History of Dartmouth College, Vol. 1: A Review

For most Dartmouth students, the College is a force of nature, whose existence is unquestioned, and a world without it might be difficult to imagine. This unfailing faith in Dartmouth has resulted in students’ historical view of the College running from ignorance to reverence, and the College’s history, the story of how the College came to be, having been de-emphasized to the point of irrelevance on campus. However, students hear names such as “Wheelock,” “Occom,” and “Webster” so often that they cannot deny that great men did in fact come before them, even if they know nothing about the men themselves.

For those who are unfamiliar with the early history of the College, one could not do much better than read through History of Dartmouth College, Volume I. The first in a two-volume series by Leon Burr Richardson, the book covers the early days of the College, ranging from the early ambitions of a Connecticut Great Awakening preacher to the recovery of the College in the aftermath of a historic Supreme Court decision. Originally published in the 1930s, the book is much closer in time to the source material and free of biases that the present day might bring. Before delving too much into its contents, it should be noted that the book merits a strong recommendation for anyone who is interested in the early history of the College or for any students who are ignorant of the very hallowed grounds across which they walk every day.

What jumps off the page (or rather becomes abundantly apparent to the reader) is the great detail that Richardson dedicates to certain historical facts. There are entire chapters in the 400-page history dedicated to merely summarizing all of the financial transactions that the College administered during its foundation. These details range from less-than-enthralling debates over faculty salaries to the more exciting trips to Europe to solicit donations (John Wheelock apparently met Benjamin Franklin in Paris in the 1780s, and the College received $20 from him and John Jay) to the outright strange (apparently the College ran a lottery for New Hampshire residents in the 1790s to raise money). Unfortunately, most details lean towards the former, but the obsession with finances is the book’s main concern given that a lack of funds drove many decisions for the College in its early days. While today its enormous endowment means that world-class facilities are expected, originally the College was an outpost in the New Hampshire wilderness, and as soon as it was founded, the College seemingly ran out of money. Disputes with the Trustees came to dominate operations and lasted through President Bartlett’s tumultuous presidency, but really continued with the scandal concerning alumni voting in the Trustee election, which contributed to the foundation of this paper.

This financial history is an important means of understanding the motivations of Eleazar Wheelock and his son John Wheelock, who succeeded him as president, but this information comes across as rather dry. Richardson’s writing is not meant for a modern audience, but the source material and the story he is compiling shine through. Even though the book itself might not tell the story in the most splendid format, the story of Dartmouth’s founding and its early days is still conveyed. While the overall story is compelling and should be known by all students, what really enlivens the history are the obscure facts that Richardson includes, and often these odd tidbits feel right at home at Dartmouth, showing the College to have been that which persists today.

To demonstrate, several of these will be mentioned briefly here. First, in 1774, Wheelock returned home to Connecticut for a couple of weeks to recover from illness. When he returned from his rest to campus, he was shocked to learn that students had begun to frequent a tavern and had enjoyed quite an amount of revelry in his absence. The tavern, located in a prime spot on campus by what is now Wheeler Hall, had given these early students ease of access to a liquor source which, being true Dartmouth men, they utilized to the best of their abilities. Upon his return, Wheelock promptly expelled six students, setting another Dartmouth tradition of administrators endlessly trying to keep drinking out of the College (and forever failing). Personally, as someone who lived my freshman year in Wheeler Hall, I can attest that while the memory of these first six martyrs has been forgotten, their spirit is undying, and these early foundations of revelry still spring forth fruit.

Following up on this early tradition of merriment, another College tradition was firmly founded in these early days: horrendous food. The food at the College was so bad in the years following its founding that the Colonial Governor of New Hampshire had to write a letter to the College rebuking them in severe language that the College’s “provisions” were so “extremely bad … that youths are thereby unhealthy and debilitated, their constitution impaired and their friends and parents highly disgusted.” The Trustees launched an investigation into the matter at the 1774 Commencement, and, while their findings were not definite, the College’s main issue was how remote it was to the rest of civilization; the College is still remote, and these concerns of food persist to this day, and while horrendous food might not seem on its face to be an ancient tradition of the College, apparently it is. Now, current students might wish that Governor Sununu would condemn the conditions of Foco, but it seems highly unlikely for history to repeat itself in this way.

