Harvard College

Gabriel Isaac Lewis

Gabriel Isaac Lewis (1883–1938) was born at Hobart Tasmania, the son of Henry Lewis (born in Germany) and Annie Cohen (born in England). After the death of his father, the family moved to Wellington, New Zealand to live with his mother’s parents (1890). His mother married Maurice Ziman (January 1896) and the new family emigrated to New York (August 1896). In 1899, the family returned to New Zealand leaving the 16-year-old Gabriel in the United States to support himself. He is recorded as a member of the debating team of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association Literary Society (1902). He put himself through evening high school in Newark and New York, before attending Phillips Exeter Academy (1902–1905) on scholarships.

In May 1905, Gabriel Isaac Lewis applied for financial age to attend Harvard College. John C. Kirtland Jr. wrote in support of his application that he was “easily the most able and capable man coming to Harvard from Exeter this year … He is of Jewish extraction, a native of New Zealand, and entirely dependent upon himself.” He did not graduate with his Class in June 1908 because his bills were unpaid, but entered Harvard Law School in September 1908 and had his undergraduate degree conferred in March 1909. He graduated LL.B from Harvard Law School in 1911.

After graduation, Gabriel Isaac Lewis lived and practised in New York. He served in the War Department, Washington DC during American involvement in the Great War. Of this service he wrote: “In July, 1918, I almost landed in the Military Intelligence Bureau, but those in charge discovered at the last moment that I was neither military nor intelligent.” He was chairman of the ethics committee of the New York County Lawyers Association and a member of the ethics committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He died of a stroke while walking to a meeting at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. He was the brother of the sculptor Betty Lewis Isaacs.

Clyde Fairbanks Maxwell

Clyde Fairbanks Maxwell was born at North Hampton, Massachusetts on 11 April 1892. His father, Walter Maxwell (1851–1934), was an Englishman who had studied science in London and Zurich before taking a Masters degree at Harvard in 1889 and then teaching physiological chemistry at the Harvard Summer School. His mother was Annie Weber (1863–1895), born in Vermont. Walter Maxwell became an expert in sugar production, working in Nebraska and New Orleans before moving to Hawaii in 1895 where he became the first Director of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Experiment and where Annie Maxwell died. In 1900, Walter Maxwell moved with his sons, Marcuswell and Clyde, to Queensland to become Director of the Sugar Experiment Stations in that colony.

Clyde Maxwell was educated at the Church of England Grammar School in Sydney and at the Armidale School. He attended the University of Sydney in 1909. The following year, his father resigned his position in Australia and returned to the United States where Clyde was enrolled in the Harvard class of 1914. Soon after graduation, he travelled to England (September 1914) and enlisted in the British Army. He was made a Lieutenant but, for health reasons, did not join his regiment in France until June 1916. He died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme on July 3, 1916 although his death was not confirmed for nine months.

A letter to Harvard from his father recounted how his family learnt about his end: “Young officers when going into action frequently placed in the most convenient pocket of their uniform an open, but addressed envelope containing a blank sheet of paper, with an attached pencil. It appears that Lieutenant Maxwell had made this provision as a closed letter was found in, or near, the German trench which his platoon had taken. The letter was forwarded to the address in England that the envelope bore. It was received by a young girl friend of Lieutenant Maxwell. He had not been able to do more than take the letter out of his uniform and close it — with blood. The enclosed sheet was blank.”

Clyde Fairbanks Maxwell has no known grave. His name appears on the Theipval Memorial in France, and in Harvard Memorial Church.

Hugh O’Neill

Hugh O’Neill (1897–1960) was born at Unley, South Australia on November 21, 1897, the son of Arthur O’Neill and Maud Everline O’Neill (nee Williams). He appears in examination lists in the Adelaide press as a student at Unley District High School and Adelaide High School, and in the Archives of the University of Adelaide as ‘hardly any attendance.’ On February 15, 1919, Hugh O’Neill, medical student, married the 62-yr-old widow Margaret Wilson Hume (nee Bell) in the Registrar General’s Office, Sydney. Both ages on the marriage certificate are inaccurate. Hugh’s age is given as 25 years and Margaret’s as 45 years. Hugh’s father, who did not die until 1936, is stated as deceased. Hugh appears to have adopted Wilson as a middle-name after this marriage. On March 5, 1919, the newly wed couple sailed for the United States. A brief notice in the Sydney Evening News stated that Mr. H. Wilson O’Neill was departing to take a three-year medical degree at Columbia University.

