Sherman Hoar, was an American lawyer, member of Congress representing Massachusetts, and U.S. District Attorney for Massachusetts. As a young man he was the model for the head of the John Harvard statue now in the Harvard Yard.

John Harvard is a sculpture in bronze by Daniel Chester French in Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachu­setts, honoring clergyman John Harvard (1607–1638), whose deathbed bequest to the "schoale or Colledge" recently undertaken by the Massachu­setts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that it was consequently ordered "that the Colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shalbee called Harvard Colledge."  There being nothing to indicate what John Harvard had looked like, French used a Harvard student collaterally descended from an early Harvard president as inspiration.