Wentworth on the Ropes

Rev. Wheelock, meanwhile, had adapted his plans. His new college, he declared, would provide instruction to white men as well as Indian students. The Earl of Dartmouth, for whom the school was named, opposed the change. (Originally, according to The Dartmouth Review, Whhelock planned to call his new school Wentworth College.) Perhaps Wheelock was currying favor with his British benefactors when he created a seal depicting Native Americans. The British were more interested, at the time in Christianizing the "savage" Indians than they were in educating the uppity colonists. Although Wentworth was loyal to the Church of England and Wheelock was of the opposing Congregational faith, the two worked out a compromise. Wheelock got his land while Wentworth placed an Anglican bishop on the Dartmouth board of trustees.

Wentworth’s plan was as practical as it was religious. Dartmouth might be good business for wealthy Portsmouth merchants. Like his uncle, former governor Benning Wentworth, John wanted to establish an Anglican parish in every new NH town. By offering free land to Christian missionaries, Wentworth could not only convert the Indians, but retain political control in an era when church and state were one in the same. Because the Church of England was unpopular in Revolutionary America, Wentworth kept his plans secret. Perhaps, historians have suggested, Wentworth had long-term plans to convert Dartmouth to an Anglican school. Getting more settlers into the unpopulated parts of New Hampshire, however, was likely his top priority. The college Latin motto, after all, roughly translates as "A voice crying in the wilderness".

Dartmouth survived in New Hampshire, but Gov. Wentworth did not. A fewe months after the famous patriot raid on Fort William and Mary in New Castle (that Wentworth described in a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth), local citizens forced the governor and his family to flee. The mob pointed a cannon at the governor’s mansion and even threatened to kill his five-month-old son. Under the cover of darkness in June 1775, the royal governor slipped out the back door of his house, stepped into a small boat on the South Mill Pond, and quietly rowed out of American history.

It really wasn’t personal. People liked him. But Wentworth represented the "mad" King George III and he simply had to go. Curiously, it was a series of private letters between Wentworth and the Earl of Dartmouth that helped seal the governor’s fate. John Langdon and John Sullivan, leaders of the insurrection, published the letters and claimed that Wentworth was planning to use military force against the people of Portsmouth.