separated, contains about 6,000 acres. The remaining part of the town, commonly called the Hanover parish, contains about 14,000 acres, including the lands asked in the petition, and after deducting the said lands, and allowing the other divisions, leaves the parish in the irregular form, as by the plain chart of the town annexed will appear, and not more than three and a half miles from the centre to either extreme part. To which chart we would refer your Honors for illustration. The first-mentioned district is so encircled by mountains, and a great part thereof College lands, seems to entitle them to the indulgence. Moose Mountain is passable in a few places only. We would further beg leave to mention the impropriety of any such new dividing line, when two such entire losses will increase our inability of supporting representation and defraying other public charges; all which are reasons sufficient why the prayer of said Col. Elisha Payne and others should not be granted. HANOVER, Jan. 27, 1786. Signed by order, NATH BABBIT. Lebanon also was averse to the partition of its territory. A committee, which was appointed at a town meeting held Nov. 26, 1782, "in the matter Represented to the Town by Colo Payne & others, Respecting their being set off in a Distinct District from the Town," reported adversely. The date of the meeting seems to indicate that the project was mooted some time before the presentation of the petition, and that from the outset it met with no favor in the towns interested. In a little more than ten years the contingency arose, as anticipated, regarding the territory beyond Moose Mountain. At a town meeting the first Monday of December, 1796, Jonathan Freeman was appointed "an agent to take care of the business respecting preferring a petition to the General Court to annex the land east of Moose Mountain to Canaan." During the preceding summer the selectmen of Canaan had petitioned the proper authorities to have a road laid out around the north end of the mountain. The proposition seems not to have been acceptable to Hanover. Doubtless then, as now, there was not very much travel between the districts on the west and the east sides of the mountain, and Hanover wished to avoid the expense of the road. In accordance with the above vote, Jonathan Freeman was directed to oppose the construction of the road at the next session of the Court of Common Pleas. The road was subsequently built, but nothing came of the petition for the division of the town. CHAPTER VIII. THE COLLEGE AND MOOR'S CHARITY SCHOOL TO 1815. HROUGH all the confusions of war and of politics, Dart mouth alone among the American colleges went steadily on without suspension, though several times painfully near it. But it had its domestic troubles, and some of them were serious enough. The year 1777 marks an epoch in its history, distinguished on the one hand by the defection of the Canadian Indians, and on the other by the estrangement of its best remaining friends in the eastern part of the State. It will be remembered how, in 1769, by the withdrawal of the boys of the Six Nations, the School in Connecticut had been for the time shorn of its special character as an Indian school and turned into new channels of usefulness, and how the founder, after becoming settled at Hanover, had returned in a degree to his original plan, and, though shaken in his confidence, had with infinite pains and expense gathered about him nearly as many Indians as before, but from a different quarter. By their withdrawal in November, 1777, when their places could not be filled, his discouragement was complete. The Indian School was thrown a second time into the shadow, and never recovered itself. The five who were left kept along, most of them, till 1782, after which but a single representative of the race remained, and for fifteen years, from 1785, there were none. This marked the definite transformation of the institution, by force of circumstances, into the English college, divested of its peculiar devotion to Indians, except as incidental to the expenditure in after years of the moderate avails of the Scotch Fund. There were no more missions, and no more systematic endeavors to bring Indians here. As regards the original idea of its founder, the School, and to that extent the College itself, was practically an admitted failure. The missionary spirit, indeed, had been quenched by the war. Between 1771 and 1774 fifteen English youths were ready to go out, and six Indians were qualified for schoolmasters; but the tumults which preceded the war, as well as the war itself, prevented any successful enterprise. Those who went among the Indians found them unusually opposed to missionary work, so that for more than ten years there was practically no access to the Indian country, except to a certain extent in Oneida. "As the chief object of their pursuit seemed thus interdicted by Providence, they generally became settled in the ministry in various parts of the country, and considered themselves exonerated from their bonds." But the real causes of discouragement lay deeper. "Of a hundred and fifty Indians who were members of the School under the elder Wheelock, several became reputable and useful preachers of the Gospel among their countrymen, but all except Occom died in early life. By far the most of the number never rose above the capacity of a schoolmaster or interpreter. Many relapsed into the life and the vices of their race, and several 'ranged themselves under the banner of desolation and murder.' Dr. Wheelock saw his kindest purposes toward them frustrated, and the benevolent projects he had formed, with fairest hopes of success, at once completely blasted." 