Hugh W. O’Neil, 21, medical student, and Mrs. Margaret O’Neil, 45, housewife (“wife” added in pencil above her name) arrived at San Francisco on March 24, 1919, destination New York. Sometime thereafter, Hugh Wilson O’Neill applied for admission to Harvard College. He reported being educated at Unley High School 1910–1911, Adelaide High School 1912–1915, University of Adelaide 1916, and University of Sydney 1918. He wished “to enter Harvard Medical School having already the necessary qualifications,” and gave his home address as Box 757, G.P.O., Sydney with another address in Glasgow. The application was written at Harvard University and is undated. The Harvard Catalogue for 1919-1920 lists him as an unclassified student, a term used to refer to a student admitted to Harvard from another college. The standing of unclassified students was determined after the completion of their first year at Harvard.

Hugh Wilson O’Neill re-entered the United States at Newport Vermont on October 28, 1919 at which time he reported being previously in the United States at Boston, April 19–September 12, 1919. At his re-entry, he is recorded as of Irish race, 21 years, married, born Adelaide. The immigration officer noted that he was returning from Glasgow where he gave his contact as Queen Margaret’s College [a women’s college, perhaps an allusion to his wife] and was in transit to Australia via San Francisco, intended stay in the United States for one month. He gave Mo. [mother] Margaret, Box 757, Bega, New South Wales as an Australian contact address.

On October 31, O’Neill wrote a letter to the Harvard Admissions office stating “I entered the Medical School in July 1919 but was called to England on urgent family affairs. Owing to lack of shipping accommodation I was unable to reach the United States in time to begin my first year in Medicine and finally arrived here by a very circuitous route.” His provisional registration was confirmed on November 7, 1919. Hugh O’Neill withdrew from Harvard College as of February 9, 1920, on account of “Finances.”

Margaret O’Neill must have returned to Australia because in July 1921 she travelled alone from Sydney to Vancouver, and then across Canada by rail. She entered the United States at Newport, Vermont, on August 7 1921, en route to Boston. After her arrival, Hugh O’Neill sent letters from Quincy House Boston, dated August 23 1921 and September 17 1921, requesting the return of his ‘bundle of certificates,’ from Adelaide High School and the University of Adelaide, that had been deposited at the Harvard Admissions Office in October 1919. The documents were returned September 22, 1921.

Hugh Wilson O’Neill entered Yale as a freshman in October 1921. In his application he lists his mother’s [sic] maiden name as Margaret Wilson Bell and used Box 757 G.P.O. Sydney as his home address. He became a member of Sigma Xi and Phi Beta Kappa, graduating in three years (A.B. 1924). He was enrolled at Yale Medical School in 1924–25, received an S.M. (Zoology and Anatomy) at the Yale commencement of 1925, but did not re-enrol at Yale in 1925–1926. Instead he was admitted to the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1925–1926) as a student in English. Professor Tinker of Yale responded to a request for a reference: “a man of first-rate intelligence. Original and independent — perhaps a little restive under routine. An Australian who seems occasionally ill at ease in a New England environment. If you are looking for sheer ability, however, here it is.” O’Neill does not appear to have revealed his prior attendance at Harvard College to the Graduate School. He reported travel to England 1910–1912 (when he was attending high school in Adelaide according to his 1919 application) and 1918–1920 (part of which time he was at Harvard College), and Egypt. He described himself as single. During this year he took courses in English, Comparative Literature, German, and French. His enrolment lapsed at the end of the year.

The Harvard Alumni Directories of 1923 and 1926 give Hugh W. O’Neill’s address as Kalkabarana, via Oodnadatta, South Australia. Only one use of ‘Kalkabarana’ was found by Google search. Mortimer Graves (Harvard Class of 1920) wrote in 1930: “The satirically minded spectator might be inspired to carry such a philosophy of education to its logical conclusion and conjure up a picture of a meeting between a highly educated gentleman who knew no history except that of his own dear native Ouachita County in the more or less sovereign State of Arkansas, and another equally highly educated gentleman whose historical information centered entirely around Kalkabarana, between Algebuckina and Oodnadatta, in South Australia.” There is nothing between Algebuckina and Oodnadatta but desert. In the directories for 1929 and 1934, Hugh W. O’Neill’s address is once again Box 757, General Post Office, Sydney.

