Margaret Bromfield Blanchard. (Courtesy photo)

Many generous citizens have made the new Harvard Public Library possible. The very first was Margaret Bromfield (Pearson) Blanchard. By establishing the Bromfield Trust on her death in 1876, Mrs. Blanchard created the Bromfield School and the landmark “Old Bromfield,” which is soon to be the cornerstone of the new library.

Margaret Bromfield Blanchard was the granddaughter of Colonel Henry Bromfield, a prominent Boston merchant. Colonel Bromfield began summering in Harvard when he bought the 120-acre Reverend Seccomb estate in 1767. The Seccomb parsonage stood roughly where Old Bromfield stands today. There are stories of the distinguished elder Colonel Bromfield, dressed in a red cape and feathered cock hat, strolling with his servant Othello up the elm-lined drive from his house to the town cemetery.

Flamboyance adds spice to history, but Mrs. Blanchard’s background has a more solid footing. Her husband, father, and grandfather were all graduates of Harvard College who contributed to the intellectual life of their day. Henry Bromfield managed a successful export business. When in Harvard, he sometimes entertained Reverend William Emerson of Concord, bringing new ideas to Harvard. Mrs. Blanchard’s father, Eliphalit Pearson, taught Oriental studies at Harvard, where he also served as acting president before helping to build up the Andover Theological Seminary. Ira Blanchard, Margaret’s husband, was a well-liked minister of the Harvard Unitarian Church until ill health forced him to retire. He succumbed to tuberculosis in 1845 at age 47.

The Seccomb mansion remained in the Bromfield family home until it burned in 1855, when Margaret Blanchard purchased the lot for a future school.

Up until this time, students attended one of Harvard’s nine “district” primary schools. Each district independently controlled its own school and one ninth of the town’s total school budget, regardless of the number of students in the district. Attempts to create a central upper grade school failed several times because of costs, as well as fears within the districts that a central school would weaken their own independence. Students with the interest and means to continue their studies left for private academies in Groton, Concord, Worcester, and other nearby towns.

In 1856, Mary Whitney bequeathed $1,000 toward a free high school—if the town would appropriate the remaining funds within 10 years. After Mrs. Whitney’s trust reverted to her heirs, Mrs. Blanchard offered $4,000 and the Bromfield family lot if the town would finance the remainder, estimated at $6,500. Again, no decisive action was taken, although some inventive citizens suggested a two-for-one by combining a new Town Hall and a new school in the same building.

With the opening of the Bromfield School in 1878, Margaret Blanch-ard accomplished what decades of cajoling and incentives had not, a secondary school in Harvard.

In her will, Margaret Blanchard’s intentions were clear, “Having long desired … to establish a school in the town of Harvard” she directed a trust of her own choosing to erect “a substantial, well-proportioned and convenient brick school house … simple and harmonious in style, and free from useless or expensive decoration.” As a memorial to her grandfather, Colonel Henry Bromfield, the words “Bromfield School” were to be cut in stone above the door and “by that name shall it always be known.” Significantly, if the school was not to be a girls’ school, then “if boys are admitted, I order that their numbers shall always be one-third less than that of the girls.”

Plans must have been in place before her death in November 1876, because the school, designed by Boston architects Peabody and Stearns, was started by the middle of 1877.

The finished building included scientific equipment donated through the trustees and valued at one-fifth of the $20,000 building cost. The remaining $70,000 from Margaret Blanchard’s estate kept the Bromfield School going until 1940, when the Bromfield Trust continued to maintain the building, but leased its use to the town for one dollar a year.

By the 1990s, what to do with Old Bromfield had become a problem. The building needed expensive repairs that neither the town nor the trust could fund. When the Bromfield School renovations were completed in 2003, the school no longer needed the extra classroom space. Now, as the signature structure in the new library, Old Bromfield can continue its distinctive presence in the town center and remain a tribute to the generosity of Harvard citizens.