Yale University Diploma (RARE) dated 1777

Original baccaleaureate degree from Yale College issued in 1777. This historic has been handsigned by Moses Dickinson, Eliphalet Williams, Warham Williams, Stephen Johnson and Elizur Goodrich....all famed men of Yale, and is over 233 years old. The diploma was issued to Ebenezer Bushnell. Trimmed and in excellent condition. 9" x 9".


Certificate Vignette




Certificate Vignette



Rough Latin translation:

To the managers and society of the college of Yale, Newport Connecticut. All have learned foresight advantageous of the master of the house. Only he is D. Ebenezer Bushnell, received his first degree after being customarily judged and examined by the candid managers and associates. Calling all graduates, for they are the Baccalaureates of kindness, to kindly assist the people, for they glorify service and he is devoted to all passions. Obliging honors to graduate according to the oath, to kindly serve anyw toward extending learning, the sign of academics of whom by name of our evidence it is standing.

Given from the academics of the day, September 10th in the advantageous year of 1777.

The society of Yale

Moses Dickinson - President

Eliph Williams

Warhamus Williams

Stephanus Johnson

Elizur Goodrich

Ebenezer Bushnell, the eldest child of Ebenezer and Elizabeth (Tiffany) Bushnell, of Lebanon, Connecticut, and grandson of Nathan and Mehitabel (Allen) Bushnell, of Norwich and Lebanon, was born in Lebanon on September 13, 1757. He was prepared for College by Master Nathan Tisdale of Lebanon and was admitted by special examination at the opening of the Sophomore year in November, 1774.

After graduation he taught school and studied law and settled in practice in Norwich, marrying on August 14, 1780, Tryphena, daughter of Dr. John Clark (Yale 1749), of Lebanon, who died on October 12, 1783, in her 24th year, leaving one son.

In 1786 he married Susan, youngest daughter of the late Captain Russell Hubbard (Yale 1751), of Norwich.

Mr. Bushnell was a man of mechanical genius, quick wit, and varied information; fluent with his pen, and an adept in poetry as well as in prose. In November, 1790, he began the publication of a new newspaper in Norwich, The Weekly Register, in which enterprise his brother-inlaw, Thomas Hubbard, joined him about six months later. Mr. Bushnell retired from the firm in October, 1793.

He subsequently went into the business of paper-making, in connection with Andrew Huntington, but after a few years enlisted in the United States Navy, and was made Purser of the ship Warren. From 1794 to 1796 he had been Captain of a company in the State militia.

He died of yellow fever on board the Warren, off Matanzas, near Havana, Cuba, on August 3, 1800, aged nearly 43 years.

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Yale University

Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five U.S. presidents, seventeen U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and several foreign heads of state.

Incorporated as the Collegiate School, the institution traces its roots to 17th-century clergymen who sought to establish a college to train clergy and political leaders for the colony. In 1718, the College was renamed Yale College to honor a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. In 1861, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences became the first U.S. school to award the Ph.D.

Yale College was transformed, beginning in the 1930s, through the establishment of residential colleges: 12 now exist and two more are planned. Almost all tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.

The University's assets include a US$16.3 billion endowment, the second largest of any academic institution, as well as the second largest academic library in the world, with some 12.5 million volumes held in more than two dozen libraries.

Yale and Harvard have been rivals in academics, athletics, and other activities for most of their history, competing annually in The Game and the Harvard-Yale Regatta.