Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/487

Rh  of the catalogue department. He was a careful and laborious student of Shakespeare, and made collections for a cyclopaedia of Shakespearian literature. Among his other works are revisions of the school editions of Webster's Dictionary, an abridgment of that work, and editions of the Rev. Charles Hole's “Brief Biographical Dictionary” (New York, 1866); “Mother Goose's Melodies,” with antiquarian and philological notes (1869); and a “Dickens Dictionary” (1873). He left in manuscript an index to anonymous literature entitled “Who Wrote It?”

WHEELER, William Almon, statesman, b. in Malone, Franklin co., N. Y., 30 June, 1819 ; d. there, 4 June, 1887. He studied at the University of Vermont for two years, but was compelled by the death of his father to leave college without being graduated. He then began the study of law un- der Asa Hascall in Malone, N. Y., was admitted to the bar in 1845, and succeeded Mr. Has- call as IT. S. dis- trict attorney of Franklin county, which post he held till 1849. At that time his political sympathies were with the Whig Sarty, by which e was chosen to the assembly in 1849, but in the early part of the Fremont canvass in 1856 he sup- ported the newly formed Republican party, re- maining in it until his death. An affection of the throat compelled him to abandon the practice of law- in 1851, and from that year till 1866 he was connected with a bank in Malone. He became president of the Northern New York railroad com- pany about the same time, and for twelve years was supervisory manager of the line from Rouse's Point to Ogdensburg, N. Y. He was a member and president pro tempore of the state senate in 1858-'9, and was chosen to congress in 1860 as a Republican; but, after serving one term, returned to his railroad and banking interests. He was president of the New York constitutional con- vention in 1867, returned to congress in 1869, and served continuously till 1877. During that time he was chairman of the committees on the Pacific railroad company and commerce, a member of those on appropriations and southern affairs, and was the first in either house to cover his back-pay into the treasury, after the passage of the back- salary act. He was also the author of the famous " compromise " in the adjustment of the political disturbances in Louisiana, by which William Pitt Kellogg was recognized as governor, and the state legislature became Republican in the senate and Democratic in the house. In 1876 he was nomi- nated for the vice-presidency by the Republican national convention, and he took his seat as pre- siding officer of the senate in March, 1877. On the expiration of his term in 1881 he returned to Malone, and did not again enter public life. Mr. Wheeler was a man of most excellent character and of great liberality.

WHEELOCK, Charles, soldier, b. in Clare- mont, N. H., 14 Dec. 1812; d. in Washington, D. C, 21 Jan., 1865. He was educated in the com- mon schools of New Hampshire and New York and became a farmer and provision-dealer in Oneida county, N. Y. Immediately after the fall of Fort Sumter he abandoned business and de- voted his time to raising recruits, pledging himself to provide for their families. In the summer of 1861 he had thus given or pledged $5,000, about half of his possessions. Soon afterward he raised the 97th New York regiment, of which he became colonel on 10 March, 1862, and subsequently he en- gaged actively in the war in the Army of "the Po- tomac, being taken prisoner at the second battle of Bull Run, and serving, after his exchange, till his death from disease. On 19 Aug., 1864, he was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers.

WHEELOCK, Eleazar, educator, b. in Windham, Conn., 22 April, 1711 ; d. in Hanover, N. H., 24 April, 1779. His great-grandfather, Rev. Ralph Wheelock (1600-'83). an eminent non-conformist clergyman, came to New England in 1637, was a founder of the 1st church in Dedham, Mass., in 1638, and thence removed to Medfield, where he was a large land-owner and a representative to the general court. Ralph's son, Eleazar, commanded a cavalry company against the Indians, and the latter's son, Ralph, was a farmer. The second Ralph's son, Eleazar, was graduated at Yale in 1733, having been educated with the proceeds of a legacy that had been left by his grandfather, Capt. Eleazar, for that purpose. He then studied divinity, and in 1735 was ordained over the 2d church in Lebanon, Conn., where he labored thirty-five years. In the year of his settlement there was a great revival of religion in his flock. During its progress he encountered opposition both from those that were more conservative than he and from the more radical, yet he entered into his work with zeal, preaching in one year " a hundred more sermons than there are days in the year." Several years later, his salary being insufficient for his support, he began to take pupils into his house, and in 1743 he received thus Samson Occom (q. v.), a Mohican Indian, whom he educated. He now conceived the plan of an Indian missionary school, and by 1762 he had more than twenty youths under his charge, chiefly Indians. They were supported by the contributions of benevolent persons, and the school received the name of Moor's Indian charity-school, from Joshua Moor, a Mansfield farmer, who gave it a house and two acres of land in Lebanon, in 1754. In 1766, Occom and Rev. Nathaniel Whitaker went to England, and by their exertions an endowment of about £10,000 was obtained, most of which was placed in the hands of a board of trustees, of which William Legge (q. v.), Earl of Dartmouth, was president. It was afterward determined to remove the school to a new location, and to add to it a seminary where scholars might be trained in the classics, philosophy, and literature. Mr. Wheelock received offers of land from various towns, but finally selected Dresden (now Hanover), N. H., both because of the healthful ness of the region, and because of the large landed endowment that was proffered by John Wentworth, the royal governor. A charter was obtained from George III., through Gov. Wentworth, in which Wheelock was named as founder and president of the college, with the privilege of naming his successor, and also as a trustee. The college was named for Lord Dartmouth, though he and the other trustees of the Indian school were opposed to its establishment, and the institutions therefore remained nominally separate till 1849. In August, 1770, Wheelock removed to Hanover, which was then a wilderness, and, after directing the clearing