ation of Dartmouth College is not injurious to the Trade and Govt. of New Hampshire, which suspicion is now the only foundation of all the calumny, invective, and aversion to it. Many people interested above wish it there; others interested below are as desirous to have it with them; and some who possess on this quarter, cry aloud to have the College here. In the midst of such diverse (perhaps also perverse) interests, it was our Duty to judge and determine, without any other view than to promote the College as benevolently instituted. This done, I know we have so far well done, and all the subsequent and expected disappointment that alone causes clamor will neither disturb me or cause regret. I wish also the same to you; for surely, sir, the unavoidable fatigue of such an undertaking ought not to be increased by any feeling of groundless aspersions. Scarce a day passes but I hear some complaints of my conduct herein, or a mail but brings me reproof, either signed or anony. mous. I consider the authors as totally unacquainted with the whole case, and therefore don't suppose them really writing of Dartmouth College, but of an entity in their own Brain, formd from certain suppositious circumstances, which are by no means ours, and therefore readily allow that they may be right, without in any degree altering my former vote and opinion. But all this will soon subside. The people will be essentially benefited, whether they know it or not, and we will be happy in their prosperity at all events. This is a reward they shall not intercept me in. I've inclosed you one of the pieces last receivd; the original, wrote in an old text hand, I keep, for future discovery, of curiosity only. It would much delight me to come to Hanover at the Corporation meeting; if possible I will, and bring the other Trustees. In the mean time, I wish you every blessing, and do assure you I am, REVD DR WHEELOCK. J. WENTWORTH. The "piece" inclosed was the following; it found its way into the public prints, and probably affords us a complete view of that side of the question. SIR, Finding by the public papers that Dartmouth College, an Institution worthy your Excellency's patronage, is to be placed in Hanover, I beg liberty (although I must secrete my name) to suggest a few things to your Excellency's Consideration, which I am moved to from a hearty desire that learning may flourish in your Province, and that the good ends you had in view in giving a charter on the most generous and catholic plan may be answered, which I am persuaded no other Governor on the continent would have done; by which I (and I am not alone in opinion) think you have, in conjunction with the other Trustees in your Province, the sole right in Equity to determine at what particular town the College shall be fixed in, without the intermeddling of any of the Trustees in Connecticut who (were they not of the clerical order, which alone is enough to determine them unfit to that service) can't be supposed to be sufficiently acquainted with your Province to determine on ye place; and although I have little acquaintance with the Doctor, who I understand is appointed president, and of whom from his public character I have a good opinion, yet he is liable to be imposed on, and from designing men may be, and I doubt not has been, wretchedly imposed on in this affair. However, whether the Doctor has been imposed on or not, 't is generally said that your Province and the public are; for a more unpleasant spot on the Connecticut River, within your Province, cannot be found than Hanover, both in point of soil or prospect, it being horridly broken on the river, and in the back part of the Town very muddy, and scarce a running stream upon it, and but one within the limits of the Town that can in any measure answer for mills; and 't is thought by many who have viewed that stream that it is not sufficient for one mill. As to my own knowledge, I can say that I have travelled thr° said Town twice, and am satisfied that my informers are not mistaken; and although I live at a good distance from the Doctor, yet as I happened to get an acquaintance last year with Col Phelps, he was so good as to show me his instructions and power of agency from the Doctor, which was as ample a power as could be to enable him to act with regard to the place and fixing the College; and the Doctor will now own that he verily thought the place was fixed, and your Excellency and the other Trustees living in New Hampshire then expressly gave in writing that it should not be placed below Haverhill or Orford. But it is evident that some of the Craft that has plagued the State this thousand years has been used, or sure I am, and so is every indifferent man who is acquainted with Hanover, much mistaken, - a town if they had water to grind for the few poor Inhabitants who live there, they never did, and 't is said by judicious men that for years to come they will not be able to raise their own bread. I would therefore, in behalf of the public, humbly pray your Excellency, by yourself or by an indifferent committee, to review, or rather view, Hanover and its circumstances, for the Doctor and his attendant did not view it,—that in justice to your Excellency, to the Province, and to the College, it would be placed farther up the river. In justice to your Excellency, as the eye of the public is to you; your honor must suffer, as it must be judged ill placed. In justice to the Province, as certain it is that the Trade from Hanover will never be to Portsmouth, but to Newbury; but from Haverhill or Orford the trade will be to Portsmouth. Further, numbers in the Province in which I live, as well as in Connecticut, as I hear, who proposd to remove and settle near the College, expecting the College would have been placed in a good Town, are, as the case now stands, determined not to move into your Province. Your Excellency has the best right, as every one judges, to determine that matter; and as the Doctor has once passed by his engagement and point of fixing it, your Excellency's honor can't