Requests for information from the Yale Alumni office to Box 757, G.P.O., Sydney went unanswered. In 1929, the Yale Alumni Registrar obtained the addresses of Hugh O’Neill’s father and brother from the University of Adelaide, but requests for information to these addresses also went unanswered.

Hugh Wilson O’Neill obtained a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1929. In the 1930 U.S. Census (April), he is a doctor living alone in Philadelphia but listed as married for ten years. Later that year, he was appointed assistant physician at Danvers State Hospital, Massachusetts, and appears in a Danvers Street directory as living with a wife Loretta. He held that position for just over a year. Following his resignation from Danvers State Hospital he attended Harvard Summer School, belatedly receiving his A.M. from Harvard in February 1932.

Margaret W. O’Neill died at Petersham, Sydney, September 21, 1933. On learning of her death a month later, Hugh immediately sent a letter to her executors: “Since I am an interested party and since my wife has drawn a will in my favour would you be good enough to forward me a copy of the will.” He wrote that he was unable to come to Sydney immediately because he was taking a postgraduate surgical course in Philadelphia. Hugh’s hopes were disappointed because the will contained a clause: “I desire to place on record that my reason for not leaving Hugh O'Neill any interest in my estate is owing to the fact that I have given him money during my lifetime and I have never been maintained by him and also owing to the treatment I have received from him during my lifetime.”

Hugh then wrote to Margaret’s executors requesting a search of her papers for his Yale diplomas but received a letter saying the diplomas could not be found. In March 1934, Hugh wrote to Yale from the Episcopal Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, Washington, D.C., requesting duplicate diplomas saying the originals had been left ‘in care of a relative’ on a visit to Australia in 1926. He is listed as a physician near Washington, D.C., in the Harvard Alumni Directory for 1937.

Hugh Wilson O’Neill was registered as a physician in California in 1937. The Harvard Alumni Directories from 1940 until his death described him as a physician at Santa Ana, California. In Santa Ana, he lived with the widow Nita R. Johnson who is listed as his wife in street directories after 1949. A note in the Yale archives from 1943 states “Omit for all Alumni fund solicitations … He must either have had a poor time here, or else inherited an unusually bilious disposition.” A further confidential note in the Yale archives from 1948 states he was suspected of arson in California. He died in California on 2 January 1960. An obituary mentions two children living in Massachusetts.

[Special thanks to Edmund and Janet Perrin for a visit to the New South Wales probate archives.]

Victor Kwonglee Kwong

Victor Kwonglee Kwong (1906–1979) was born at Cairns, Queensland. In 1919, he was Dux of the Lower School of Scotch College, Melbourne, and attended the Upper School for a year. From September 1922 to June 1924 he was a student at St. John’s University in Shanghai. In September, 1925 he applied to Harvard to be admitted as a transfer student but was advised to attend a local college and then reapply. He attended Boston University September 1925–January 1927. During this time he was a member of the Boston University debating team, gave public lectures on China, and became president of the Chinese Student Christian Association of Greater Boston.

In February 1927, he was admitted to Harvard College as a provisional sophomore concentrating in economics. In March, he obtained a one-year loan of $150 from Harvard to pay his college bill. He did not register for the Fall semester and was granted leave of absence in October. Permission for late registration was given in March 1928 subject to ‘satisfactory financial arrangements’ but his request for a scholarship was turned down. In August, he paid the interest on his first loan from Harvard and had the loan extended for another year then took out a second loan from Harvard in October 1928 for an additional $104 to pay his College Bills.

Victor Kwong had given a number of talks to the Rotary Club at Leominster. As a consequence, the mayor of Leominster, Bernard W. Doyle, underwrote a loan for $1000 (November 19, 1928) to allow him to complete his senior year at Harvard. He appears to have used part of this money to pay off his Harvard debt and on November 26 he petitioned to withdraw from Harvard College to attend a university in California. The request was granted the following day. After correspondence with Mr. Doyle, the Dean and Administrative Board concluded that Kwong had obtained the $1000 loan under false pretenses and that he had acted in a manner to bring discredit on the College. The University of California at Berkeley, where Kwong, had applied was informed that he should not be admitted on account of the loan. In his letter to Berkeley, Dean Hanford wrote “Kwong’s record and conduct has been otherwise good although there has always been a certain glibness and lack of frankness in his action. This latter may be due to the difficulty of understanding the oriental mind.” Unable to enroll at Berkeley, Kwong found work as a journalist reporting on Chinatown for the San Francisco Bulletin.

