Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History. On this episode, we are visiting with

Leazar Wheelock. Wheelock was born in 1711 in Connecticut. He died in 1779 in Hanover, New Hampshire.

He was a colonial minister, an educator, college founder and president. For the final decade of his life,

from 1769 until 1779, Wheelock was the first president of Dartmouth College. Dartmouth and Ivy League

college was the last of the nine colonial colleges. Wheelock secured a charter from King George the

third. The college was named for the second Earl of Dartmouth. As an aside, there was a connection

between the second Earl of Dartmouth and John Newton, the hymn writer, it was Dartmouth who made

the introductions for Newton to become an Anglican minister. Well, let's go back to the colonies and

back to the life of Wheelock and let's go back to his life before he founded Dartmouth and before

1769. I mentioned he was born in 1711. He was born on a 300 acre farm in Wyndham, Connecticut.

He went to Yale where he distinguished himself as quite the scholar. He graduated in 1733 and was

awarded the Berkeley scholar prize. It was named for the British philosopher and Anglican Bishop George

Barclay, who had donated a large sum of money and books to Yale. Well, after Yale, Wheelock became the

pastor of the second congregational church in Lebanon, Connecticut. The first church served to the

south, but the second church served the growing population to the north, and it was technically called

the Lebanon North Parish. Well, the same year he became pastor of second church, he married Sarah

Davenport. And then in 1740, Revivals came not only to Lebanon where Wheelock was the pastor

there, but also to the whole Connecticut River Valley and to the entire colonies. This was part

of the Great Awakening. Wheelock became one of the Great Awakening's great advocates and was also

one of the itinerant ministers. In June of 1741, Wheelock was at North Hampton, Massachusetts,

and that was where the Church of Jonathan Edwards was. For the next two weeks, he and a handful

of others preached up and down the Connecticut River Valley, Chris Crossing, Massachusetts, and

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