Portsmouth Politicians Started and Revived
NH's Only Ivy League School

The next time you go golfing with chums from Dartmouth, look carefully at the logo embroidered on their caps and polo shirts. The college "shield" shows two Native Americans holding a giant book. They are walking out of the forest toward a two-story building topped by a Christian cross. The image speaks volumes. It is the symbol of a controversy that has burned at the heart of the prestigious college since it was founded in 1769.

The logo also links the founding of Dartmouth College directly to Portsmouth. I had no clue about this connection until I was asked to address a group of Dartmouth alumni the other day. I was nervous. What do I know about life in the Ivy League? Sure, I’ve seen the movie "Animal House," written by a Dartmouth grad. But I went to the University of New Hampshire. Our seal is pretty mundane – a lamp, a chain, some laurels and an arm holding a hammer. Still, I do know Portsmouth, so I poked around – and here’s the scoop.

Dartmouth College was originally conceived as a missionary school for Native Americans. The idea came from Rev. Eleazar Wheelock who established an Indian school in Connecticut as early as 1756. Hoping to move and expand his small school, Wheelock sent two of his best Indian students to England to raise funds a few years before the American Revolution. Donations poured in, with a generous contribution from William Legge, the second Earl of Dartmouth. The Earl was a close friend of Sir John Wentworth, the royal governor of the province of New Hampshire. Wentworth’s former home still stands on Pleasant Street in Portsmouth. Both the Earl and John Wentworth were openly opposed to the British taxes that eventually sparked the Revolution.

Wentworth to the Rescue

Rev. Wheelock had money, but was unable to obtain a charter to start his college in Connecticut. So he appealed to Wentworth, the handsome, active and likeable governor descended from a powerful and influential family. Wentworth offered Wheelock land in a distant forested spot on the Connecticut River called Dresden, later Hanover, NH. Wentworth knew influential people and was able to obtain a charter for the college from King George III. This was the last royal charter granted, making Dartmouth the youngest and still smallest of the colonial Ivy League schools.

Dartmouth got its charter in 1769, a big year for John Wentworth. That same year he built a massive summer home on a 5,000-acre tract in the wilds of Wolfeboro on what is now Lake Wentworth. The progressive young governor was driving New Hampshire’s economy westward along a series of improved provincial roads. One of those new roads would pass his Wolfeboro mansion en route to Hanover. Wentworth was planning ahead, but he was running out of time.

Wentworth also served in a famous Boston court case in the summer of 1769. NH’s royal governor, among others, found a colonial ship captain not guilty of murder when he killed a British soldier who was attempting to seize the ship’s cargo. The defense lawyer in the case was a Harvard classmate of John Wentworth named John Adams, who would later become president of the United States. That year Wentworth also divided New Hampshire into counties, naming three of them Hillsborough, Strafford and Rockingham after wealthy British nobles.

As the powerful Surveyor of the King’s Woods, Wentworth was in charge of the valuable trees that powered the NH economy and included the tall valuable pines stretching all the way to Nova Scotia. After a trip to Halifax in 1769, Wentworth returned to Portsmouth and married his cousin Frances Atkinson. The wedding took place just 10-days after her first husband’s funeral.