Early Life
John Wheelock was born in Lebanon, Connecticut on January 28, 1754, the son of Eleazar Wheelock, the director Moor's Indian Charity School (founded 1754), and Mary Brinsmead Wheelock. Though he began his higher education at Yale, Wheelock followed his father to Hanover, New Hampshire when his father founded Dartmouth, and completed his studies there, where he was a member of the College’s inaugural graduating class in 1771.
In 1776, Wheelock became a leader of the United Committees, a group of disgruntled New Hampshire citizens angry at their lack of representation in the state legislature and the distance of the state capital; in retaliation for these slights, Wheelock and others led twelve New Hampshire towns to secede from the state and attempt to join Vermont. The next year, 1777, as the Revolutionary War raged, Wheelock briefly served in New York and Vermont as a Lieutenant Colonel in Colonel Bedel's Regiment. He carried on correspondence with, among others, George Washington.
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