Eleazar Wheelock

Born: Windham; April 22, 1711
Died: Hanover, New Hampshire; April 24, 1779

Entry by Bruce P. Stark

Eleazar Wheelock was a Congregational clergyman and the founder of Dartmouth College. He was graduated from Yale College in 1733, was licensed to preach in 1734, and in 1735 was ordained minister in Lebanon Crank. Soon after his installation, his parish was stirred by a religious revival and Wheelock became one of those New England ministers who prayed for a wider awakening of religion. When George Whitefield launched the Great Awakening in the fall of 1740, Wheelock was one of its most energetic supporters, preaching widely throughout New England. He was a popular and persuasive preacher and was one of a handful of men who labored most ardently to make the Awakening a success. Although deprived of his salary in 1742 for intinerant activities, Wheelock was an established minister who was horrified by the religious excesses associated with James Davenport (c. 1716-1757) and was one of the men who successfully persuaded Davenport to retract his errors.

Like many ministers, Wheelock supplemented his meager income by preparing young men for college. In the wake of the Great Awakening, he recognized that the hitherto neglected Indians needed attention, and as early as 1743 he began to instruct privately a young Mohegan Indian, Samson Occom (1723-1792). Wheelock eventually envisaged a plan for educating and converting Indians that involved removing them from their native environment to Lebanon, training them, and sending them back to their own tribes as missionaries. In 1754, with the financial backing of Joshua More (1683-1756) of Mansfield, he launched More's Indian Charity School. His educational efforts with Indians were marked, however, by disappointments. Many of his Indian students sickened, died, or were spoiled by the amenities of white civilization. By 1768 he had aroused the enmity of Sir William Johnson, who withdrew all Indians from the Six Nations from his school. Plagued also by salary difficulties with his parish, Wheelock began to think about enlarging his educational program to include a college. Emissaries in Great Britain had secured some ₤12,000, and in December 1769 Wheelock obtained a charter from Governor John Wentworth to establish Dartmouth College. The College was established in 1770 in frontier Hanover, New Hampshire. For the remaining nine years of his life Wheelock was president of Dartmouth College and More's Indian Charity School.

Eleazar Wheelock was a strong supporter of the Great Awakening. His missionary zeal inspired his Indian education experiments and these in turn led to the founding of Dartmouth College.

For Further Reading

McCallum, James D. Eleazar Wheelock, Founder of Dartmouth College. Hanover, New Hampshire, 1939.

* Entry under revision.