56. Joseph Willard's notes for a Greek grammar

Joseph Willard (1738-1804) was a Congregational minister, a scholar of ancient Greek, astronomy, and mathematics, and the twelfth president of Harvard College, serving from 1781 to 1804.

In 1781, the same year that he was appointed president of Harvard, Willard began work on a Greek grammar. Although the grammar was never published, Willard’s extensive notes were saved and are included in his papers. Handwritten in both English and Greek, the notes contain Willard's analysis of Greek verb forms, the meaning and uses of Greek words, illustrations of syntactic rules, and citations drawn from various Greek historians, orators, poets, philosophers, and rhetoricians. Documents range from notes written on scraps of paper to sections of the manuscript sewn together. Willard frequently wrote his notes on the blank pages of letters, receipts, lists, and petitions, many of which document his administrative duties as president of Harvard. Hence the presence of other material on this sheet. Willard also annotated his list of Greek words with x's and dots, though we don't know what he meant by these symbols.