abstractSimon writes that she is glad her daughter Sarah has succeeded at
Wheelock’s school, and hopes her young son does as well. She also offers to send
another
daughter and another son.
handwritingHandwriting varies in size and wanders somewhat. However,
it is largely legible. When the handwriting is compared with that of manuscript
767559, which is signed Sarah Simon but appears to have been written by Edward
Deake, it seems probable that this is Simon's actual hand.
paperLarge single sheet is in good condition, with light staining,
creasing and wear.
inkBrown ink is heavily faded.
noteworthyThere is a pencil mark near the the trailer on one verso.
The trailer is in an unknown hand.
Modernized Version
Deletions removed; additions added in;
modern spelling and capitalization added; unfamiliar abbreviations expanded.
These
few Lines are to let you know that I am well
at present — and I hope
these
will find you in the same
condition
I underStand that my daughter gives
Mr. Wheelock
great
satisfaction
for which I am Glad and greatly
rejoice
and the Lord Reward you for your pains
and labor – for I Never Shall be able
to Reward you for it for I Cannot be thankful
enough for these
privileges —
I have Sent my little Son up to you take him to your Self
and keep him in subjection
keep him as Long as you please
until you think that he Shall be capable of business and if you want a girl I have one about fourteen
years of age 3d day of next
month I Should be Glad if you would take
her upon the Same ConSideration and if you conclude to
[illegible][guess: keep
]
her I Should take it as a great favor if you would Send me word as Soon as you Can
My Son Manuel
desire to be received
Into your Charity
School
for the design
he has for learning is because he believes that he is called to be a public man So he thinks
learning to be necessary — and So no more
at present — Give my most
humble
regards to all your family
and So I Remain your humble
servant
Sarah Simon[gap: tear]
Moor’s Indian Charity School was a grammar school for Native Americans
that Eleazar Wheelock opened in North Lebanon, Connecticut in 1754. The
school was named for Colonel Joshua Moor, also spelled More, who donated
the land and school building. Moor’s was essentially an expansion of the
grammar school that Wheelock opened in 1743 to support himself during
the fallout from the First Great Awakening, when Wheelock, who'd
participated in itinerant ministry during the Awakening, had his salary
confiscated by the colony of Connecticut. In December of that year,
Samson Occom asked Wheelock to teach him as well. Wheelock's work with
Occom was so successful that Wheelock decided to replicate the
experiment with other Native American boys. He accepted his first Indian
students in 1754, and in 1761 began taking female students as well.
Wheelock believed that in time, his school would become just one part of
a larger missionary enterprise. He planned to send his Anglo American
and Native American students to various tribes as missionaries and
schoolmasters, with explicit instructions to pick out the best students
and send them back to Moor’s to continue the cycle. His ultimate goal
was to turn his school into a model Christian Indian town that would
include farms, a college, and vocational training. However, Wheelock’s
grand design did not survive the decade. Wheelock lost the vast majority
of his Native American students; he fought with many of the best,
including Samson Occom, Joseph Johnson, David Fowler, and Hezekiah
Calvin, and other former and current students accused him of subjecting
Native Americans to disproportionate amounts of manual labor. In 1769,
perhaps due to concerns about corporal punishment, the Oneida withdrew
all their children from Moor’s. When Wheelock relocated to Hanover in
1769, only two Native American students came with him, and it became
clear that Wheelock’s focus was on Dartmouth and that Dartmouth was for
white students. After Wheelock’s death in 1779, Moor’s Indian Charity
School receded further into the background as John Wheelock, his
father’s reluctant successor, stopped taking Indian students. Some
Native American students were enrolled in Moor’s until 1850, when the
school unofficially closed.
Charlestown is located in Washington County in southwestern
Rhode Island along the Block Island sound. For thousands of years before
European settlement, the area was inhabited by Native Americans who lived by
hunting, fishing and agriculture. When the English dissenter, Roger Williams,
fled Massachusetts Bay in 1636 and stepped ashore in what would become the
Plantation of Providence, he was welcomed by Canonicus, sachem of the
Narragansett Indians. From Canonicus, Williams purchased a large tract of land
that included the settlement of Misquamicut, which would become the site of an
English settlement named Charlestown after King Charles II. It was incorporated
in 1783. After the Great Swamp Fight in which the United Colonies massacred
many Narragansetts — and hunted down and killed or enslaved those who escaped —
500 survivors (from a pre-war population of 5,000) signed a 1682 peace treaty
and received permission to join with the Eastern Niantic tribe, which had
remained neutral throughout the war and had a small reservation near
Charlestown. Settlers continued to acquire land from the Naragansetts, and by
1880, the tribe ceased to exist as a legal entity. A portion of tribal lands
were returned to Narragansett ownership in 1978 by the courts and state
legislation, and the tribe was officially recognized in 1983. Charlestown is
the present-day headquarters of the Narragansett Tribe and the location of
their reservation.
