WHEELOCK’S CONCH SHELL

Dartmouth founder Eleazar Wheelock brought this ocean artifact with him to Hanover, where it was used as a horn. When students heard its call they came running, as glorified in a 19th-century College song by E.E. Parker, class of 1869, and Addison Andrews, class of 1878: “It called the students from their play, to work, to prayers, with potent spell; Ill fared he who dared disobey the summons of the Old Conch Shell.” Freshmen were tasked with blowing the conch horn, but some were better than others. When the job fell to John Ledyard, class of 1776, he sounded the call with “reluctance and in a manner corresponding to his sense of degradation,” according to College historian Frederick Chase, class of 1860.