William Wells collection of books

William Wells (1773-1860) was a bookseller and educator in Massachusetts. He emigrated from England to Boston with his family in June 1793, settling in Brattleboro, Vermont, and entered the junior class of Harvard in the fall of 1795. Wells was awarded Price’s Morals by the College as a Detur Prize the same year. He graduated Harvard with an AB in 1796 and received his AM in 1799. After serving as a Latin Tutor at Harvard from 1798 to 1800 and an usher in the Boston Latin School from 1802 to 1804, Wells established himself as a bookseller in Court Street, Boston. Engaging in both publishing and retail sales, Wells supplied Harvard with textbooks including the Latin reader Excerpta quaedam e scriptoribus latinis probatioribus, which he issued with printer Thomas B. Wait and Co. in 1810, and Hugo Grotius’ De veritate religionis Christianae. In 1814, he formed the firm Wells and Lilly with Robert Lilly (circa 1782-1834). Thomas Jefferson was among the company’s customers in 1818. In 1827, Wells retired and moved to 175 Brattle Street in Cambridge, where he opened a classical school for boys. Wells remained involved with Harvard as an alumnus, serving on the Overseers Committee for examination in Greek and Latin in 1825, and on multiple committees to examine the accounts of the Treasurer of the Hopkins Fund in the 1830s. Wells married Frances Boott (1786-1873) in 1808, and they had seven children, including Mary Love Wells (1809-1874), William Boott Wells (1812-1844), Frances Boott Newell (1815-1895), Francis Boott Wells (1816-1877; Harvard AB 1835), and Kirk Boott Wells (circa 1819-1897). William Wells died in Cambridge on April 21, 1860.

Since 1727, the charity of Edward Hopkins (1600-1657) has funded the Detur Prize, a book prize awarded to Harvard students for academic achievement, and the oldest prize at the College. The prizes are typically awarded to sophomores who attain very high academic standing at the end of their freshman year, but in the past have been given to juniors. In addition to William Wells, recipients of the prize in 1795 included his classmates Samuel Dana (1778-1864) and Charles George Cabot (-1811). Wells' son, Francis Boott Wells, won the prize in 1833 when he was a sophomore at Harvard.