Rev. John Bulkeley, M.A.

Graduate of the Class of 1642 from Harvard College.

"JOHN BULKLEY.

Born 1619, died 1689, aged about 70. .

Rev. John Bulkley, M.A., appears to have been the first in the list of graduates who took the degree of Master of Arts at Harvard College. He was son of the Reverend Peter Bulkley, of Odell, in the hundred of Willey, in Bedfordshire, England, and afterward of Concord, Massachusetts, by his first wife Jane, who was daughter of Thomas Allen, of Goldington. He was baptized 19 October, 1619. In 1635 he came to New England with his father in the Susan and Ellen. In 1642 he was made freeman. He was chaplain of the party sent in 1643 to arrest Samuel Gorton in Rhode Island and bring him to Massachusetts. December 27, 1643, he and his classmate, George Downing, received similar appointments as teachers in the College, as stated on page 30. He went to England probably about the same time with Downing. He was settled in the ministry at Fordham, in the county of Essex; and styles himself an “hireling of the church at Fordham,” in the parish register of which are recorded with his own hand the baptisms of a son and a daughter. There he continued till his ejectment by the Act of Uniformity, 24 August, 1662. He then “retir'd to Wapping in the Suburbs of London, where he liv'd several Years, practising Physick with good Success; administring natural and spiritual Physick together. He was a learned and eminently Pious Man. His whole Life was a continual Sermon. Tho' he was not often in the Pulpit, yet he might truly be said to Preach every Day in the Week: And seldom did he visit his Patients, without reading a Lecture of Divinity to them, and praying with them.”

“That which gave a Lustre to all his other Vertues, was his great Humility, the constant Sweetness of his Temper, Integrity of his Mind, and Charitableness of his Nature, which appear'd in every part of his Life.” He “died at St. Katherine's, near the Tower,” 24 May, “1689; in the seventieth Year of his Age, and then finish’d his Course with unusual Tranquility, and Resignation of Mind. Mr. James of Nightingale-lane, preach'd and afterwards printed his Funeral Sermon, on Prov. xiv. 32.” By deed dated 20 December, 1645, Bulkley gave to Harvard College his portion of a “Garden conteyning about one Acre & one Rood of land scittuate & neer adjoining to the Colledge & ordered the same to be for the use of the fellows that should from time to time belong to & be resident at the said Society, the so Garden being now commonly called & known by the name of the fellows Orchard.” The boundary extended from what was then called Braintree Street, now Harvard Street, northerly on a line with the of Gore Hall nearly to the west side of the present site northern end of that building, thence easterly through it 91 feet, whence it took a southerly direction 398 feet 6 inches to the street, the front being wider than the rear of the lot." Since that time the College yard has been considerably encroached upon. Several feet were taken from it in the year 1860 to widen Harvard Street."

• Source - Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University: In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Volume 1 by John Langdon Sibley and Clifford Kenyon Shipton, pg. 52-54.