Stumps and Scholarships

THE CHECKERED HISTORY of the Dartmouth land grants starts even before the College Charter. When Eleazar Wheelock decided that his charity school for the Indians had outgrown its facilities at Lebanon, Connecticut, and should be transplanted as a college into Indian country, word of his decision spread rapidly through the colonies. The ambitious missionary was soon the recipient of varied inducements from many localities.

Governor Benning Wentworth, whose New Hampshire Province lacked such an institution, was among those interested. In 1763, six years before the Charter, he promised the enterprising schoolmaster the 500-acre lot he had reserved personally in the towns recently granted in western New Hampshire, including Hanover. Wheelock wrote General Lyman, who was interested in establishing the Indian School on his pending Ohio River grant, "To encourage it, Governor Wentworth made me an offer of a tract of land, if I would carry it there."

Three years later Governor John Wentworth, before leaving England to succeed his uncle, went further and offered to grant a township for the school and its people, if it should be located in his new domain.

Landaff Grant (1770-1791)

True to his promise, Governor Wentworth granted the college a township of land a month after the Royal Charter was issued and during the height of the controversy as to the specific location of the new institution. The granted town was Landaff, in the foothills between the Connecticut River and the White Mountains and near the towns of Haverhill, Bath and Orford, all of which were contending for the site of the college. Landaff had been granted previously in 1764 but the recipient had not carried out the terms of settlement and the grant was declared forfeited by the Governor and Council with no judicial determination.

Curious as to the effect the Governor's grant of Landaff might have on the selection of a site for the college, Wheelock dispatched his friend, the Rev. Jonathan Parsons of Newburyport, to sound out the Governor at Portsmouth. On March 18, 1770, Parsons had "a private and very free interview" in which the Governor "greatly preferred Landaff to any other place, not only because as near the center of the Province according as he expects the Line will be fixed, and so will accommodate the inhabitants and Indians, but especially as the whole Township is given to the benefit of the College." There were other advantages claimed, such as "if vicious, corrupt, or con tentious and bad men should go into the town, the authority of the College might turn them out."

This report confirmed the dispatch written February 28, 1770 to Wheelock by Governor Wentworth, who stated, ". . . . I have full unalterable reasons of very great importance to inform you that it is my fixed opinion, advice and desire that the said College be placed in Landaff, Bath or Haverhill and in no other town whatever—the first I prefer, next Bath and then Haverhill. All die Trustees will join me in this opinion on a vote."

Wheelock refused to commit himself until he had personally "examined the several places proposed, within the limits prescribed for fifty or sixty miles on or near the river." For eight weeks the Wheelock party listened to the reasons and arguments from people who "have got into a heat and unhappy temper among themselves about the affair." Finally, at Portsmouth on July 5, 1770, Wheelock successfully persuaded those trustees residing in Portsmouth, the provincial seat, to recall their decision specifying Landaff or any part of Haverhill within one mile of Landaff and agree unanimously upon Hanover.

Once the location was determined, the trustees set out to improve Landaff as required by the terms of the grant and to encourage sale of land, thus providing ready cash to build the new school at Hanover. A road four rods wide through the town had to be cut, cleared and made passable for carriages within two years from the date of the grant and within four years sixty families had to be settled. In five years about $5,000 was spent in surveying the town's 25,000 acres, building roads and bridges, erecting a sawmill and grist mill, and providing other inducements to settlers.

The original grantee must have observed the development with growing interest. In 1773 the Lords of Trade accepted his argument that the grant to the College was invalid. But Governor Wentworth assured the worried Wheelock that the College title to Landaff was "as safe as any title in Portsmouth" and advised "settlement without hesitation or apprehension." The Privy Council soon supported the College's position and all thoughts of negotiating with the original proprietor to assure a clear title were forgotten—temporarily.

Came the Revolution and the first grantees sought recognition. Wheelock, in language foreshadowing the Dartmouth College Case, expressed the hope that the agent for the College's adversary might be sent a copy of the College charter so that he might see "how amply this incorporation is endowed, and how independent it is made of this government, or any other incorporation." Differences between settlers under rival claimants grew from words to blows and finally to involved court action. The Trustees in 1782 voted to assume the defense of any College agents indicted for rioting, explained their position to the Council of Safety, and wrote the settlers urging "stability, patience, and peace." Finally, President Wheelock appealed to the General Assembly in 1788 for its protection in defense of the Landaff title or the grant of a tract of land twelve miles square in extreme northwestern New Hampshire as compensation for the losses incurred by the College.

