Dartmouth College Charter

Granted by King George III of Great Britain in 1769, the Dartmouth College Charter is the founding document of Dartmouth College. It established Dartmouth as the ninth colonial college and the last to be chartered by the British Crown. The contents of the charter include a brief history of the founding of the college, which includes the college’s educational mission, the names of those who helped to fund it, and the intention for the school to be situated in western New Hampshire along the Connecticut River. It also outlines criteria for governing the college. It names the twelve founding members of the Board of Trustees and their duties, names Eleazer Wheelock as the founder and first president of Dartmouth College, and plans for the succession of these positions. The document is written by Theodore Atkinson, Secretary of New Hampshire and is signed by John Wentworth, the British colonial governor of New Hampshire.

The language in the Charter speaks to Wheelock’s earlier efforts to establish a charity school for indigenous communities in the Northeast. A college is “erected in our said province of New Hampshire by the name of Dartmouth College,” the document reads, “for the education and instruction of youth of the Indian tribes in this land in reading, writing, and all parts of learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing and christianizing children of pagans, as well as in all liberal arts and sciences, and also of English youth and any others." In 1754, Wheelock established an Indian Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut with support from Colonel Joshua More. By late 1765 funds for the school were depleted, so Wheelock sent two ministers, Samson Occom and Nathaniel Whitaker, to Britain to raise money. Their fundraising efforts secured contributions from prominent Englishmen, including William Legge, Second Earl of Dartmouth and Secretary of State for the Colonies, while Wheelock negotiated with New Hampshire Governor John Wentworth to settle the new location of the school, now planned as a college. These new plans soured the longstanding relationship between Wheelock and Occom. Occom, a Connecticut Mohegan who had studied under Wheelock decades earlier, was angered to find that the funds would be used to educate primarily white, rather than indigenous, communities. Much of Occom’s career and his relationship to the founding of Dartmouth is documented in The Occom Circle, a digital edition of letters, essays, and other writings by Occom.
 

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