1768 ELEAZAR WHEELOCK.Early Missionary to Native Americans & Founder of Dartmouth Rebukes Young Minister.

A very rare early holograph, perhaps non-authorial, docketed as a Copy of Mr. Wheelock's Letter to Mr. Worcester. The motivation for anyone other than Wheelock to retain a copy of the private, controversial communication between him and a "rogue" minister in the region is not clear, and Wheelock's hand varied over time. Regardless, the text of the letter from a significant figure of the time does not appear to be extant elsewhere. 

1768 was perhaps the most difficult year of Wheelock's life, 1768 was the year he experienced a public rift with the most influential convert of his "Indian" school, Samson Occom. 

In an effort to build the first Native American college in America, Wheelock sent Occum to England on a preaching tour during 1766 and 1767. When Occum returned, he found Wheelock had apparently redirected funds and his efforts to the founding of Dartmouth instead. A bitter and public controversy ensued wherein Wheelock charged Occom with all manner of sins, i.e. drunkenness, enthusiasm, unorthodoxy, pride, etc., and Occom accused his long-time mentor of fraud and embezzlement.

Occom also published his memoir that year and began resisting some of the "white man's" narrative of his Christian experience, though he remained a committed Christian. 

In the same year, one Rev. Worcester, perhaps one of Wheelock's students, was given permission to preach throughout the region of Lebanon, CT, but was seemingly a sectarian, a bragger, and prone to evangelistic exaggeration, etc. Wheelock's discomfort says something, since he was friendly with and supported the radical Great Awakening firebrand, James Davenport. 

The text in full:

Lebanon Augt 6th 1768

Revd Sr.

I freely consented to your Preaching to my People, & Encouraged yr supplying Mr. Pomeroy's [Benjamin Pomeroy] People & recommended you to Mr. Polwains [?] & hoped you would be usefull to ye Interest of ye Redeemers Kingdom as I Charitably hope you desire to be, but I have since heard of your Carracter [sic] and Conduct which is ill very ill and which I shall with ye same freedom & friendship now **** you off as I have heretofore acknowledged that which was good in you.

I hear yt you are preaching to ye parts who have deisred your labours, when ye neighbouring ministers, and one of them ye Pastor of ye People, yt are much dissatisfied with you; that they have repeated desires to discourage but you have appeared to shun them, that you go on appointing ***** lectures, without consulting them there in, that you affect no Company, but of your admirers and Conduct so, as to Encourage Parties, and dissaffection to their ministers, and one another, that you abound in boasting of what you have done, or of ye Honr God has put upon you in making you usefull, for ye Conviction & Conversion of Numbers here & there, that there is much Reason to fear, you have been to free & forward to administer Comfort without Grounds & heal ye wounds slightly. 

Those my dear Sr are all Characters of a false spirit & a false Teacher, your first duty when you hear your Brother has ought agt you is to go & give him satisfaction, and your Obligations here are much greater, as you are a minister and especially as such a place & season as you are now in, where ye great Enemy will not fail to Improve Every advantage to obstruct and hinder ye Glorious Work of God, and that Especially by promoting Parties, disputing, jealousies, and Evil Surmising, &c. 

Let me my dear Sr beg of you to hear what Mr. Perry and others have to object agt your Person, Character or Condct, most Certainly they do not act out of Character in desiring of it, but ye part of faithfull ministers, of Xt who watch for Souls as those yt must give an Account, and if you can't give them Satisfaction, I beseech of you, as you would not lay by a fatal bar to ye progress of ye Work of God, if you would quit those Parts.

You see my brotherly freedom, I write my very heart. Tho in great haste, you may depend upon your future usefulness in those parts (I think) will oblige you to hear and answer all objections yt are made agt you; be sure your ****** of ye light will much strengthen them. 

I hope you will take in good part what is honestly intended by, Revd Sr, your assured Friend and honourable Servt.

Eleazr Wheelock.