Dartmouth's Home Town Celebrates

Columbia, Connecticut, which was the district of Lebanon Crank when Eleazar Wheelock began his IndianSchool there in 1743 is this year celebrating the 125th anniversary of its incorporation as a town. All the history ofthe old Indian School and its illustrious personages is beingraked up and printed far and wide, and the whole storycomes rather close to the heart of every Dartmouth man forit was there that the college was born. Samson Occom stoodhesitating on the doorstep of Wheelock's House in thatmemorable year 1743, timidly summoning enough courageto ring the bell and apprise the clergyman that he had cometo be a student. Had he run away, as he was stronglytempted before Wheelock's servant answered the bell, thefuture of the college might have been a different one, but itis quite evident even to those of us who are not of a speculative disposition that that moment of hesitation was fraughtwith importance. But he rang and waited,—

DID DARTMOUTH MEN STEAL APPLES?

Dartmouth College might well take part in the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the incorporation of the little town of Columbia, Conn., on the coming Fourth of July and so officially recognize anew that before Dr. Eleazar Wheelock built his first hut of logs in 1770 where Tri Kappa house once stood, he had a thriving school in Columbia, started in 1743 and with the removal to New Hampshire simply endowed and enlarged under a new charter to carry on its work of educating Indians, missionaries and teachers.

Tradition says that Dartmouth College is not now situated in the state of Connecticut because the farmers of the neighborhood were afraid that the college boys would steal their apples and generally make a nuisance of themselves. This is what their descendants will believe when they come to the town green on the Fourth of July and look at the old white house which was the parsonage in the days of Dr. Wheelock and at the tiny white school which housed the beginning of a great college, but is still sufficient for the educational needs of their little town.

Yet rueful laughs at the expense of the townfathers of 1767 will all be mistaken. The records of Dr. Wheelock's church clearly prove that the people of that day needed no Chamber of Commerce to tell them what the town was losing. They show that it was voted at "the legal and full meeting of the Inhabitants legal voters of the Second Society in Lebanon, Conn.," on June 29, 1767:

"That wee desire the Indian Charity School now under the care of the Rev. Mr. Eleazar Wheelock may be fixed to continue in this Society provided it may consist with the interest and propriety of the school.

"That as we have a large and convenient house for publick and divine worship wee will acomodate the members of the school with such convenient seats in the house as wee shall be able.

"That the following letter be presented to the Rev. Mr. Eleazar Wheelock by Israel Woodward, James Pineo and Asahel Clark, Jr., in the name and behalf of this society and that they desire him to transmit a copy of the same and the votes foregoing to the right honourable the Earl of Dartmouth and the rest of those Honourable and worthy gentlemen in England who have condescended to patronize the school and to whom the establishment of the same is committed."

COLUMBIA PROUD OF COLLEGE

The true reason why Dartmouth is not today in Columbia is revealed in the letter: they offered 400 acres of land at 50 shilling lawful money an acre while John Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire, offered a township of six square miles on the Connecticut River free.

The story of the apples must have been enlarged to cover chagrin but today pride will be better served by the knowledge that the townfathers were not shortsighted in letting the college go but on the other hand were fully aware of the benefits which would come from keeping it, and that, as the letter says, "wee desire it may be considered that this is its birthplace, here it was kindly received and nourished when no other door was set open to it, here it found friends when almost friendless, yea, when despised and condemned abroad."

The one-room school house in which the early classes were held has been moved back from the street, to give room for the town hall, but it is in good repair and continuous use. The outside must appear much as it did 175 years ago but inside, it has been entirely remodeled, even the old floor boards being covered over by new ones.

Both the school house and the old parsonage, which stands at the other end of the Green with the stately church (built in 1832) between, are unmarked. The house is now the residence of H. W. Porter, the postmaster of the town, and in excellent condition. Little but the old woodwork and the view from the kitchen door to the north across wooded hills reminds one of colonial days and yet it was only recently that Mr. and Mrs. Porter found in their attic an old table, seven feet long, and of saw-buck construction with an oak base and chestnut top.

BAILEY GIVES TABLE TO COLLEGE

This table was sold by an antique dealer to Harold C. Bailey of Hartford for his camp, but he soon realized that it was too valuable and too important from an historical point of view for such a use. Experts told him it was a perfect specimen with all the original material and dated from 1680 to 1700. Mr. Bailey has now arranged for its presentation to Dartmouth College because he has become convinced that it may well have been at this board that Dr. Wheelock and his family sat down with the Indian boys whom he had taken into his home to educate.

If so, there is an indirect reference to it in the "Memoirs of Rev. Eleazar Wheelock" by David M'Clure and Elijah Parish, published in Newburyport, N. H., in 1811, for after telling of the death of John Pumpshire, a youth of the Delaware nation who entered the school in December, 1754, we read, "the decline and death of this youth was an instructive scene to me and convinced me fully of the necessity of special care respecting their diet and that more exercise was necessary for them, especially at their first coming to a full table."

It is good to know that "the Indian boys were very soon as cheerful and happy as if they had been at home." Dr. Wheelock's maxim with the natives, we are told, was that those who take the direction of other's children should treat them as their own. He was "always the gentle and affectionate father of his tawny family."

And yet the description of a day at this earliest Dartmouth seems rigorous and far too sedentary for the youth of the wilderness or in the light of the present, for any boys.

"The students were obliged," the Memoirs read, "to be decently dressed and ready to attend prayers before sunrise in the fall and winter and at 6 o'clock in the summer. A portion of scripture was read by several of the seniors of them; and those who were able answered a question in the Assembly's catechism; some explanatory questions were asked them upon it and answers expounded to them.

"After prayers a short time was allowed for their diversion and the school began with prayer at 9 o'clock and ended at 12; began at 2 and ended at 5 o'clock with prayer. Evening prayers were attended before daylight was gone. Afterwards they applied to their studies."

So began the life of Dartmouth college on a hilltop in Connecticut where red boy and white prayed and studied together. In this town today, incorporated in 1804, but little changed in size, those beginnings are not forgotten and the schoolhouse and parsonage stand monuments to Colonial Dartmouth, older than any in Hanover itself.

SEVEN-FOOT SAW-BUCK TABLE FROM THE ATTIC OF DR. ELEAZAR WHEELOCK's HOUSE IN COLUMBIA, PROBABLY USED BY FIRST INDIAN SCHOLARS, NOW GOES TO DARTMOUTH COLLEGE FOR PRESERVATION.

CONGREGATIONAL. CHURCH, COLUMBIA, CONN., BUILT IN 1832, REMODELED IN 1879. DR. WHEELOCK WAS PASTOR OF THIS CHURCH 1741-1770

SCHOOLHOUSE, COLUMBIA, CONN., USED BY WHEELOCK's INDIAN PUPILS

REED HALL GROUP 1866 Top row: Johnson, Sellew, Gambell. Middle row: Kelley, Andrews, Abbott At bottom: Hazen, Tirrell, Kendal], Ide, Kingsley, Pillsbury

ALONG THE ROW