Harvard’s Warner Free Lecture Series had its beginnings in 1891, when the town accepted the generous bequest of Henry L. Warner, a town native. Warner left the town $10,000 to be used to provide educational lectures to 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 ...”