General Ebenezer Webster, whose son, Daniel, was then seven years old, succeeded in packing the State Senate committee con- sidering the proposal and himself reported for the originally hostile committee "that for the encouragement of literature a grant of eight miles square of land adjoining upon the old Canada line and Connecticut River be made for the benefit of that seminary. ..."

General John Sullivan, President of the State of New Hampshire, supported the measure in a fiery speech—claimed to be the last oration in the stormy career of the Revolutionary patriot. The Act was passed on February 5, 1789, and the First (Clarksville) Grant was on the books.

The Trustees, however, contended that the new Grant did not extinguish the College's title claims in Landaff and found themselves in another round of controversy. President John Wheelock petitioned the President of the State, the doughty General Sullivan, for his personal aid in settling the dispute. The College lost a test case at Haverhill and, in 1791, the Trustees formally and finally relinquished all their claims to the township.

This loss of a promising source of income after the prolonged physical and legal struggle in its defense, and the expense of large sums in its development, was relieved only by the knowledge that if the College had been located in Landaff, it, too, would probably have perished in the litigation.

Wheelock Grant (1785)

While the State of New Hampshire was being harassed by the disturbing boomerang of its first large grant to the College, the Governor, Council and General Assembly of Vermont (then meeting in Norwich) came to the College's aid with the gift of a town appropriately enough called "Wheelock."

According to the Charter, Dartmouth College had been and still is "of important service in diffusing useful literature among mankind, and through this State in particular." The township was granted, further explained the Charter, "for the due encouragement and for promoting the useful and laudable designs of said College."

Encouraged by this gift of 23,000 acres in the hill country between St. Johnsbury and Lake Willoughby, the Trustees decided to lay the foundations of a new building, Dartmouth Hall.

Settlement of the new grant started the next year and during the following decade most of the town was surveyed into onehundred-acre lots, many of which were leased to settlers.

Wheelock, like Landaff, was the cause of an almost continuous round of litigation, too involved to be summarized here. The President and Trustees, however, fought every inch of the way, perhaps because as late as 1815 this town comprised at least one-half of the permanent funds of the College and the School. Wheelock's annual rents were about $1400 (of which half went to the College and the other half to Moor's Indian Charity School in Hanover) at a time when all the other rents and income of the College from other permanent sources seldom exceeded $700.

Leased lands in Wheelock still pay a small sum to the College. The town's population is now only about 250. In fact, thirtyone of its citizens fought in the Revolution, in contrast with the 18 who served in World War 11. The town's association with the College now exists largely, in name only.

FINANCIAL IMPORTANCE OF EARLY GRANTS

Dartmouth's historians agree that despite the problems they created, the College's grants, including many small tracts privately donated and not here described but amounting to nearly 20,000 acres, stood the College in good stead in her time of greatest financial need immediately after her founder's death.

Frederick Chase, longtime College Treasurer, has observed: "Leaving out of view the foreign funds, the original endowment of the College was entirely in lands." In describing the perplexities following the death of Eleazar Wheelock, he reported: "The most trying of all were the inextricable difficulties concerning the township of Landaff," adding, "the only hope which the College now had of permanent support lay in its landed endowment; but large sales of it at that early day and at prices merely nominal, in order to meet current expenses, threatened to bring these resources to a speedy end."

Prof. Leon Burr Richardson, in explaining the same critical period, stated, "It is to be observed that the college was kept on its feet only by a forced sale of lands Despite John Wheelock's best efforts, further sales were required in the years to come, so that by 1800 the institution owned but a small portion of the domain originally in its possession."

The proceeds of these lands, both from sales and rentals, were especially useful in redeeming notes and other obligations the College incurred when the notorious lotteries failed to meet the construction costs of Dartmouth Hall. In 1780, for example, 60% of the total College income was derived from the rent or sale of College lands.

