Free tuition tale is true
When 16-year-old Maura Nolan matriculates at Dartmouth next fall, she'll be collecting on a 156-year-old offer made to residents of her tiny village of Wheelock, Vt., free tuition for Wheelock students who gain admission to the College. For Nolan, one of 390 early-decision students admitted in late fall, that offer will be worth more than $40,000 over four years.
Nolan is the first female and only the seventh resident of the northern Vermont town of 400 to take advantage of Dartmouth's offer. The unusual arrangement 'started back in the late 1700s when Dartmouth's second president, John Wheelock, asked the Vermont Assembly to consider the earlier example of New Hampshire's legislators and grant the College a township to bolster its financially troubled coffers. Dartmouth was then the only college in the North Country. After much debate, the assembly granted the College thousands of acres, which eventually became the town of Wheelock, about 60 miles north of Hanover. The College then leased the land to farmers in Wheelock. During a visit to the town to collect the rents in 1828, Dartmouth's sixth president, the Rev. Dr. Nathan Lord, reportedly made his extraordinary offer. "Whenever any Wheelock boys are ready for college, send them along and there will be free tuition," he is quoted as having said.
The town never forgot his words, and in 1886, when Wheelock resident Osias D. Mathewson decided to apply, he inquired through a friend if that 58year-old invitation.still held true. A positive reply came back from the College's eighth president, Samuel Colcord Bartlett: "Send the boy along." With that, Mathewson became the first Wheelock Scholar. He was graduated from Dartmouth at the head of his class and later became for 35 years headmaster of Lyndon Institute, the same school from which Nolan is scheduled to be graduated in June.
Since Mathewson's time, five more Wheelock residents have attended Dartmouth tuition-free: Harland Deos '39, the late Winston Shorey '41, Neil Barber '42, A. Ranald Bailey Jr. '56, and the late Robert St. Louis '75.
And now Nolan, a resident of Wheelock since 1974, an honors student, and a member of Lyndon's track and crosscountry ski teams, will become the latest Wheelock Scholar. It wasn't until after she had accepted the offer of admission that it became known that Nolan was eligible for a Wheelock Scholarship, since her mailing address is Lyndonville because Wheelock is too small to have its own post office.
The regular stream of notable visitors to Hanover recently included Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Barbara Tuchman, left, and Kenneth Manning, right, author of arecent biography of biologist E. E. Just '07. Tuchman, who came to campus for fivedays as a Montgomery Fellow, talks here with honors students at MontgomeryHouse. She also gave a public lecture in which she said she sees history as ' a work ofart" and narrative history as "a necessary way of connecting cause and effect."Manning's visit came during Black History Month and tied in with the College'scommitment to fund a science chair in Just's name. Here, Harvard-educated historian Manning autographs copies of his Just book. His three-day campus visit alsoincluded meetings with faculty and students arid a public address.
