Copy of Email, January 30, 2001 Gershom Collier, Harvard College, 1734 -- NOT !! Dear Friends and Family, (Also file this under the sub-category "What in the !&%$ ! is Happening to the Younger Generation?") My wife is on her way to Miami and Fort Lauderdale for a few day's visit with her sisters, so I took the day off and spent it in the Haverhill Library genealogy room. I know, I know !! When she isn't around I just abandon myself to idleness and dissipation !! ____________ Between my visit to the NEHGS in November, today's work in Haverhill, and a lot of Internet and Email activity in the last few months, the Collier genealogy pot is boiling merrily away. I thought this was interesting enough to pass along right away -- Do we all recall Gershom Collier (Nov. 1, 1713, Hull - before 1749), 2d son of that name of Lt. Gershom Collier and Elizabeth Poole, of Hull? He was for 1 + years a member of the Harvard College class of 1734 (New England Historical Genealogical Register, Vol. 104, page 241), but seems to have also fallen into idleness and dissipation. Sibley's Harvard Graduates, Vol. IX, 1731-1735, Clifford K. Shipton, Mass. Historical Society, Boston, 1956, pages 389-390 and 410-411. Page 389-390 - "Gershom Collier was born on November 1, 1713, a son of Gershom and Elizabeth (Pool) Collier of Hull. One Sabbath evening in his Sophomore year, he and Sam Holbrook feigned sickness and improved the opportunity to mutilate Tutor Flynt's mare. Detected, they lied and were expelled: Oct. 26, 1731, after morning Reading and Prayer in the Hall, the ...sentence against Holbrook and Collier was read, they admonished to repent and reform, the Table on which their names were written in the Buttery was brought into the Hall and their names cut out of it, and they were ordered to go Immediately out of the Hall, and to quit the College. (Faculty Records, Harvard University Archives, I, 40) The following Spring a petition for their readmittance was turned down by the President and Fellows for the good of the college. Mr. Collier paid the last of Gershom's bills and again, in September, petitioned for his restoration, but the President and Tutors voted "that is was not proper to harken to the motion, nor any way Incourage his readmission." (Ibid., p. 43.) This is the last that we hear of Gershom Collier. There is reason to think that he was lost at sea soon afterward." Pages 410-411 (notes for Samuel Holbrook) -- Young Mr. Collier and Mr. Holbrook seem to have cut off "...Mr. Flynt's Mares's Ears, and the Hair of her Mane and Tail...," lied about it, and adding to their Sin, done so on the Sabbath. Mr. Holbrook was eventually readmitted to Harvard at the beginning of Senior year, but he "...had not seriously reformed, for in April it was ordered that he be publicly admonished for entertaining disorderly company from Boston instead of attending public worship on a Fast day..." He eventually took both the A.B. and M. A. degrees, was a schoolmaster at Hingham for a time, and was eventually Postmaster of Boston for a number of years, until his death on October 5, 1766. He was unmarried. Although I need to do some further checking, it would appear that young Holbrook was a member of the Adams family, which may have helped in his reinstatement. Would that we had the transcription of the conversation between young Gershom and his father upon his return from Cambridge to Hull !! Wade