Eleazar Wheelock

Eleazar Wheelock (1711 to 1779) was an American Congregational minister, orator and educator who founded Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Born in Windham, Connecticut, he graduated from Yale College in 1733 and spent some thirty-five years as a pastor and itinerant preacher in what is now Columbia, Connecticut, where he was a leading voice of the Great Awakening revival. In 1743 he took in Samson Occom, a Mohegan, and taught him for four years until he was ready for the ministry. That success led Wheelock to found Moor's Charity School in Connecticut to educate Native American boys and girls in both secular and Christian subjects, supported by donations from New England and England. He later enlarged the project into a college, obtained a royal charter in 1769, named the college for Lord Dartmouth and became its first president in Hanover, New Hampshire. The college mainly served the sons of colonists, a change that Occom and the English trustees opposed. Wheelock also owned slaves.