Eleazar Wheelock
| Eleazar Wheelock | |
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Portrait by Joseph Steward
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| President of Dartmouth College | |
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In office 1769–1779 |
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| Succeeded by | John Wheelock |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
April 22, 1711 Windham, Connecticut |
| Died | April 24, 1779 (aged 68) Hanover, New Hampshire |
Eleazar Wheelock (April 22, 1711 – April 24, 1779) was an American Congregational minister, orator, and educator in Lebanon, Connecticut, for 35 years before founding Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. He had tutored Samson Occom, a Mohegan who became a Presbyterian minister and the first Native American to publish writings in English. Before founding Dartmouth, Wheelock had founded and run the Moor's Charity School in Connecticut to educate Native Americans. The college was primarily for the sons of English colonists.
Eleazar Wheelock was born in Windham, Connecticut, to Ralph Wheelock and Ruth Huntington, who had a prosperous farm of 300 acres. He is the great-grandson of the first teacher of the first free school in the United States (see Dedham, Massachusetts), the Rev. Ralph Wheelock. In 1733, he graduated from Yale College, having won the first award of the Dean Berkeley Donation for distinction in classics. He continued his theological studies at Yale until he was licensed to preach in May 1734.
Two months after beginning as pastor of a church, on April 29, 1735, he married Sarah Davenport. She died in 1746. They managed a farm in addition to his pastoring, and he was an itinerant preacher during the 1730s and '40s.
He married a second time to Mary Brinsmead, a widow with two children. In total he had eight children with his wives and two step-children.
Wheelock was installed as the pastor of the Second Congregational Church of Lebanon, Connecticut, in February 1735. He served as their minister for 34 years, while also acting as an itinerant preacher during the Great Awakening.
He participated fully and enthusiastically in the Great Awakening, a religious revival that had begun to sweep the Connecticut River Valley around the time of his graduation from Yale. He was one of its greatest proponents in the state, serving as the "chief intelligencer of revival news".
In addition, Wheelock was deeply concerned about Native Americans in New England, whose numbers had declined rapidly due to disease, warfare and social disruption, including continued encroachment on their lands by colonists.
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