DARTMOUTH COLLEGE And yet — in fact you need only draw a single thread at any point you choose out of the fabric of life and the run will make a pathway across the whole, and down that wider pathway each of the other threads will become successively visible, one by one. — Heimito von Doderer, DIE DÂIMONEN “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Dartmouth College HDT WHAT? INDEX DARTMOUTH COLLEGE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 1765 In this year or the following one, the Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker, who had been for some time a minister of Norwich, Connecticut, and Sampson Occum, the first native American preacher educated by the Reverend Mr. Wheelock, afterwards President of Dartmouth College, journeyed to England to solicit donations for the support of Mr. Wheelock’s school “for the education of Indian youth, to be missionaries and school-masters for the natives of America.” HDT WHAT? INDEX DARTMOUTH COLLEGE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Dartmouth College “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX DARTMOUTH COLLEGE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 1770 September 28, Friday: On page 2 of The New-Hampshire Gazette there appeared a notice by the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock (1711-1779) that Moor’s “Indian charity-school” at Lebanon, Connecticut “is now become a body corporate and politic, under the name of Dartmouth-College, by a most generous and royal charter” dated December 13, 1769. ELEAZAR WHEELOCK (president 1769-1779): Eleazar Wheelock, a Congregational minister from Connecticut, founded Dartmouth College in 1769 and served as its first president. The last of the Colonial colleges, Dartmouth was established by a charter granted by King George III, with funds from the second Earl of Dartmouth and others and a grant of land from John Wentworth, Royal Governor of the Province of New Hampshire. Wheelock had earlier established Moor’s Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut, to provide education to young American Indian men and train them for missionary work. Hoping to expand his school into a college, but unable to gain a charter in Connecticut, Wheelock looked to the north, where settlements were growing and, with them, the need for educational institutions. Samson Occom, a Mohegan Indian and one of Wheelock’s first students, was instrumental in making Wheelock’s dream a reality by raising funds and goodwill from English and Scottish missionary organizations. A major figure in the first Great Awakening, Wheelock was a visionary and a preacher of some renown, a career he continued at Dartmouth where, in addition to President, he was also Trustee, Professor of Divinity and Minister of the College Church. Devoted to the College he had carved out of the wilderness, Wheelock was also thoroughly practical and throughout the difficult years of the Revolutionary War forged the political alliances and raised the funds necessary to keep the fledgling enterprise open. Largely because of his efforts, Dartmouth is one of the few American colleges to have continually graduated a class since 1771.1 1. All the Dartmouth College presidential portraits are in the college’s Hood Museum of Art in Hanford, New Hampshire. HDT WHAT? INDEX DARTMOUTH COLLEGE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE After considering various sites in New Hampshire, the trustees in England had chosen the town of Hanover. Before setting out for Hanover to supervise the clearing of the site and the construction of the first buildings to house his family and the students, Eleazar Wheelock had written the trustees from Lebanon CT on July 29, 1770 outlining his plan of action:2 I am preparing to remove immediately, unless a report very lately come among us, viz. that an army of Worms, which have this year invaded several parts of this Land, have so prevail’d as to cut off great part of the crops in yt. Country & threaten them with great scarsity, should be so confirm’d as to convince me I must stay for want of subsistance. A few days later, on August 1, Eleazar Wheelock had written to Governor John Wentworth of New Hampshire: The melancholly recots of Destruction by worms make me fear whether I shall be able to subsist with my mushroming family in the woods the ensuing winter. howevr, I am preparing to remove as fast as I can.3 Damage to the crops in the summer of 1770 would lead to a food shortage during the following winter and spring, forcing Eleazar Wheelock to import, at great expense, foods from parts of Massachusetts not affected. He would report in February 1771 that:4 I am forced to support those I have [family, students, laborers] from Northfield, Northampton, etc, and by reason of the drought and worms last year every article of provisions is held at dearest rate. These worms were the larvae or caterpillars of the Cirphis unipunctata moth.5 A number of army worm infestations occurred in New England after 1770, and there had been earlier reports.6 An infestation had been recorded in Maine by the Reverend Thomas Smith in his journal of June 27, 1743- July 1, 1743: There are millions of worms, in armies, appearing and threatening to cut off every green thing; people are exceedingly alarmed. July 1. Days of fasting are kept in one place and another, on account of the worms. An exceeding scarce time for hay; it is 7 to 8 a load.7 2. Dartmouth College Library, Special Collections, Ms. 770429. According to Holland, W.J. THE MOTH BOOK. NY: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1905, page 200, the worms were the larvae or caterpillars of the Cirphis unipunctata moth. 3. Dartmouth College Library, Special Collections, Ms. 770451. 