1 But a far more serious misfortune was the loss of friends at the eastward. This was chargeable in part, no doubt, to border politics, but in great part also to the course pursued by Dr. Wheelock in a controversy with the town of Hanover over the civil rights of the College. The quarrel with the town gave great concern to all the friends of the College. It was at one time very hot, and threatened to lead to radical changes and destruction. The immediate occasion of it was a difference in 1 Memoirs of Wheelock, pp. 62-4. Of the whole number of Indians who attended the School, about twenty-five were at Hanover, several of them in College, and three were graduated, namely, Daniel Simons, a Narragansett, in 1777; Peter Pohquonnopeet, a Stockbridge, in 1780; and Lewis Vincent, a Lorette, in 1781. It is but fair to remember, as a partial offset to this gloomy picture, that the friendly attitude of the Oneidas during the Revolutionary War was due in very large degree to what Wheelock had previously done for the improvement of the Six Nations, and to the influence of Mr. Kirkland and others, who went out from the Lebanon School. January, 1777, about an affair of the small-pox, in the suppression of which the preceding autumn all had harmoniously joined. There had been at times friction and heart-burning on account of the roving cattle and the gates; but in general, relations with the town had been pleasant, and in the point of freedom from taxation the claims of the College had been fully allowed, even to the extent of exempting person and property of the executive officers. The precise origin of the quarrel is rather obscure; but it would appear that, the small-pox having broken out again in this region, inoculation was privately resorted to, in violation of law, by some of the students on their own account, but with the consent of the President, and by some also of the citizens under the hand of Dr. Eager, one of the resident physicians and surgeon to Bedel's regiment. Application to the authorities for permission to continue it met a determined refusal; and the houses at the College mills on Mink Brook being already infected by the students, and well retired, all the patients were ordered there, in spite of President Wheelock's angry protest. He became so deeply exasperated by what was done, and the manner of it, that he forthwith set on foot, on his own responsibility, and so far as appears, without the knowledge of the trustees, a plan for the removal of the College into the State of New York. Finding no encouragement there, he carried the grievance to the trustees and to the ecclesiastical authorities; but was everywhere disappointed of the support that he demanded. The trustees from the eastward, by no means able to countenance the high claims of college prerogative, and yet unwilling to exasperate him by flat opposition, avoided the subject by keeping away, under various excuses, from the meetings which he called, in hope that the quarrel would after a little subside; but they drew thereby upon themselves a fire of complaints that cooled the friendship of some whose support could ill be spared in so critical a period, and chief among them that of John and Samuel Phillips.1 1 Mr. Phillips had been, on the whole, the most constant and generous private benefactor of the College and School in America. In 1774-76 he answered calls to the amount of about £600, and at that period we find Dr. Wheelock turning to him in every emergency, as he formerly did to Thornton. In 1774 Mr. Phillips purposed "spending some time [at Hanover], the better to satisfy myself what service to our The cause of the matter will best appear by presenting the principal documents. The first that we have is The Memorial of the Students of Dartmouth College to the inhabitants of this vicinity: DARTMOUTH HALL, Jany. 8, 1777. Whereas the small-pox has providentially broke out in this vicinity, whereby many persons have been greatly exposed to that epidemical and painful distemper, and whereas self-preservation is the first and great law of nature, we think it our indispensable duty to take every possible means to alleviate the distemper which may be effected by inoculation; We the subscribers, having been more or less immediately exposed, do petition the inhabitants of this vicinity to take our uncommon case into consideration and give your consent (as neighbors) that we, and such others belonging to the vicinity as desire it, take house or houses at the mills, if they can be obtained, to be inoculated in, under such regulations as the inhabitants shall esteem most requisite at this emergency. EBENEZER HASELTINE. LABAN AINSWORTH. ASHUR HATCH. NATHANIEL MANN. NOAH MILES. DANIEL POTTER. This petition received the indorsement of the citizens, We the subscribers, taking the above petition into our serious consideration, and being fully convinced that sundry of the students have been eminently exposed to the small-pox, do esteem it our duty to give our consent that one class, or such as apply for it within 8 days, be permitted to have it by inoculation at the mills as requested, under the following restrictions, viz : — 1. That a committee be appointed to inspect and regulate that matter so that no person in this neighborhood or elsewhere be exposed. 2. That Mr. Sever, Capt. Hendee, and Mr. Maccluer be a committee for that purpose. 3. That no person be permitted to visit the houses there without the consent of s committee, nor return from thence without being cleansed to their satisfaction. 4. That the road leading to the mills be fenced across at the top of the hill, and notification of that disorder be there posted in writing. 5. That the authority of College will consent to enact a law which shall be effectual to bind the students to the foregoing and such other regu Master can be most advantageously rendered.” His aspiration was, “Oh that I might now at this eleventh hour be faithful in his work!" (N. H. Hist. Soc. Coll., ix. 84.) There was earnest hope that some distinguished benefits might be derived from his generosity. But about this time his ardor cooled, and his attention was turned, with the concurrence of Mr. Samuel Phillips (his nephew and prospective heir) to the endowment of the academies at Exeter and Andover in 1778. At a later period his interest in the College revived to some extent. |