First (Clarksville) Grant (1789-1872)

The Memoirs of Eleazar Wheelock declare: "The Trustees, yielding a principle of law to a prior title, have constantly confided in the justice of the State to indemnify them for their loss (of Landaff). More especially do they continue their confidence in the government, as this donation was a principal condition of establishing the college in New Hampshire."

The founder died ten years before New Hampshire made good on its original grant, but the funds realized from land sales of the Clarksville Grant in extreme northern Coos County helped pull his son and successor through the financial crisis of his administration.

Within six weeks from the date of the patent, 20,000 acres were sold for one thousand pounds "hard money" and two years later another strip of 10,000 acres was sold for a substantial sum. The remaining 6,000 acres, considered the best land in the township, were subdivided and sold or rented on long leases, realizing about $10,000. The final remnants were disposed of in 1872.

Early liquidation of the chief values in the First Grant forced the College to seek additional land. A memorial was presented to the General Court in 1792 asking for further relief because of the losses incurred at Landaff and the inadequacy of the First Grant. Favorable legislative committees submitted several reports, one of them granting 24,500 acres from the First Grant to the eastern boundary of the State, but no final action was taken for several years.

Second College Grant (1807-)

Annually from 1803 to 1806 the Trustees voted to request a second Grant. Finally, in 1807, with language hardly suggestive of the attitude of the Legislature during the Dartmouth College Case then but a few years distant, the State granted a township of 26,800 acres in extreme northeastern New Hampshire adjacent to Maine.

The Legislature resolved that "the establishment of Dartmouth College has under Divine Providence been signally useful in diffusing science in the various professions, academies and schools, throughout the State," observed that "without legislative aid it must inevitably decline and be finally reduced to ruin," and forthwith granted "a tract of land amounting to six miles square," provided that "the incomes of said land shall be applied wholly and exclusively to assist the education of the youths who shall be indigent and to alleviate the expenses of the members of families in this State, whose necessitous circumstances will render it impossible for them to defray the expenses of an education at said seminary without such assistance."

This Act has been amended only twice in 140 years. First, in 1846, an Act authorized the Trustees "to sell, alien and convey in fee simple" the Second Grant. This opportunity to "sell out and get out" has appealed to many Presidents and Trustees when ready funds were scarce and purchasers were begging, but to their eternal credit—with an assist from hesitant potential purchasers—the area is still intact more than a century after this permission was granted. Second, in 1919, an Act authorized the College to use for general purposes "so much of the avails and income of the land granted to them by the State as may not reasonably be required for the purpose specifically declared in said grant, namely, the education of indigent youths and the alleviation of the expenses of necessitous families in this State."

After bo.th the College and the State had accepted the final location, at least two expeditions were undertaken against trespassers and in 1828 the most promising section for settlement was subdivided into 100-acre lots to be leased for long terms in accordance with the practice of the period. Actually only a few lots were ever leased, but timber was sold from time to time.

About 1829 'he cynical author of a letter to the editor of the New Hampshire Statesman in discussing the language of the 1807 Act, commented, "To some, perhaps, this choice phraseology may savour of a more classical origin than the halls of legislation. Be this, again, as it may. The value of the tract to those (whoever they may be) that are to be benefitted by it, is very small "

The Second Grant was never popular with settlers for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has ever visited its rugged terrain. In 1841 Francis Parkman approached the Grant after his freshman year at Harvard.. prophetically viewing this expedition "as the beginning of greater things" and "as merely prefatory to longer wanderings." "My chief object in coming so far," he observed in his journal, "was merely to have a taste of the half-savage kind of life necessary to be led, and to see the wilderness where it was as yet uninvaded by the hand of man."

The next summer Parkman returned to the "howling wilderness" while exploring the hinterland from the source of the Connecticut to the headwaters of the Magalloway. Midway on this expedition he noted, "Right beneath us was the valley of the Dead Diamond Stream. A line of steep and lofty bluffs marked its course, for the river itself was buried too deep among the mountains to be visible." No wonder that the banks of the Dead Diamond, which flows through the College Grant to meet the Swift Diamond near the Peaks, were unattractive to settlers!