A final tradition that has recently crept back up into the conversation is the College’s reaction to highly contagious diseases. Wheelock was quite afraid of smallpox, and during the Revolutionary War, the threat of smallpox came to the forefront of local concerns. In August of 1776, a local physician by the name of Dr. Laban Gates inoculated a student for smallpox, but Dr. Gates failed to ask any local authorities before using this experimental method of disease prevention. Wheelock swiftly accused him of endangering the community, but as Dr. Gates admitted he acted in haste and the disease did not take to the student, the issue was dropped. Then, in the next year, due to the outbreak of the War, eight students claimed they had been in contact with the disease, and the town along with the College quickly descended into a bicker over how to properly isolate and care for the infected students. Sparing the details, this issue became quite a scandal and divided Wheelock and the town. Today, considering the developments of the past couple of years at the College, hubbub and division about disease prevention seems to be another tradition of the College that has roots in these early days.

Beyond just the foundation of these ancient traditions, the book also mentions some other specific facts regarding the College’s location that are of great intrigue. Wheelock, who was born and raised in Connecticut, had apparently looked all around the colonies at where he wanted to found his school for educating Native students, and originally, his first choice was Western Pennsylvania. This prospect was soon seen as untenable, and the three locations that served as finalists for the location of his college were the following: western Massachusetts; upstate New York around Albany; and, of course, the Upper Valley, where it was finally settled. New Hampshire was largely chosen because of the great interest and promises by its colonial government, but also there were competing spots in the Upper Valley for where to put the College. Originally, Orford was seen as the best location as it had a much more scenic connection with the river (its sloping hill allows the river to be prominently seen while still in the town). Hanover was the location where the most land was promised to Wheelock, and so he chose the land over scenic views, locating his new school in the recently founded Hanover.

The comradery between the state government and the College was broken at the outbreak of the War, as the main figure who supported the College was the Colonial Governor, who fled the country. This tenacious relationship would eventually result in the famous court case in which Daniel Webster gallantly came to the College’s aid, but also during the Revolutionary War, Wheelock himself threatened to pack up the College and move it to Albany. These threats were empty, but another topic of contention was the emergence of Vermont in the following decade. Already in a contentious relationship with New Hampshire, the College claimed for a period of time that, as Vermont broke off from New York, the College and Hanover were actually in the territory of Vermont. As other factions in the new state grew to power, this plan of latching itself onto this new territory was dropped by the College, and the College gave up its claim of existing on Vermont territory, returning to the confines of the Granite State.

Of course, any history of Dartmouth’s founding must discuss Wheelock’s project of educating Native Americans. As mentioned previously, money shortages dominated the decisions of the early College, and educating natives was seen as a way of generating charity for the College. However, if not enough charity was present, educating natives was quite difficult. During the first decade of the College, natives were a prominent part of the College, but the War, with many tribes taking the side of the British, proved to be a limiting factor. After Wheelock’s death in 1779, natives would go missing from the College for a period of time, but they were deliberately brought back as students in the first decade of the 1800s. 

Another interesting fact that arises in the book is that Dartmouth was not alone in this early ambition of educating natives. Samuel Kirkland was one of Wheelock’s top early advisors during the founding of the College, but, due to personal disputes, Kirkland left Wheelock and his College quite early on. He would not abandon the mission of educating natives, however, founding Hamilton-Oneida Academy in Oneida County, New York to educate the Oneida people, and this school would later go on to be the basis of the present Hamilton College.

To briefly summarize the span of the History of Dartmouth College, Volume I, the book ranges from Wheelock’s early projects in Connecticut and sourcing the money for the College through the founding and growth of the College to the tumultuous events of Dartmouth College v. Woodward and the aftermath. Spanning the early years of the College, the book gives a great insight into the foundations on which the College was built. While the wider narrative of the College is undoubtedly present, my personal favorites are the random facts and tidbits that the book includes. For one last example, in 1799 the code of conduct specifically banned students from joining the Freemasons. These details are where the character and quality of Dartmouth arise from the text. The larger narrative is great and needs to be known by more students, but the particular flavor of the great traditions of the College is best seen in the details that the book highlights.

At times, the writing is tough to follow and can be slow and monotonous, but one could do much worse in where to look to learn about the history of our great College. If one is inching to learn more about its founding, Richardson’s History of Dartmouth College is a fantastic place to educate oneself in more depth. Perhaps for a college that prides itself so much on tradition and history, a book of this caliber might be recommended, or even required, reading for all students at Dartmouth—assuming they can still read.