Where Wheelock's Great Design Began

ON a beautiful, sunny day in August of 1963 I made a visit to the little country town of Columbia, Conn., which is in the west central section of the State, a few miles west of Willimantic. The present town of Columbia was formerly a part of the much larger town of Lebanon. The object of my visit was to inspect the village in which Eleazar Wheelock had his first pastorate and especially to see and photograph a monument to him, about which I had learned only a few years before. When Wheelock settled there, the Village was known as Lebanon Crank. The origin or the significance of this peculiar name I do not know.

The monument is of stone, set near the highway, in front of the present church building which dates from a time long after Wheelock left to settle in Hanover. Here he started his little school for the teaching of the Indian youth. A sign hanging from a post near the stone monument commemorates the existence of the school near the spot. Eventually Wheelock named it Moor's Indian Charity School, after a well-to-do resident of Mansfield, Conn., who, shortly before his death in 1756, donated a tract of land and a house, close by the church and the parsonage.

The church stands at one end of the long, open green which is the center of the village. The present church building was erected in 1832. At the rear of the church stands a small, one-story white building, 20 by 40 "feet, which is all that is left of the original building of Moor's Indian School. Professor Richardson in his two-volume history of Dartmouth College (Vol. I, p. 34) states: "In 1755 Col. Joshua More, a wealthy farmer of Mansfield, gave to a group of trustees about two acres of land in Lebanon upon which was a 'convenient tenement.' . . . Much modified, diminished in size and cut down to a single story, it survives, so far as the frame is concerned, as the present schoolhouse at Columbia."

Behind the Moor's Charity School building is now a large modern schoolhouse. Over the door of the little old schoolhouse is this legend: "To the Memory of OCCUM from Henry Barnard Junior High School, Hartford, Conn." Inside the building is a plaster bas-relief which is described as follows in a little history of the town published in 1954:

"It is a plaque depicting the migration of Wheelock and his students from Lebanon Crank to Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1770. About five feet long and twelve inches wide, it shows, in colorful bas-relief, the old school here, an ox cart, a cow, Mrs. Wheelock beside her coach, servants, Indians, and a man on horseback, all headed toward a log house in New Hampshire; there stands Wheelock preaching to Indians ('vox clamantis in deserto'). Then the Dartmouth Library of 1950 is shown, with its famous weathervane, and Wheelock's face looking down upon it from the clouds. 'By the Gospel he subdued the ferocity of the Indian, and to the civilized he opened new paths of science.' In the lower corner appears Occom receiving money bags from the Earl of Dartmouth. Pine trees form a background for the scenes.

"The plaque was designed in 1950 by Mrs. Robert C. Tuttle, sculptor and artist, who chose several of the town's boys and girls, of different faiths, to help her with the project, which took six months to complete."

Nearby stand several buildings of a public nature, a World War memorial monument, "Yeoman's Hall," which has a large auditorium and serves as the Town Hall, and a chapel. White houses front on the green, and at one end are several stores, and the old stagecoach tavern. The present minister of the church is the Reverend George K. Evans, but unfortunately I did not make his acquaintance on the first visit as he was away. It is an attractive little village, grouped around the green, set in mostly wooded country. In 1964 I made a second visit to Columbia in company with my classmate, Roger W. Brown 'O5, and his wife, and we met the Rev. Mr. Evans. He showed us about and was very helpful in giving us information and arranging for us to gain access to the old schoolhouse.

The sign hanging on the post on the highway in front of the church reads as follows:

MOOR'S CHARITY SCHOOL for Indian Education Kept Here, 1754-1770 By Eleazar Wheelock

On the top of the sign is the round seal of the State of Connecticut and below the seal is the Latin motto of the State: QUITRANSTULIT SUSTINET. Royal C. Nemiah, Emeritus Professor of the Classics at Dartmouth, has kindly translated this motto for me, as follows: "He Who (i.e. God) Brought Us Across (the Ocean) Sustains Us."

Samson Occom was Eleazar's first and most famous Indian pupil. His mother heard of Wheelock and his English-speaking pupils, and when Occom was 19 years old she brought him to Wheelock and besought Wheelock to educate her son, too. Wheelock was very reluctant, but she finally prevailed and Samson Occom (later spelled Occum) joined the English boys in Wheelock's house near the church. The house still stands there, now painted white, fronting on the green, with a modern porch in front.

The stone monument to Eleazar Wheelock, with its inscription, is shown in the accompanying photograph.

I first heard of this monument several years ago when visiting a Harvard Law School classmate of mine and his sister in their home in New Haven, Conn. He is a graduate of Yale College and the family is one with generations of Yale association. The sister, Miss Josephine B. Foster, when she learned that I was a graduate of Dartmouth College, told me about the monument and her part in it. She was chairman of a memorial sub-committee of the Connecticut Society of the Colonial Dames of America, and in looking about for a suitable project for the committee, she conceived the idea of erecting a monument of a permanent nature to commemorate the life of Eleazar Wheelock, a graduate of Yale and pastor of the church at Columbia before going to Hanover.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Miss Fos- ter for her fine idea and her recognition of the need for the monument, as well as for her energy in carrying it out. As a result, we see a handsome, enduring monument to the founder of Dartmouth College at the place where he lived for many years and where he developed and matured his plan for the College, the great achievement of his life.

Frederick Chase '05 (l) and Roger W.Brown '05 (r) with the Rev. George K.Evans on their visit to Columbia, Conn.

Marker for Wheelock's original school.