In 1853, one John M. Wilson was com- missioned to report on the possibilities of the Grant. He still visualized many opportunities for settlers, estimated the timber value at $8,026, and recommended that the area be logged, explaining, "if the excitement in relation to timber which now exists should subside, it may be many years before as good an opportunity again presents itself."

Meanwhile the College Treasurer was selling small volumes of timber—even in those days the most readily convertible asset, despite the inaccessibility of the tract. In 1888 the Trustees published a Noticeto Lumbermen, offering to sell "the soft timber on this tract," but adding, "as this is to be kept as a perpetual income to the College, great care must be taken in preserving the small growth."

A twenty-year cutting contract was negotiated later that year with George VanDyke "to cut down, take, and carry away from said grant three million feet a year during said twenty years of the spruce, pine and cedar, and so much of the fir and poplar as he sees fit to take...." But the Second College Grant, like its predecessors, Landaff and Wheelock, was destined for prolonged litigation. Violation of the terms of the VanDyke lease resulted in a long drawn out controversy between the College and the International Paper Company, which was finally settled on terms generally favorable to the College before the full twenty years elapsed.

In 1905-1912 the Trustees employed the late Phillip W. Ayres as Forester to carry into effect a ten-point management policy adopted at the suggestion of Trustee John R. Eastman '62. It was an uphill struggle best described in the words of Professor Eastman: "The management of this work has not been an easy task. The methods employed have been approved by some of the best Foresters in the country but in many cases have not been approved by the lawless contractors and their friends. Rumors of their disapproval have made the work of the committee more difficult. Legitimate and intelligent criticism is a stimulus to good work, but simple fault-finding based on rumor or lack of knowledge tends to no good result."

The Second College Grant came into its own immediately after World War I. In 1918-1919 the spruce and fir in the valleys were being attacked by the spruce budwoim, which had reached epidemic proportions, killing a large amount of merchantable timber. The situation confronting the Trustees is well explained in an article by one of its members, Dr. John M. Gile '87, than whom no one was better acquainted with Grant problems, in the March, 1922 issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Wrote Dr. Gile: "For the greatest economy and the greatest saving of timber the only feasible method was to cut the whole. The price of wood in 1920 was the highest that had ever been known and to take advantage of that market seemed the wise thing."

In 1920 a contract was made with the Brown Company of Berlin, N. H., for the sale of all softwood standing timber. The payment for the first year amounted to $162,500. The proceeds of the contract and the funds built up from previous cuttings were considered enough to provide annually $50,000 before another general cutting could be made. The Trustees authorized the use of such portion of this amount as might be required to provide that needy students from New Hampshire might receive scholarships and that the balance should be used for the general purposes of the College.

During the 1920-1931 decade the net receipts from stumpage sold under this contract amounted to 11,536,889. During the 1920-1935 period the invested income from the Second College Grant Reserve Fund totaled $665,877. In the same period the College expended $884,167 for scholarships and general purposes, leaving in the fund in 1935 a balance of $1,213,970. In addition, $161,558 was used during 1928-1929 for land purchases and for improvement of the College plant.

The Second College Grant may be studded with stumps, but they have served a useful purpose—and they are already shaded by a thrifty "second growth" capable of making substantial contributions to the scholarship fund and the general expenses of the College.

CURRENT OPERATIONS

In the late thirties the old-growth hardwood, previously considered a liability because of the long haul to markets, came into its own. Several contractors tried their luck, but none was fully successful until the wartime access road of 8.5 miles was constructed in 1944 from Wentworth Location up the Dead Diamond River and a new bridge was built across the Diamond River below the peaks. Since then millions of feet of high quality yellow birch and hard maple have rolled out of the Grantand are still rolling.

Alumni who may purchase the nationally-available line of Ethan Allen colonial furniture can rest assured that the chances are four out of five that the yellow birch was grown on the College Grant before conversion into furniture by the Beecher Falls Manufacturing Corporation. And when undergraduates score a strike at Hanover's Bowling Green, the chances are good that the toppled "tempered maple" pins were made at St. Johnsbury from College Grant timber.

