The Five Maries
A Little-Known Story of How Two Dartmouth Presidents Married Descendants of a French Aristocrat
ONE NIGHT IN 1685, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had renewed the persecution of Protestants in France, a ship sailed out of a southern port of France carrying two small folk, fleeing from a horror-stricken land, and destined to contribute to the lore of a great college in the New World.
As the ship proceeded furtively into the night, Marie Bourdoux, daughter of Thomas Bourdoux, a French gentleman of wealth and learning, stood on the unlighted deck, her child's petticoat quilted with all the gold it could bear and more in a belt about her tiny waist. Beside her in the darkness stood a stranger, Pierre Lassal (or LaSalle), another refugee, also liberally supplied with gold.
The ship made the port of St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, and by that time Marie and Pierre had found one another. Five years later they were married at St. Thomas, and in time, Pierre secured a lucrative appointment in the Danish government.
In 1706, some fifteen years after the marriage, a daughter, little Marie Lassal the Second, was born. This Marie, becoming of marriageable age, joined her fate with a French gentleman of Huguenot descent named Joannis (de) Malleville. Marie the Second lived to be but 32, but behind her she left a son and three daughters, among them a Marie the Third, Marie de Malleville.
Marie the Third, born in 1736, married at 15, Christian Suhm, governor-general of the Danish West Indies, and a member of a distinguished Copenhagen family. Of this marriage there were six children, of which one, Marie the Fourth, born in 1758, was destined later in life to become the wife of a president of Dartmouth University. But life was to be very full for Marie the Fourth before she was to meet the distinguished Lieutenant Colonel Wheelock of General Gates' staff in America and son of Dartmouth's founder, Eleazar Wheelock.
Marie Suhm's uncle, Thomas Mallevill'e, had been sent on a grand tour of Europe and to Denmark for his education. He received a commission as captain of the king's life guard in Denmark and further fortified his position by marrying a maid of honor to Queen Carolina Matilda, consort of Christian VII of Denmark and sister of George 111 of England. At the age of 12, Marie Suhm was sent to live with her uncle and to be educated at the court of Denmark.
The court of Denmark was filled with all the glamor, intrigue and scandal of royal privilege characteristic of foreign courts of the time. Marie Suhm spent much time at court and there developed the courtly manner and poise which remained with her throughout her life.
In 1759 her father died, and soon afterward her mother married General Lucas von Beverhaupt, who later became prominent in America.
When Marie left Copenhagen, it was decided she should be sent to the Moravian school at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She came to America and was placed under the guardianship of Abraham Lott of New York City. Marie never saw her native islands again, and shortly after this her stepfather sold his large estate at St. Croix and sailed with his family and 200 negroes for America.
General Beverhaupt established himself at Patsippany, New Jersey, on an estate of some 3000 acres. The place was named "Beverwyck" for the general's old home in Holland, and here he made a home for his family, including his stepdaughter, Marie Suhm.
There was a large manor house after the southern style and notables from far and near were entertained. For years an old oak marked the spot on the lawn where General Washington and his staff had dined one Sunday afternoon. General and Martha Washington, General and Mrs. Knox, and General Lafayette were among those whom Marie Suhm knew intimately in her Beverwyck home, and letters still preserved tell of balls and dinners attended by General Schuyler, Colonel Hamilton, John Mason, Dr. Livingstone, and innumerable others.
One day there came from afar one who was to change the entire course of Marie Suhm's life and link her inseparably with Dartmouth. John Wheelock, second president of Dartmouth and former lieutenant colonel under General Gates, had heard the praises of Miss Suhm and wrote for permission to come and pay his respects to General Beverhaupt and family. He came, saw and was conquered. Marie was in the garden, in short gown and petticoat when John arrived. Admonished, she is reported to have said, "If he marries me, he will often see me looking this way."
It is not reported that Marie was of great personal beauty, but she had fine clothes and wore them well, and she had the grand manner from, observing life among the elite of two countries.
President John Wheelock is described as a scholar of stately manners in memoirs of the Suhm family. His letters to his "adored Marie" were "worthy of Sir Charles Grandison." She was to him "the most interesting object in the solar system." The replies were shy and respectful, in keeping with the style of the day, and not always perfect in spelling, as English was not the native language of the young lady.
Marie Suhm and John Wheelock were married after a year's engagement in November, 1786, in what is now the Howe Library in Hanover, then the home of the Wheelock's, on the site of Reed Hall. Letters and congratulations from prominent persons at home and abroad are still preserved.
