In 1855 the Chicago & Northwestern Railway built toward Janesville, Wisconsin, from Cary. Projecting where trains from Chicago would have to stop for servicing in the days of wood fuel, Elbridge Gerry Ayer and two other North Western stockholders platted a community in southeastern Chemung Township on land that they had purchased without mentioning their railroad affiliation. In April 1856, the railroad accepted Ayer's town plat as a station named Harvard. When the North Western's Kenosha-Rockford line entered Harvard in 1859, the railroad built engine-handling facilities there.
As railroad employment expanded, Harvard's population ballooned. In 1868 voters incorporated the community, and elected Ayer as president.2
In 1942, Harvard instituted an annual celebration called Harvard Milk Days. A lavish parade down whitewashed streets presided over by a large fiberglass Holstein cow named (since 1970) Harmilda attracted thousands.
Dairy farming declined as farmers found it easier and equally profitable to supply metropolitan Chicago's supermarkets with produce. Many Mexicans who came to work as temporary pickers and processors remained in Harvard as landscape laborers, significantly changing the community's demographic.
In 2006, Harvard held a year long Sesquicentennial Celebration. 3 Famous Residents: Michael McCormick The Greater Harvard Area Historical Society is located on Hart Street. The ongoing mission of the society is the plaquing of historical sites in the area, and obtaining histories of Harvard families, businesses and farms which have been in operation for more than 100 years.
There are twenty marble busts, three relief carvings and two full length statues in Annenberg Hall. Thirteen of the current busts were among eighteen busts that were transferred from Gore Hall Library to Memorial Hall in 1874. The works include two busts by Daniel Chester French (who sculpted the John Harvard statue now in Harvard Yard as well as the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.), five sculptures by William Wetmore Story (including a portrait of his father and a self portrait), and busts of six consecutive Harvard Presidents.
The most recent addition is a bust of W.E.B. DuBois, co-founder of the NAACP and the first African-American student to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. The bust was commissioned by The President and Fellows and the Department of Afro-American studies in 1993.
The two large sculptures depicting John Adams and John Winthrop as well as the statue of James Otis in Sanders Theatre were all brought from pastoral Mt. Auburn Cemetery in 1935 as a gift from the Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery.
The current arrangement of sculptures reflects the original arrangement as closely as possible.
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