Eleazar Wheelock

author

Eleazar Wheelock

1711–1779

A fiery Congregational minister and educator of colonial New England, he is best known for founding Dartmouth College after years of missionary and school work in Connecticut. His life also reflects the complicated religious and cultural ambitions behind early American education.

1 Audiobook

A plain and faithful narrative of the original design, rise, progress and present state of the Indian charity-school at Lebanon, in Connecticut

A plain and faithful narrative of the original design, rise, progress and present state of the Indian charity-school at Lebanon, in Connecticut

by Eleazar Wheelock

About the author

Born in Windham, Connecticut, in 1711, he graduated from Yale in 1733, studied theology, and became a Congregational minister in Lebanon, Connecticut. He gained a reputation as a popular preacher during the Great Awakening and spent decades building his influence as a religious leader and educator.

In the 1750s, he founded Moor’s Charity School, an institution aimed at educating Native American youth for Christian missionary work. That project, supported in part through connections with Samson Occom and transatlantic fundraising, eventually led to the founding of Dartmouth College in 1769, where he served as the school’s first president.

His legacy is significant but also complicated. He played an important role in shaping colonial higher education, while the history of his school and its mission is now often discussed alongside the broader tensions between religious outreach, Native education, and colonial power in eighteenth-century America.