and taught history at Harvard from 1915 to 1955. He served as the United States Naval Operations historian during World War II. Morison twice won the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes, was awarded the first International Balzan Prize and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1926, Morison was appointed as the official Harvard tercentennial historian. In preparation for his multi-volume work, the Tercentennial History of Harvard University,he began researching the exact location and fate of land grants presented to Harvard by the General Court of Massachusetts in the 1650s. In 1934, Morison wrote to Charles Mallory Williams, a resident of Stonington, Connecticut, to enlist his help in examining the history of the grants. In 1936, Harvard University celebrated its 300th anniversary.

Charles Mallory Williams (1872-1951) was a professor of dermatology and general practitioner. A descendant of an early Connecticut shipping family, Williams was the president of the Stonington Historical Society. Williams graduated from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1890, received a Bachelor of Pharmacy from Yale University in 1892, and acquired his medical degree in 1898 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Williams decided to specialize in dermatology after serving his internship at Roosevelt and Sloane Hospitals. Williams was the author of numerous articles in medical journals, medical board president at the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital, and a lieutenant colonel in the United States medical corps during the first World War.