— Ch. 1 · Founding And Colonial Origins —
Dartmouth College.
~5 min read · Ch. 1 of 5
Eleazar Wheelock stood before a small group of Mohegan and other Native American students in 1755 to open Moor's Indian Charity School. This school was his first attempt to create an educational institution for Indigenous people, though it struggled with funding and recruitment. The charity school proved somewhat successful, but additional funds were necessary to continue operations. Wheelock sought help from friends to raise money, eventually securing support from John Phillips in 1762. That same year, Samson Occom traveled to England with Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker to raise funds from churches. Their efforts established a trust managed by William Legge, the 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, who became the namesake of the future college.
Wheelock relocated the school to Hanover, New Hampshire, after facing difficulties recruiting Native Americans due to its distance from tribal territories. On the 13th of December 1769, Royal Governor John Wentworth issued a royal charter in the name of King George III establishing Dartmouth College. The charter stated the college was created "for the education and instruction of youth of the Indian tribes" as well as English youth. Despite this language, Wheelock primarily intended the college to educate white youth. By 1771, the college granted its first degrees, marking the beginning of its academic journey. Occom, disappointed with Wheelock's departure from the original goal of Indian Christianization, later formed his own community called Brothertown Indians in New York.
Legal Battles And Expansion
In 1819, Dartmouth College faced a historic legal challenge when New Hampshire attempted to amend its charter to make the institution a public university. An institution named Dartmouth University occupied the college buildings and began operating in Hanover in 1817 while the original college continued teaching classes in rented rooms nearby. Daniel Webster, an alumnus of the class of 1801, presented the college's case to the Supreme Court. He concluded his peroration with the famous words: "It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it." The court found that amending Dartmouth's charter constituted an illegal impairment of a contract by the state and reversed New Hampshire's takeover.
Following the legal victory, Dartmouth underwent significant modernization under President William Jewett Tucker from 1893 to 1909. During his tenure, twenty new structures replaced antiquated buildings, and both the student body and faculty expanded threefold. Large endowments such as the $10,000 given by law professor John Ordronaux supported this revitalization. Presidents Ernest Fox Nichols (1909, 16) and Ernest Martin Hopkins (1916, 45) continued Tucker's trend of modernization, further improving campus facilities and introducing selective admissions in the 1920s. In 1945, Hopkins admitted to using racial quotas to deny Jewish entry into the university, sparking controversy.