Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/618

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
594 WHEELOCK WHEELWRIGHT

deposits of bituminous coal, which is readily and cheaply obtained. The leading establishments are iron and nail mills, glass works, and founderies and machine shops. There are in the city six nail factories and two manufactories of railroad, merchant bar, and sheet iron, while within a radius of four miles are four other large iron and nail works. The spike mills produce annually 60,000 kegs for railroad and boat building. The Superior foundery and machine works, covering 2½ acres, produce castings of all kinds, rolling mill, steamboat, and blast furnace engines, and mowing and reaping machines. There are six extensive glass factories. There are a national bank, with a capital of $200,000, and several state banks, with $1,400,000 capital. Each ward has a free public school, in which both English and German are taught. The Wheeling female college is on the highest ground in Centre Wheeling. About 2 m. from the city is the convent Mt. de Chantal, a school for girls. In the city is St. Joseph's academy for males, adjoining the cathedral. The Wheeling library association has a reading room and a library of 5,000 volumes. There are three daily and five weekly (one German) newspapers, and 21 churches.—Wheeling was settled in 1774, and incorporated in 1806. It became the county seat in 1797. It was the seat of government of West Virginia from the organization of the state till 1870, when the capital was removed to Charleston. In 1875 the state government was reëstablished at Wheeling.

WHEELOCK. I. Eleazar, an American clergyman, the founder and first president of Dartmouth college, born in Windham, Conn., April 22, 1711, died in Hanover, N. H., April 24, 1779. He graduated at Yale college in 1733, and from 1735 to 1770 was pastor of the second Congregational society in Lebanon, Conn. He established a missionary school there, called “Moor's Indian charity school,” out of which grew Dartmouth college. (See Dartmouth College, and Occom, Samson.) He removed to Hanover in 1770, and presided over his new college nine years. He published a “Narrative of the Indian School” in 1762, and several continuations of it up to 1773. He received the degree of D. D. from Edinburgh university in 1767. A memoir of him, with selections from his correspondence, appeared in 1811. II. John, second president of Dartmouth college, son of the preceding, born in Lebanon, Conn., Jan. 28, 1754, died April 4, 1817. He entered Yale college in 1767, but graduated with the first class at Dartmouth in 1771, and was a tutor there from 1772 to 1776. In 1775 he was elected to the colonial assembly, and in 1777 was appointed a major in the New York forces, and soon after lieutenant colonel in the continental army. In 1778 he commanded an expedition against the Indians, and soon after he was placed on Gen. Gates's staff. Though only 25 years old at the death of his father, he was chosen to succeed him as president of the college. In 1782 the trustees sent him to Europe to procure books, money, &c., for the institution, which were lost by shipwreck off Cape Cod. An ecclesiastical controversy among the trustees occasioned his removal in 1815. In 1817 a new board of trustees restored him to office, but he died a few weeks after. He bequeathed half his large estate to Princeton theological seminary. He published “Sketches of the History of Dartmouth College” (1816).

WHEELWRIGHT, John, an American clergyman, born in Lincolnshire, England, in 1594, died in Salisbury, N.. H., Nov. 15, 1679. He was a graduate of Cambridge, and for some years a clergyman of the established church at Alford, Lincolnshire; but in 1636, being displaced by Archbishop Laud, he emigrated to Boston, and was chosen pastor of a branch church, in what is now Braintree. The celebrated Mrs. Anne Hutchinson was his sister-in-law, and he partook of her views. Differences of opinion led to personal animosities between him and Mr. Wilson, the pastor of the Boston church; and the general court in its session of 1636-'7 appointed a fast, partly to heal these dissensions. On this occasion Mr. Wheelwright preached in Boston, and for his sermon the general court pronounced him guilty of sedition and contempt, and after some months' delay he was banished from the colony. In 1638 he formed a settlement on the banks of the Piscataqua, which he called Exeter. After five years Massachusetts claimed this town, and he removed with a part of his church to Wells in the district of Maine. In 1646 he was permitted to return to Massachusetts, and settled in Hampton. In 1654 he published his “Vindication.” He went to England in 1657, but returned in 1660, and settled as pastor in Salisbury in 1662. He published Mercurius Americanus (4to, London, 1645).

WHEELWRIGHT, William, an American capitalist, born in Newburyport, Mass., in 1798, died in London, Sept. 26, 1873. When 25 years old he commanded a trading vessel on the W. coast of South America, and in 1829 established a line of sailing passenger vessels between Valparaiso and Cobija. In 1835 he planned a line of steamers on the W. coast, which resulted in the foundation in 1838 of the Pacific steam navigation company, now (1876) running 54 steamers. In 1842 he suggested and afterward built a railway from Santiago to Valparaiso. In 1849-'52 he built the railway from the port of Caldera, which he created, to Copiapó, 50½ m., afterward extended to Tres Puntos. In 1855 he planned a railway from Caldera across the Andes to Rosario on the Paraná, 934 m. It was opened from Rosario to Cordoba in the Argentine Republic in 1870, and to Ensenada on the Atlantic in 1872. He also constructed the first telegraph line and the first gas and water works in South America. He was buried at Newburyport.—See La vida y los trabajos industriales de William Wheelwright en la America del Sud, by J. B. Alberdi (Paris, 1876).