s to Connecticut. I've just got studies fitted,
and made provision for the support of the rest of them. The great
difficulty in taking your son is the want of provisions in this
starved country. I send to Northfield and Montague for my bread, and
expect supply chiefly from thence."
The facilities for acquiring classical and scientific education appear
to have been substantially the same at Dartmouth, at the outset, as in
other American colleges of that period.
The discoveries of Newton and Franklin had a marked, if not
controlling, influence upon the thought of the eighteenth century.
No American college, perhaps, felt this influence more than President
Wheelock's Alma Mater, in which Franklin took a deep interest.
At the period of the founding of Dartmouth, we find that, in Yale
College, the Faculty consisted of Dr. Daggett, who was President, and
Professor of Divinity; Rev. Nehemiah Strong, Professor of Mathematics
and Natural Philosophy, and two or three tutors.
President Wheelock doubtless had his Alma Mater especially in mind, in
planning the curriculum of Dartmouth. He was himself Professor of
Divinity, as well as President. His first associate in instruction,
who acted in the capacity of tutor, was Mr. Bezaleel Woodward, who had
graduated at Yale College in 1764, during the presidency of Rev.
Thomas Clap, of whom his associate in the Faculty, the future
President Stiles, says: "In Mathematics and Natural Philosophy I have
reason to think he was not equaled by more than one man in America."
The fact that Mr. Woodward was subsequently, for many years, a highly
esteemed professor of Mathematics in the college, indicates that he
was a worthy pupil of his distinguished teacher.
There can be no doubt that the college was highly favored, in its
beginnings, in having a president who had been, while at college,
distinguished as a classical scholar, and in later life as an able and
a learned divine, aided by a younger teacher, whose scientific
attainments well qualified him for the duties of his position.
The first preceptor of the Charity School, at Hanover, was David
McClure, who had recently graduated at Yale College. He was an able
and a successful teacher. The various relations of the school and
college were so intimate at this period, that it is nearly impossible
to dissociate them. The word "school," as used by President Wheelock,
frequently includes the college.
Three of Dartmouth's first class wer
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