be exposed in reviewing that matter. Surely the extraordinary cost must be great to build and support a College in a Town where boards can't be sawed nor bread raised. I beg your Excellency's pardon for this trouble. A number of the judi cious urged me to write, and as a word is sufficient, I am, etc., 1 N. H. Hist. Soc. Colls., iii. 286. PUBLICUS.1 Wheelock suspected in this the hand of Colonel Phelps, and took care to let him know it. Perhaps the same idea was also in the mind of the Governor; but Phelps, as we know, indignantly denied the authorship. Though the violence of the storm in a little while subsided, and most of the subscribers after some delay and importunity discharged their obligations, there lingered for many years an undercurrent of hostility which affected the relations of the Province to the College, and even became a factor in the political turmoils of the border. Many of the objections urged against this place we readily see to have been unfounded. At present it is no doubt quite as suitable for the purpose as the situation at Haverhill, certainly much better than any in Landaff; and yet as matters then were, Haverhill afforded some obvious advantages, and the reasons for preferring Hanover are still somewhat obscure. To the London trust Wheelock wrote, July 10: "The very favorable and remarkable occurrences in providence by which that place [Hanover] was pointed out above all others are too many and too long to write." In contemplation of his removal, Wheelock's pastoral relations at Lebanon were dissolved about the 1st of April, 1770, with the approval of the western council of the Windham Association. The dissolution was attended with some circumstances of irritation that made him and his family glad to get away. His relations with a portion of the congregation had for some years been not of the pleasantest. The matter of his salary had never ceased to be a source of heart-burning and a subject of frequent discussion. Its annual value was dependent on the prices of provisions at stated periods of settlement; and aside from the uncertainty thus involved, he complained of arbitrary changes of the period, made so that rate-payers might avail themselves of fluctuations to his disadvantage. In 1766 he seriously proposed, on that account, to ask a dismission. Early in 1769, being in feeble health and looking forward to an early removal with his school, he proposed to his church to invite in a candidate to preach on probation, which was done, with a promptitude not altogether pleasing, in the person of one Ephraim Judson. But Wheelock's health after a few months. improving, and the prospect of removal growing more uncertain, he found that the step was premature, and preferred, with the help of Mr. Woodward, to resume the full charge of his pulpit. Parties were about equally divided, and there arose. an unhappy state of feeling that greatly embittered his last months in Lebanon. Doubtless some of the trouble was due to the disappointment of the people in seeing the school taken out of their midst. To the subscribers of the £500 endowment fund of 1755, Wheelock gave notice by public advertisement, dated Lebanon, Aug. 23, 1770, that ... "My Indian charity school is now become a body corporate and politic, under the name of DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, by a most generous and royal charter, granted and amply endowed with immunities, powers, and privileges, in the opinion of good judges not inferior to any university on the continent, by his Excellency John Wentworth, Esq., Governor of New Hampshire, whom God has raised up and commissioned for this purpose. I hope soon to be able to support by charity a large number, not only of Indian youths in Moor's1 charity school, which is connected and incorporated with the College, but also of English youths in the College, in order to their being fitted for missionaries among the Indians, etc. And I would take this opportunity to advise those who have so generously subscribed for the use and support of this institution that the several sums by them subscribed are in consequence of this incorporation become payable." 2 1 The subscriptions of 1755 being predicated on Moor's foundation, it was necessary in this connection to recur to that. 2 Conn. Courant, Sept. 10; N. H. Gazette, Sept. 28, 1770. DUR CHAPTER III. 1760-1810. HANOVER UNDER THE PROPRIETARY. URING the long struggle between France and England for the possession of the Canadas, which ended in 1760 in favor of England, the upper valley of the Connecticut River, till then unoccupied, except by Indians, came by various circumstances to be better known for its beauty and fertility. Plans had been agitated as early as 1752 to lay out towns in it; and no sooner was the war over than crowds of adventurers besieged the Royal Governor of New Hampshire for grants of land on both sides of the valley, and beyond, to the westward limits of the present State of Vermont, over the whole of which, until 1764, he claimed jurisdiction. In the three years, 1761-64, Governor Benning Wentworth granted more than one hundred and forty towns in these western regions, one hundred and twelve of them west of the Connecticut. The Connecticut valley, while difficult of approach from eastern New Hampshire by reason of the intervening heights, lay open to easy access from the south, and the people of Connecticut, not slow to avail themselves of the advantage, came in large numbers, under favor of the Governor, and possessed the land. Among them, in the autumn of 1760, came to Portsmouth two gentlemen from Windham County, Joseph Storrs and Edmund Freeman, Jr., both of Mansfield, and with the assistance of the elder Atkinson presented to the Governor, December 10th, the following petition: PROVINCE OF TO HIS EXCELLENCY Benning Wentworth, Esq., Capt. General, Humbly shews Joseph Storrs and Edmund Freeman, Jun., in behalf of Themselves, and as agents for about Two hundred and forty others, Inhabitants of Windham County, in the Colony of Connecticut, whose names are |