Wheelock, Eleazar definition of Wheelock, Eleazar in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Wheelock, Eleazar (ĕlēā`zər hwē`lŏk), 1711–79, American clergyman, founder of Dartmouth College Dartmouth College, at Hanover, N.H.; coeducational; chartered 1769, opened 1770, the ninth colonial college (see Wheelock, Eleazar ). Originally a men's college, Dartmouth began admitting women in 1972.
..... Click the link for more information. , b. Windham, Conn., grad. Yale, 1733. He became (1735) the pastor of a Congregational church in the part of Lebanon, Conn., that is now Columbia. Here he became interested in Native American education, and he founded and conducted (1754–67) a school for Algonquin and Iroquois youth. One of his first students, Samson Occom, went to England and helped to raise funds for the project, and when an endowment of some $50,000 had been collected, Wheelock moved to what is now Hanover, N.H., and established (1770) Dartmouth. He became its first president and guided the college through the early days of the American Revolution.

Bibliography

See biography by J. D. McCallum (1939, repr. 1969).

Wheelock, Eleazar (1711–79) college president; born in Windham, Conn. A Congregational minister, he founded Moor's Indian Charity School in Lebanon, Conn. (1754), moving the school to Hanover, N.H., in 1770 and reestablishing it as Dartmouth College; he was president until his death. He wrote a Narrative of the Indian School at Lebanon (1762–75).