Lebanon Crank was the name of an area in the northwest part
of the town of Lebanon, Connecticut, on both sides of the Hop River, which was
created by the Connecticut legislature in 1716, in response to the demand of
residents who did not want to travel to the First Church in Lebanon proper for
services. It was also known as Lebanon North Parish and the Second Society or
Second Church in Lebanon, names that refer to religious organizations of the
Congregational Church. The two dozen families who started the parish built
their first meetinghouse near the site of the present structure, around which
the religious and political life of the community revolved. Eleazar Wheelock
served as minister in this parish from 1735 to 1769, and his house, built
around 1735, is the oldest building still standing. Lebanon Crank played a
major role in his life. It was his base of operations when he became an
itinerant mininster during the religious awakenings of the 1730s and 1740s, and
he presided over a revival in the Second Church in 1740. His Indian Charity
school was located nearby in Lebanon, and his students attended the Second
Church in Lebanon Crank as part of their education. The parish was so invested
in Wheelock's School that they tried to keep him from moving it up to New
Hampshire when he founded Dartmouth College, but failed. Lebanon Crank was
subsequently renamed Columbia and established as a separate town in May
1804.
Mrs. Sarah Simon is the matriarch of the Narragansett
Simon family, which included herself, Miss Sarah Simon, James Simon,
Abraham Simon, Daniel Simon, and Emmanual Simon. All five children
(there was at least one other) were educated at Moor's, to some degree.
The Simon family spells their name Simon, but Wheelock and others vary
it. She sent five children to Wheelock. Although Miss Sarah wrote that
Mrs. Sarah was ill in 1769, missionary records indicate that Mrs. Sarah
survived until at least 1773.
Eleazar Wheelock was a New Light Congregationalist
minister who founded Dartmouth College. He was born into a very typical
Congregationalist family, and began studying at Yale in 1729, where he
fell in with the emerging New Light clique. The evangelical network that
he built in college propelled him to fame as an itinerant minister
during the First Great Awakening and gave him many of the contacts that
he later drew on to support his charity school for Native Americans.
Wheelock’s time as an itinerant minister indirectly brought about his
charity school. When the Colony of Connecticut retroactively punished
itinerant preaching in 1743, Wheelock was among those who lost his
salary. Thus, in 1743, he began operating a grammar school to support
himself. He was joined that December by Samson Occom, a Mohegan Indian,
who sought out an education in hopes of becoming a teacher among his
people. Occom’s academic success inspired Wheelock to train Native
Americans as missionaries. To that end, he opened Moor’s Indian Charity
School in 1754 (where he continued to train Anglo-American students who
paid their own way as well as students who functionally indentured
themselves to Wheelock as missionaries in exchange for an education).
Between 1754 and 1769, when he relocated to New Hampshire, Wheelock
trained approximately 60 male and female Native American students from
nearby Algonquian tribes and from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of
central New York. At the same time, he navigated the complicated
politics of missionary societies by setting up his own board of the
Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, although he
continued to feud with the Boston Board of the SSPCK and the London
Commissioners in Boston (more colloquially called the New England
Company). By the late 1760s, Wheelock had become disillusioned with the
idea of Native American education. He was increasingly convinced that
educating Native Americans was futile (several of his students had
failed to conform to his confusing and contradictory standards), and, in
late 1768, he lost his connection to the Haudenosaunee. With his
inclination and ability to sponsor Native American missionaries largely
depleted, Wheelock sought instead to fulfill his ultimate ambition of
obtaining a charter and opening a college, which he did in 1769. To fund
this new enterprise, Wheelock drew on the £12,000 that Samson Occom had
raised for Moor’s Indian Charity School during a two-and-a-half year
tour of Great Britain (1765 to 1768). Much of this money went towards
clearing land and erecting buildings in New Hampshire for the Charity
School’s relocation — infrastructure that also happened to benefit
Dartmouth. Many of Wheelock’s contemporaries were outraged by what they
saw as misuse of the money, as it was clear that Dartmouth College was
not intended for Indians and that Moor’s had become a side project.
Although Wheelock tried to maintain at least some commitment to Native
American education by recruiting students from Canadian communities, the
move did a great deal of damage to his public image. The last decade of
Wheelock’s life was not easy. In addition to the problems of trying to
set up a college far away from any Anglo-American urban center, Wheelock
experienced the loss of relationships with two of his most famous and
successful students, Samson Occom and Samuel Kirkland (an Anglo-American
protégé). He also went into debt for Dartmouth College, especially after
the fund raised in Britain was exhausted.
Miss Sarah Simon was a member of the Narragansett
Simon family: Mrs. Sarah Simon, Miss Sarah Simon, James Simon, Abraham
Simon, Daniel Simon, and Emmanual Simon. All five children (there was at
least one other) were educated at Moor's, to some degree. The Simon
family spells their name Simon, but Wheelock and others vary it. Miss
Sarah was one of Wheelock's female students, and wrote a spiritually
troubled letter to him before departing (769900.1).
Part of the Simon family: Mrs. Sarah Simon, Miss Sarah
Simon, James Simon, Abraham Simon, Daniel Simon, James Simon, and
Emmanual Simon. All five children (there was at least one other) were
educated at Moor's, to some degree. The Simon family spells their name
Simon, but Wheelock and others vary it. James Simon served in
Revolution.
Part of the Simon family: Mrs. Sarah Simon, Miss Sarah
Simon, James Simon, Abraham Simon, Daniel Simon, James Simon, and
Emmanuel Simon. All five children (there was at least one other) were
educated at Moor's, to some degree. The Simon family spells their name
Simon, but Wheelock and others vary it. Emmanuel eventually enlisted in
the Revolution.