4. Chase, Frederick. A HISTORY OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE AND THE TOWN OF HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, ed. by John K. Lord. Cambridge MA: John Wilson and Son, 1891-1913, Volume I, pages 223-4. 5. Holland, W.J. THE MOTH BOOK. NY: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1905, page 200. 6. Riley, Charles V. SECOND ANNUAL REPORT ON THE NOXIOUS, BENEFICIAL AND OTHER INSECTS OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI. Jefferson City MO, 1870, page 42. 7. Smith, Thomas. JOURNALS OF THE REV. THOMAS SMITH, AND THE REV. SAMUEL DEANE, PASTORS OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN PORTLAND, WITH NOTES AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES: AND A SUMMARY HISTORY OF PORTLAND, BY WILLIAM WILLIS. Portland ME: Joseph S. Baily, 1849, page 215. HDT WHAT? INDEX DARTMOUTH COLLEGE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 1772 Benjamin West was awarded an honorary degree by Dartmouth College. THE NEW-ENGLAND ALMANACK FOR 1772. By Benjamin West, Philomath. Providence, Rhode Island: John Carter. It contains account of the compass variation for Providence and a table to calculate the number of days from any day of one month to the same day of any other month. THE NEW-ENGLAND ALMANACK FOR 1772. By Benjamin West, A.M. Newport, Rhode Island: Ebenezer Campbell. WEST’S SHEET ALMANACK, FOR THE YEAR 1772. Broadside. No copy located. Advertised in Providence Gazette. 8 THE RHODE-ISLAND ALMANACK, OR ASTRONOMICAL DIARY, 1772. By John Anderson, Philomath. Newport, Rhode Island: Solomon Southwick. This is the first of the series of Anderson Almanacs. 8. Since in fact there is no record of any “John Anderson” living at Newport, and since in the preface of the 1773 almanac we notice the question being raised “Who is this John Anderson?,” we are probably safe in put- ting this identity down as yet another pseudonym. HDT WHAT? INDEX DARTMOUTH COLLEGE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 1779 At the age of 14, Stephen Burroughs ran away to enlist in the army. He would shortly desert, and enter Dartmouth College. MUMPERY JOHN WHEELOCK (president 1779-1815): John Wheelock assumed the presidency of Dartmouth upon his father’s death in 1779. Neither a cleric nor an academic, Dartmouth’s second and youngest president was confronted with the task of building up Dartmouth’s finances and physical resources after the ravages of the Revolutionary War. While his relationship with the state legislature led to a legal crisis for the College and the controversy surrounding his latter years in office cast a shadow over his administration, Dartmouth made tremendous progress under his leadership. Two of the College’s most renowned alumni, Daniel Webster (1801) and Sylvanus Thayer (1807) graduated during his tenure, and he was instrumental in founding the fourth medical school in the nation in 1797 under Dr. Nathan Smith. John Wheelock also began building the historic Dartmouth Hall, which has become one of the country’s best-known collegiate buildings.9 9. All the Dartmouth presidential portraits are in the college’s Hood Museum of Art in Hanford, New Hampshire. HDT WHAT? INDEX DARTMOUTH COLLEGE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 1783 Toward the end of his 15th-Century captivity in England, Prince James Stewart of Scotland had written a long poem for Lady Joan Beaufort, “The Kingis Quair.” In this year William Tytler discovered the poem among manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Its 7-line stanza scheme would become known as “rime royal.” US independence was recognized in the Treaty of Paris. READ THE FULL TEXT The “Peace of 1783” with England, signed by Benjamin Franklin, gave the new national government in North America a chance to settle scores at home. Among other punishments for disloyalty (loyalty), the mansion and estate of Colonel Elisha Jones outside Weston, Massachusetts, at which the Reverend Asa Dunbar and his wife Mary Jones Dunbar, the Colonel’s daughter, had been residing in 1775 and 1776, was confiscated HDT WHAT? INDEX DARTMOUTH COLLEGE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE by representatives of the new American government. Suddenly they belonged to someone else. DUNBAR FAMILY (Oh, well, you didn’t want David Henry to grow up a poor little rich kid, now did you!) Here are a bunch of American loyalists, leaving everything behind and fleeing to Canada (think of the helicopters taking off from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon, crowded with panicked refugees — it was that sort of situation): Early in the year Asa Dunbar was admitted to practice law in New Hampshire, and when Elijah Dunbar graduated from Dartmouth College later on during this year he came to study law in the Keene office of his Uncle Asa before beginning to practice law in Keene, New Hampshire and Claremont.