Dartmouth
College (/ˈdɑrtməθ/ dart-məth) is a private Ivy League research university located in Hanover, New Hampshire,
United States. It consists of a liberal arts college, the Geisel School of
Medicine, the Thayer School of
Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences.Incorporated
as the "Trustees of Dartmouth College,"it is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution.With an undergraduate
enrollment of 4,276 and a total student enrollment of 6,342 (as of 2013),
Dartmouth is the smallest university in the Ivy League.It was the last Ivy
League school to admit women, in 1972.
Dartmouth
College was established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, a Congregational minister. After a long period of financial and political
struggles, Dartmouth emerged in the early 20th century from relative obscurity.
Dartmouth's
269-acre (1.09 km2) campus is in the rural Upper
Valley region of New Hampshire. Participation in athletics and the
school's Greek
system is strong.Dartmouth's 34 varsity sports teams compete in the Ivy League conference of the NCAA Division I. Students are well known for preserving a variety of
strong campus traditions.
History
Dartmouth was founded
by Eleazar Wheelock, a Puritan minister from Columbia, Connecticut, who had previously
sought to establish a school to train Native
Americans as missionaries. Wheelock's ostensible inspiration for such an
establishment resulted from his relationship with Mohegan Indian Samson Occom. Occom became an ordained minister after
studying under Wheelock from 1743 to 1747, and later moved to Long Island to preach to the Montauks.
Wheelock founded Moor's Indian Charity
School in 1755. The Charity School proved somewhat successful, but additional
funding was necessary to continue school's operations, and Wheelock sought the
help of friends to raise money. Occom, accompanied by the Reverend Nathaniel
Whitaker, traveled to England in 1766 to raise money from churches. With these
funds, they established a trust to help Wheelock. The head of the trust was a Methodist named William
Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth.
The Charter of
Dartmouth College on display in Baker Memorial Library. The Charter was
signed on December 13, 1769, on behalf of King
George III of Great Britain.
Although the fund provided
Wheelock ample financial support for the Charity School, Wheelock had trouble
recruiting Indians to the institution, primarily because its location was far
from tribal territories. In seeking to expand the school into a college,
Wheelock relocated it to Hanover, in theProvince of New
Hampshire. The move from Connecticut followed a lengthy and sometimes
frustrating effort to find resources and secure a charter. The Royal Governor
of New Hampshire, John
Wentworth, provided the land upon which Dartmouth would be built and on
December 13, 1769, issued the charter in the name of King George III establishing the College. That charter created
a college "for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes
in this Land in reading, writing & all parts of Learning which shall appear
necessary and expedient for civilizing & christianizing Children of Pagans
as well as in all liberal Arts and Sciences and also of English Youth and any
others." The reference to educating Native American youth was included to
connect Dartmouth to the Charity School and enable use of the Charity School's
unspent trust funds. Named for William
Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth—an important supporter of Eleazar Wheelock's
earlier efforts but who, in fact, opposed creation of the College and never
donated to it—Dartmouth is the nation's ninth oldest college and the last institution
of higher learning established under Colonial rule. The College granted its
first degrees in 1771.
Given the limited
success of the Charity School, however, Wheelock intended his new college as
one primarily for whites. Occom, disappointed with Wheelock's departure from
the school's original goal of Indian Christianization, went on to form his own community of New
England Indians called Brothertown Indians in New York.