WHEELOCK, ELEAZAR
(22 April 1711, Windham, CT-24 April 1779, Hanover, NH). Education: B.A., Yale College, 1733. Career: Minister, Second Congregational Church, Lebanon, CT, 1735-70; president, Dartmouth College, 1770-79.
Eleazar Wheelock was one of the leading evangelists of the Great Awakening, a powerful preacher in his own parish and in others he visited as an itinerant. In one year he was reputed to have preached nearly five hundred sermons. He was the sort of person who might have condemned formal learning, out of religious enthusiasm. But instead he became one of colonial New England's foremost schoolmasters, and he founded an Ivy League college.
Wheelock became interested in education when, as minister at Lebanon, Connecticut, he began to teach to supplement a meager clerical salary. One of his first pupils was one of his most famous, the Mohegan Indian Samson Occom*. Occom's success in school encouraged Wheelock to recruit other native students. Joshua Moor, a neighbor, gave a house and two acres of land for the school, which came to be known as Moor's Indian Charity School. Other philanthropists gave money for student support. By 1765 Wheelock had taught twenty-nine Indian boys and ten girls, as well as seven whites, all charity students. The natives came from as far away as New Jersey and New York. In common with most other colonists, Wheelock disparaged Indian culture. He intended his students to return to their tribes and serve as missionaries and exemplars of the superior white culture. The young men were taught husbandry and the women housewifery in addition to religion and the "three Rs."
In 1765 Occom went to England to raise funds for Wheelock's school. Occom and a companion raised twelve thousand pounds, a substantial sum of money.
But Occom and Wheelock soon argued over the ideal composition of the school. Wheelock was disappointed in the results of the school in Lebanon-many students died of disease or forgot their lessons in civilization as soon as they returned to their tribes. He concluded that he could have a more lasting impact if he founded a college as well as a school and admitted whites. He received encouragement from the governor of New Hampshire and began the school in a "hut in the woods" on the banks of the Connecticut River in Dresden, later Hanover. Thirty students followed him on foot from Lebanon ... They lived at first in buildings made of logs without nails and slept on hemlock boughs.
Of the seventy-two young men who graduated from the college during Wheelock's lifetime, thirty-nine became ministers. The school became increasingly a white college. Occom opposed the transformation, and he and Wheelock were estranged for the rest of their lives. Wheelock named his school for Lord Dartmouth, leader of the English trustees who controlled the funds Occom had raised. As president of his new school, Wheelock taught, preached, farmed, built buildings, and served as local justice of the peace. In such ways the former itinerant preacher established a school that would carryon the Congregational tradition of an educated ministry.
Bibliography
A: A Plain and Faithful Narrative ... of the Indian Charity-School, 9 vols. (Boston and Hartford, 1763-75).
B: AAP I, 397-403; BSGYC 1,493-99; DAB 20,58-59; DARB, 499-500; NCAB 9, 85-86; David McClure and Elijah Parish, Memoirs of the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock (Newburyport, Mass., 1811; New York. 1972); James D. McCallum, Eleazar Wheelock: Founder of Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H., 1939).
Eleazar Wheelock was one of the leading evangelists of the Great Awakening, a powerful preacher in his own parish and in others he visited as an itinerant. In one year he was reputed to have preached nearly five hundred sermons. He was the sort of person who might have condemned formal learning, out of religious enthusiasm. But instead he became one of colonial New England's foremost schoolmasters, and he founded an Ivy League college.
Wheelock became interested in education when, as minister at Lebanon, Connecticut, he began to teach to supplement a meager clerical salary. One of his first pupils was one of his most famous, the Mohegan Indian Samson Occom*. Occom's success in school encouraged Wheelock to recruit other native students. Joshua Moor, a neighbor, gave a house and two acres of land for the school, which came to be known as Moor's Indian Charity School. Other philanthropists gave money for student support. By 1765 Wheelock had taught twenty-nine Indian boys and ten girls, as well as seven whites, all charity students. The natives came from as far away as New Jersey and New York. In common with most other colonists, Wheelock disparaged Indian culture. He intended his students to return to their tribes and serve as missionaries and exemplars of the superior white culture. The young men were taught husbandry and the women housewifery in addition to religion and the "three Rs."
In 1765 Occom went to England to raise funds for Wheelock's school. Occom and a companion raised twelve thousand pounds, a substantial sum of money.
But Occom and Wheelock soon argued over the ideal composition of the school. Wheelock was disappointed in the results of the school in Lebanon-many students died of disease or forgot their lessons in civilization as soon as they returned to their tribes. He concluded that he could have a more lasting impact if he founded a college as well as a school and admitted whites. He received encouragement from the governor of New Hampshire and began the school in a "hut in the woods" on the banks of the Connecticut River in Dresden, later Hanover. Thirty students followed him on foot from Lebanon ... They lived at first in buildings made of logs without nails and slept on hemlock boughs.
Of the seventy-two young men who graduated from the college during Wheelock's lifetime, thirty-nine became ministers. The school became increasingly a white college. Occom opposed the transformation, and he and Wheelock were estranged for the rest of their lives. Wheelock named his school for Lord Dartmouth, leader of the English trustees who controlled the funds Occom had raised. As president of his new school, Wheelock taught, preached, farmed, built buildings, and served as local justice of the peace. In such ways the former itinerant preacher established a school that would carryon the Congregational tradition of an educated ministry.
Bibliography
A: A Plain and Faithful Narrative ... of the Indian Charity-School, 9 vols. (Boston and Hartford, 1763-75).
B: AAP I, 397-403; BSGYC 1,493-99; DAB 20,58-59; DARB, 499-500; NCAB 9, 85-86; David McClure and Elijah Parish, Memoirs of the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock (Newburyport, Mass., 1811; New York. 1972); James D. McCallum, Eleazar Wheelock: Founder of Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H., 1939).