The Wheelock Succession

ELEAZAR WHEELOCK died last January 5 in Harlingen, Texas, at the age of 87, and was buried in Wheelock City Cemetery The great-great-great-grandson and one of the last descendants to carry both the genes and the name of the College's founder, Eleazar Louis Russell Wheelock is survived by his wife, Margaret, and sons Eleazar Jr. and Jerry. Although there are grandchildren too, they are adopted, according to Seymour E. Wheelock '40, who wrote to us recently, enclosing an obit from the Harlingen Valley Morning Star. Eleazar Jr. and Jerry are now the last direct descendants to carry the Wheelock surname.

Thirty years ago it was Seymour Wheelock who refuted the notion that there were no male heirs left in the Wheelock succession, an opinion put forth earlier by History Professor Leon Burr Richardson. In the pages of this magazine Seymour told us about the Harlingen Wheelocks, who traced their line back to Eleazar Louis Ripley Wheelock, born in Hanover in March 1793 to Eleazar Jr., son of Dartmouth's founder. Twelve years later Eleazar Jr. 's young family moved to Ohio and six years later the father died. Eighteen-year-old Eleazar Louis Ripley. Wheelock wandered up and down the frontier for a few years, doing things to Indians that his grandfather would hardly have approved of. He married in about 1818, became a colonel in the U.S. Army, and in 1833 founded Wheelock, Texas. It is his great-grandson who has just died.

Eleazar Wheelock and hisgreat-great-grandson Eleazar.