HUNTING AND FISHING

More than a century ago Francis Parkman "pulled a trout from every deep hole and the foot of every waterfall." In ten minutes he caught "a dozen of trout averaging a foot in length" of the Magalloway trout "which are the noblest in appearance and the most delicious in taste I ever knew." The descendants of those trout are still in the Swift and Dead Diamond Rivers, thanks largely to a regulation which prohibits fishing the feeder streams.

In 1947 transfer of the ga:te-tender to the southern boundary on the only road entering the Grant made possible a record of the deer killed on the Grant—one of the few large tracts of timberland in the country where a reasonably reliable count of the fish and game harvest can be obtained.

Last fall at least 44 deer were killed on the Grant with no appreciable effect on the local herd.

WILDERNESS RECREATION

In 1947 the Cilley Camp (since renamed Peaks Camp), at the fork of the Swift and Dead Diamond Rivers, was turned over to the Dartmouth Outing Club. In the same year the D.O.C. built a log cabin on Alder .Brook, a tributary of the Swift Diamond River, thereby making available to undergraduate and alumni members of the Club two equipped cabins as bases for fishing, hunting, or wilderness travel.

The College thus has available an asset never visualized when the Grant was established: a substantial area of North Country wilderness where undergraduates and alumni can live in, and learn to love, the outdoors. Students visiting the area with woodsmen like Ross McKenney will soon learn how to hunt safely, fish successfully, and appreciate Dartmouth's unique heritage. As an outdoor laboratory for the natural sciences, the Grant is in a class by itself. Whether the possibilities of this "laboratory" will be fully utilized only the future can tell.

THE FUTURE

In 1946 the Pack Forestry Foundation, in cooperation with the U. S. Forest Service, accepted the invitation of the College to survey the Grant and make recommendations. One of its suggestions, that a College Forester be employed to supervise its development, has already been adopted. Other recommendations in the comprehensive report will be accepted as circumstances and practical considerations warrant.

In the Second College Grant, Dartmouth can produce continuous crops of valuable timber and at the same time provide a happy hunting and fishing grounds for those undergraduates and alumni willing to work a bit for their sport, if there is reasonable assurance of successful results.

In the words of the late Dr. John M. Gile, whose pleadings as a Trustee saved the Second College Grant for our time, "From whatever standpoint we view it, this property is of great interest to all Dartmouth men, and, though it may have had but little monetary value when granted, it was nevertheless an earnest on the part of the State of its interest in the College and stands as a permanent bond between them."

One thing is certain: Landaff, Wheelock, and Clarksville are now history. But at the Second College Grant, where the Diamond flows into the Magalloway and the Magalloway into the Androscoggin, Dartmouth has a unique opportunity to convert stumpage into scholarships and to develop scholars into sportsmen and natural scientists from here on out.

COLLEGE FORESTER

THE PHOTOGRAPH ABOVE shows the triple Dia- mond Peaks, most distinctive landmark of the Dartmouth Grant. The hikers are on Swift Diamond Tote Road leading from Windey Hill to Peaks Camp.

COLLEGE FORESTER, Bob Monahan '29 (right), author of this article, shown on a winter visit to the Grant with Ross McKenney of the DOC, who frequently leads student trips to the forest tract.

BRIDGE ACROSS THE DIAMOND RIVER, on the only road entering the Dartmouth Grant. Built in 1944, it has been important in opening up the tract to new recreational ond natural science developments.

SAW LOGS LEAVE THE GRANT: Left, hardwood logs from the more impenetrable parts of the wilderness tract are brought out by horse team to the truck landing (right) where they are derricked to a waiting pile and then on to the trucks which take them to Beecher Falls, Vt„ for processing in the manufacture of furniture.

YELLOW BIRCH FROM THE GRANT goes mostly to Beecher Falls, Vt., where it becomes Ethan Allen colonial furniture. Above, an employee of the Beecher Falls Furniture Corp. works on a bed which some Dartmouth alumnus may now own.

PRESIDENT DICKEY, left, who has made a number of trips to the Grant, shown there in 1946 at the time of the complete survey made by the Pack Forestry Foundation and the U. S. Forest Service.

ALDER BROOK CABIN, one of two DOC cabins in the Dartmouth Grant equipped as bases for hunting, fishing and wilderness travel, was built last year by a DOC work crew under the direction of Ross McKenney.