To a bride born of the tropics, knowing the life of a government house in the Indies, a European court, lavish luxury and hospitality at Beverwyck, and metropolitan society in the Colonies, one can imagine the hardships and inconveniences of the wedding trip to Hanover over the bad roads of that day. In later years Dartmouth professors' wives had many a tale to tell of costly laces and satin cloaks trimmed with Russian sable which seemed startlingly out of place on Hanover Plain.
Mrs. Wheelock made a trip to Beverwyck about a year after her marriage, and there Marie the Fifth was born on February 3, 1788. A daughter of the President of Dartmouth must learn something of the out- side world, and so, at the age of twelve, Marie Wheelock was sent to Mrs. Elisha Ticknor's school in Boston. She remained three years, living with the Ticknors, and often revisited the home in later years. She was closely associated with "my little brother George," who later became the eminent belles lettrist, George Ticknor, of the Dartmouth class of 1807.
Letters between the child and the parents reflect many delightful and amusing incidents of Boston and Hanover. Papa Wheelock did not part easily with his money, and Marie had to make several requests for permission to buy a five dollar chain for a miniature of her father.
Trouble over a rejected suitor caused young Marie to become somewhat embittered over Hanover, and she spent much time with an aunt in Newark, in New York, and in Philadelphia. In Boston she attended Dr. Channing's church, sat at the right hand of a governor of Massachusetts at a banquet "surrounded by flowing democrats," and made quite an impression on President Madison, whom she met at a Boston gathering. Marie, however, preferred Newark, for she writes from there, "The inhabitants are just the thing for me, free from that disgusting formality, the characteristic of Boston."
Then came the great event in the life of Marie the Fifth. William Allen, distinguished graduate of Harvard, author of the American Biographical Dictionary, a settled minister in the old parish of his famous father at Pittsfield, had been urged to go to Hanover to meet Miss Wheelock. He was advised to take along a copy of his book as a propitiable offering to her father, the President. This he did, and disposed of the book and his heart at the same time.
A son of the famous "Fighting Parson" of the battle of Bennington and of Elizabeth Lee, a descendant of Governor Bradford, young Allen had inherited the finest traits of character and of physical beauty from both sides of his famous family.
William Allen and Marie Malleville Wheelock ("in a dress of cambric so fine it could be concealed in clasped hands") were married January 28, 1813, in the home of President Wheelock at Hanover. Following the ceremony, the bridal party set out in two sleighs for the new home in Pittsfield.
In 1816 came the death of President John Wheelock and the celebrated Dartmouth College case which split the College and its supporters into two factions. Eleazar Wheelock had claimed the right to name his successor and John Wheelock, being of the same mind, had desired William Allen, his son-in-law, to succeed him. The legislature, by special act, created Dartmouth University and supported William Allen as president, the trustees meanwhile electing Francis Brown as president of Dartmouth College.
Allen continued as president for two years, and when the University lost its case, he accepted the offer of the presidency of Bowdoin College, moved there with his family and John Wheelock's widow, and served the college as its head from 1820 to 1839. Completing this service, he went to Northampton, Massachusetts, where he died in 1868.
In closing this tale of the five Maries, may we recall one last appropriate thrill in the life of Marie the Fourth, widow of President John Wheelock. In a cloud of dust a military figure galloped up from the Lebanon road to the college campus on a late day in July, 1817, surrounded by local militia and college officers. It was James Monroe, president of the United States. After being formally received by President Allen of the University, he proceeded immediately to the home of the president to pay his respect to Mrs. John Wheelock and there, as Professor Lord says in his history, "romantically renewed the acquaintance begun years before her marriage when he, as a lieutenant in the Revolutionary army and wounded at the battle of Trenton, enjoyed her kind offices as volunteer nurse." It was the last ray of the setting sun on a strange and wonderful life. President Wheelock's widow died at Brunswick, Maine, on February 6, 1924.
The fifth Marie, wife of President Allen of Bowdoin, died in Brunswick four years after her mother, at the age of 40. She left behind her husband and eight children, one of whom was named MarieMarie the Sixth.
MARIE WHEELOCK ALLEN WILLIAM ALLEN Marie Allen, the fifth Marie, was the daughter of John Wheelock, second president ofDartmouth College. As if destined to be forever a "daughter" of Dartmouth, she marriedWilliam Allen, who succeeded President Wheelock and became President of the shortlived Dartmouth University.
