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CHAPTER V.

THE COLLEGE UNDER GOVERNOR WENTWORTH.

1770-1775.

S soon as the location of the College was fixed, it became for many reasons desirable that preparations for its removal should be made without delay. Within a month after his return from Portsmouth, Wheelock set out again, accompanied by young Ripley and Dr. Crane, with laborers and teams. They reached Hanover early in August. The students followed in detachments in the course of the next month.1 Arrangements had been made with neighbors in June to open a clearing and put up temporary buildings, but the work was scarcely begun. The nearest house on the New Hampshire side was distant two miles to the northward from the place of the new settlement, "through one continued and dreary wood."2 Easterly lay a tract of rugged hill and unbroken forest several thousand acres in extent, through which ran the only highway yet opened in this quarter, the so-called "half-mile road," skirting the western slope of the hill parallel to the river, and nearly a mile away.

The chosen tract, comprising, with the Governor's lot and contiguous lands, a thousand acres or more controlled by Wheelock, was heavily wooded with white pines of extraordinary size. The central portion was an elevated plain, and the

1 Dean, Grover, Gurley, Frisbie, and Huntington came in September. Kendall went by way of Boston to bring young Thomas Walcott, and arrived about October 1,-nearly at the same time as McClure, Hebbard, and others, and as Wheelock's family.

2 Memoirs of Wheelock, by David McClure and Elijah Parish, 1811, p. 54 To avoid repetition, it is proper to note that we are indebted to this book for many interesting facts of this period, the authenticity of which, considering that McClure was an eye-witness and participant, is beyond question. Much is drawn also from Wheelock's own printed narratives and correspondence.

As

CHAPTER V.

THE COLLEGE UNDER GOVERNOR WENTWORTH.

1770-1775.

S soon as the location of the College was fixed, it became for many reasons desirable that preparations for its removal should be made without delay. Within a month after his return from Portsmouth, Wheelock set out again, accompanied by young Ripley and Dr. Crane, with laborers and teams. They reached Hanover early in August. The students followed in detachments in the course of the next month.1 Arrangements had been made with neighbors in June to open a clearing and put up temporary buildings, but the work was scarcely begun. The nearest house on the New Hampshire side was distant two miles to the northward from the place of the new settlement, "through one continued and dreary wood." 2 Easterly lay a tract of rugged hill and unbroken forest several thousand acres in extent, through which ran the only highway yet opened in this quarter, the so-called "half-mile road," skirting the western slope of the hill parallel to the river, and nearly a mile away.

The chosen tract, comprising, with the Governor's lot and contiguous lands, a thousand acres or more controlled by Wheelock, was heavily wooded with white pines of extraordinary size. The central portion was an elevated plain, and the

1 Dean, Grover, Gurley, Frisbie, and Huntington came in September. Kendall went by way of Boston to bring young Thomas Walcott, and arrived about October 1, nearly at the same time as McClure, Hebbard, and others, and as Wheelock's family.

2 Memoirs of Wheelock, by David McClure and Elijah Parish, 1811, p. 54. To avoid repetition, it is proper to note that we are indebted to this book for many interesting facts of this period, the authenticity of which, considering that McClure was an eye-witness and participant, is beyond question. Much is drawn also from Wheelock's own printed narratives and correspondence.

rest of it much broken. The rocky knob that lifts itself in the midst of the plain, on which the Observatory now stands, was also densely covered, though mostly with hard wood, to such a degree that the ground was entirely hidden under a deep growth of moss, saturated with water at all seasons. The southeastern portion of the plain was a hemlock swamp, across which, at a later time, a corduroy road was made to the mill neighborhood. This swamp supplied two or three small but unfailing streams. Of these the largest,' called from a very early time "Girl Island Brook," and more recently "Girl Brook," rising in the valley at the foot of the high, wooded hill which we call "Pine Hill," a half mile east of the College, passed to the north and reached the river through the "Vale of Tempe " over against "Girl Island." Another smaller stream drained the southeastern portion of the plain to Mink Brook through what is now "Dry Hollow." The third, taking its rise in the immediate neighborhood of the College, at the foot of Wheelock's garden, where the gas-works now are, reached Mink Brook by the same winding valley through which the "Path from Lebanon" climbed to the plain. This last, though smaller than "Girl Brook," gave a steady supply of water for the village potash works, brick-yard, and laundry. The soil about the base of the Observatory hill is of gravelly loam, but the rest of the plain has a rich, dark mould over a subsoil of heavy clay, excepting the western side, which is sandy.

A spot was selected on the drier and more level part of the plain, about sixty rods from the river, close to the northerly line of the College land. It proved, indeed, to be outside of the College limits, on land belonging to Wheelock himself. A hut of logs was built for Wheelock's use, about eighteen feet square, without stone, brick, glass, or nails. With a force of laborers, varying from thirty to fifty in number, many of them volunteers from this and the neighboring towns, Wheelock "betook himself to a campaign."

"I set some," he says, "to digging a well, and others to build a house [of timber and boards] for myself and family, of 40 by 32 feet and one

1 These and many other curious particulars and facts are drawn from memoranda left by Mr. William W. Dewey, who at the age of two years was brought to this village, in 1779, by his father, Dea. Benoni Dewey. He had a great fondness for local antiquities.