<p>okay, theres probably a very quick answer to this, but i was just wondering if there are any descendants of john harvard lurking somewhere in the world, and if there was, i would despise them bc of their easy way in. 
i mean, he only lived to be 31, but still, there could be little illegitimate harvards creeping around.</p>
<p>If there are any, their relationship to John Harvard would be so distant as to provide no legacy boost. Whatever the case It can’t be all that big of a family. I’ve never met or known of another person with the last name Harvard.</p>
<p>yeah, neither have i. they almost definately dont exist.</p>
<p>i know a guy with the last name harvard</p>
<p>a harvard!
blablabla</p>
<p>actually, my last name is harvard.
im constantly getting that "haha ur last name is harvard, well then u must go to harvard’ bs
or i have jerseys that have my last name on the back and people always ask me if i play for harvard.
but no, i do not play for harvard university, i do not attend harvard university but my last name is infact Harvard, which is pretty sweet.</p>
<p>According to census data, approximately .0001% of the population (1 out of 100,000, or about 3000 people in America). I’d note there are about 12,000 names tied at this frequency.</p>
<p>(I happened to have census data on hand- I’ve done a little statistics research in common names).</p>
<p>And according to a facebook search, there’s one undergraduate at Harvard whose last name is Harvard, and one recent graduate. (Using the Poisson distribution to see if this is an unusually high percentage is left as an exercise for the reader.)</p>
<p>I went to Harvard with someone whose first name was Harvard. His roommate and best friend’s last name was Vassar.</p>
<p>You serious, Northstarmom?</p>
<p>Yes, I am serious.</p>
<p>I think the question is trivially reduced to whether Harvard ever married. And I would doubt it (wasn’t he a Jesuit not supposed to marry?). So even if he had kids they would not carry his last name. Non-direct decendants are not legacies.</p>
<p>John Harvard was not a Jesuit - he went to an Oxford college that was a Puritan stronghold. He was married, but had no children.</p>
<p>I am 99.9% certain that Garvard went to Cambridge. Which is reflected in the name of Cambridge, MA.</p>
<p>Hope I didn’t make a typo in Harvard’s name somewhere else.</p>
<p>John Harvard went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge.</p>
<p>He was a Protestant.</p>
<p>Ack I read the Wikipedia article and then somehow wrote Oxford instead of Cambridge. Big fat F for me! Thanks for correcting me Hanna!</p>
<p>a) John Harvard didn’t have children.</p>
<p>b) If John Harvard had had children, the vast majority of his descendants that are alive today would NOT share his last name.</p>