In January 1930, Kwong applied for readmittance to Harvard College but was rejected on a vote of the Adminstrative Board. The following month he was a member of the Chinese student debating team that defeated Harvard. The Crimson report of the debate noted that “As a debater at Harvard, Kwong had an especially brilliant record, his efforts being a major factor in the Harvard success in 1927 and 1928 when the University won the Intercollegiate Debating League championship.”

During 1930–1932, Kwong worked as an editor for Young China in San Francisco after which he moved briefly to China. He returned in 1934 as a member of the Chinese consulate in San Francisco and was able to pay off his debt to B. W. Doyle. By 1939, he was an Intelligence Officer connected with the Chinese Embassy in Washington. He served as an attache at the Embassy during the Second World War. He joined the World Bank in 1946 before working for the United Nations. In 1974, he received a doctorate from Arizona State University. 
 

Victor Kwonglee Kwong was the younger half-brother of Kwang Lim Kwong.

Hume Dow

Hume Dow (1916–1997) was born at Melbourne. He came to the United States in 1924 when his father, David M. Dow, was appointed official secretary of the Australian Commissioner to America. His father was the head of the Australian mission to the United States from 1930–1938 (an ambassador was not appointed until 1946). Hume Dow was educated at Staten Island Academy where he was a friend of the future philosopher Donald Herbert Davidson (a friendship that was continued at Harvard College). He won an open scholarship to Swarthmore College in 1934 but turned this down when he received a more attractive scholarship from Harvard College. At Harvard, he was a member of the John Reed Society, an organizer of the Harvard Film Society, literary editor of the Advocate, and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He helped raise money for an ambulance to be sent to the Loyalists in Spain. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with the class of 1938 and returned with his parents to Australia. He worked as a journalist and as editor of Salt, the Australian Army Journal. In 1953, he joined the English Department at the University of Melbourne where he remained until his retirement.

William Ernest Kendall

William Ernest (Bill) Kendall swam for Australia at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. He was a member of the class of 1940 and elected captain of the Harvard University freshmen's swimming team. He left Harvard at the end of his sophomore year and went to work for Coca Cola. He returned to Australia in 1939 to work in his father’s steel company.

David Frederick Hawkins

David Frederick Hawkins (1933–) grew up at Fairlight on the northern side of Sydney Harbor and attended North Sydney Boys High School. He finished first in the breaststroke at the 1950 Empire Games in Auckland swimming the “butterfly” style and then represented Australia at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki. (Hawkins won two gold medals for Australia in relay events at the 1954 Empire Games in Vancouver where he swam orthodox breaststroke because of the banning of the butterfly. The butterfly became its own event at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne.)

After the Helsinki Games, he came to the United States to obtain a university education because he would have needed to take a Teacher’s Scholarship to attend the University of Sydney (this would have bonded him after graduation to teach wherever he was sent by the N.S.W. Education Department). He received an admission offer from the University of Michigan. Yale offered to ‘redshirt’ him for a year because of the current strength of their swimming team. In August 1952, he was offered admission to Harvard University with the understanding that he would pay for his board ($300) and tuition ($600) by working at Harvard. At the end of his freshman year he was awarded the Frank Scott Gerrish Scholarship and with this award he was able to pay for his board and tuition for the final three years of his Harvard degree. David Hawkins initially concentrated in economics but switched to government. He was unable to do a senior thesis in government because he had not taken the required introductory courses and graduated with the class of 1956, Cum Laude in General Studies.

After commencement, Hawkins enrolled at the Harvard Business School obtaining his M.B.A. in 1958. He then joined Australian Carbon Black Pty Ltd, Melbourne as executive assistant to the managing director but received his first assignment to Boston. He coached the Harvard freshman swimming team of 1958–1959 before returning to Australia. In January 1960 he was enrolled in the doctoral program at Harvard Business School, graduating D.B.A. in 1960. He then joined the Business School faculty teaching financial accounting. He received tenure in 1972. He is currently the Lovett-Learned Professor of Business Administration.

(See Individual Bio Statements at Left)

Class of 1908
Gabriel Isaac Lewis

Class of 1914
Clyde Fairbanks Maxwell

Class of 1919-1920
Hugh O’Neill

Class of 1929
Victor Kwonglee Kwong 

Class of 1938
Hume Dow

Class of 1940
William Ernest Kendall

Class of 1956
David Frederick Hawkins