- John Wheelock
John Wheelock (1754-1817) was the eldest son of
Eleazar Wheelock who was the founder and first president ofDartmouth College ; John Wheelock succeeded his father as the College’s second president.Early life
John Wheelock was born in
Lebanon, Connecticut onJanuary 28 , 1754, the son of Eleazar Wheelock, the director Moor's Indian Charity School (founded 1754), and Mary Brinsmead Wheelock. Though he began his higher education at Yale, Wheelock followed his father toHanover, New Hampshire when his father founded Dartmouth, and completed his studies there, where he was a member of the College’s inaugural graduating class in 1771.In 1776, Wheelock became a leader of the United Committees, a group of disgruntled
New Hampshire citizens angry at their lack of representation in the state legislature and the distance of the state capital; in retaliation for these slights, Wheelock and others led twelve New Hampshire towns to secede from the state and attempt to joinVermont . The next year, 1777, as theRevolutionary War raged, Wheelock briefly served inNew York and Vermont as a Lieutenant Colonel in ColonelBedel's Regiment . He carried on correspondence with, among others,George Washington .Presidency of Dartmouth College
Upon his father's death in 1779, John Wheelock assumed the presidency of the College, despite the fact that he was neither an academic nor a minister.
During his almost forty years as Dartmouth's president (1779-1815), Wheelock oversaw the construction of Dartmouth Hall and the founding of
Dartmouth Medical School , the fourth-oldest medical school in the country; he also maintained the College’s fiscal solvency throughout the Revolutionary War, mainly through the Vermont legislature’s grant of 23,000 acres (93 km²) inWheelock, Vermont .During the latter half of Wheelock's tenure, he became embroiled in a dispute with Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees. Wheelock proceeded to convince the governor of New Hampshire to fill the Board with supporters and turn Dartmouth College into a state-controlled
Dartmouth University . The original, private Board resisted and eventually sued. The case, "Dartmouth College v. Woodward ", went through various judicial courts, before the United States Supreme Court decided in the Board's favor in 1819, the result of a brilliant peroration by Dartmouth alumnusDaniel Webster , class of 1801, who had, ironically, graduated under Wheelock's tenure. However, by this time, Wheelock, who had been forced out of the presidency in 1815 by failing health and poor relations with the Board, had died. He was succeeded byFrancis Brown .Wheelock died on
April 4 , 1817 and is buried near his father in the cemetery in Hanover, NH.External links
* [http://www.dartmouth.edu/~presoff/succession/john.html Dartmouth on President Wheelock]
* [http://www.wheelockgenealogy.com/wheelockweb/pages/vtrevwar.htm Service in the Revolutionary War]
* [http://www.flowofhistory.org/themes/american_republic/western.php Role in the New Hampshire Rebellion]
* [http://www.wheelockgenealogy.com/WheelockWeb/pages/ew_bio.htm The Founding and Early Years of Dartmouth College]
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