Columbia, Connecticut
Tolland county. Taken from Lebanon in 1800. It is 22 miles E. from Hartford and about 14 S. by E. from Tolland. Population, 1830, 962. Columbia is watered by a branch of the Willimantic, and has a satinet factory, and other operations by water. The surface is uneven; the soil hard and gravelly, but excellent for grazing. In this place, about the year 1741, the Rev. Dr. Eleazar Wheelock, the first president of Dartmouth College, opened a school for the instruction of Indian youth. He removed his family and pupils to Hanover, N.H., in the autumn of 1770. The snow was very deep, and Hanover was a wilderness. "Sometimes standing in the open air, at the head of his numerous family, Dr. Wheelock presented to God their morning and evening prayers: the surrounding forests, for the first time, reverberated the solemn sounds of supplication and praise." This good man died in 1779, aged 69.
