Excerpt from Henry S. Nourse’s “History of the Town of Harvard Massachusetts 1732–1893,” written in 1894.

Harvard’s renowned Warner Free Lecture Series had its beginnings in 1891, when the town accepted—by unanimous vote—the very generous bequest of Henry L. Warner, a town native. Warner left the town $10,000 to be used for providing educational lectures to all the town’s citizens—and he left specific instructions about what form the lectures were to take.

According to the terms of the bequest, lectures were to “avoid partisan politics and religious sectarianism,” and were to be delivered by “eminent or able lecturers and scholars, upon scientific, literary, biographical, historic, patriotic, national, educational and moral subjects.” The instructions go on to allow that lectures may also include “travels, questions of government and society, and whatever may interest the people, and at the same time instruct and benefit them in accordance with the design of the lectures.”

Warner was born on the original Warner homestead on Bare Hill in 1834. He grew up in Harvard and, after completing his secondary education, studied law at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. After being admitted to the bar, two years after his graduation, he headed West and became involved in real estate in Sioux City, Iowa, where he was twice elected mayor.

The lecture series envisioned by Warner began in December of 1891, with a talk on “Household Art in Japan,” presented by Professor Edward S. Morse. Among the other lecturers in that first year were presenters who spoke on The Merchant of Venice, Russia and its political exiles, the Passion play at Ober-Ammergau, and the search for the Northwest passage to India through the American continent.