A Cornell connection in my DNA

Little did I know when I stepped onto the Hilltop for the first time as an incoming student in the fall of 1972, that I had a connection to Cornell’s first years as an educational institution. It wasn’t until over 40 years later upon my retirement from teaching that I discovered this unique tie.

That summer after retirement was the beginning of my passion for genealogy research, history, and writing. Anyone who does genealogy research knows what a “high” it is to discover some fascinating nugget about one of your ancestors. It certainly adds fuel to the addiction!

While working on one family line, I turned my attention to the oldest son and immediately found many online references to his accomplishments. Imagine sitting at your computer for hours, skipping from one source to another in search of details, when up pops something that catches your eye and you say to yourself, “What?” Time slows down as you read the passage again, and you experience the joy of having unearthed that gold nugget, like a miner after hours and days of slogging, asking yourself, “Why am I doing this? Is it worth it?”  

Now let’s step back in time to a momentous November day in 1853 when the Iowa Conference Seminary came into being with the completion of “Old Sem,” the vision of George Bryant Bowman. That day a procession through Mount Vernon took place: Some 100 students processed in rows climbing the Hilltop to their new home. Joining them were townspeople and the instructors who made up the first faculty. The languages taught were French, Greek, and Latin; the professor was my 2nd great-granduncle, David Hilton Wheeler.

Wheeler attended and then graduated from Rock River Seminary in Mount Morris, Illinois, then taught there until 1853 with Samuel Fellows, Cornell’s first president. It was at this time he got the call to come to Cornell. In the earliest days of the college in 1853, Wheeler had been involved in the formation of the first Greek Literary Society called Amphictyon. Professors like Fellows and Wheeler, who always took part in the debates, played an important mentoring role. Subjects relating to slavery occurred frequently early in the society’s history. 

Wheeler had a varied and illustrious career, leaving and then returning to Cornell as Professor of Greek Language and Literature from 1857-1861. During the 1860 presidential campaign, public education was a core platform of the Republican party, and Wheeler was a fierce advocate for it as he campaigned for Abraham Lincoln in Iowa. For this service he was rewarded with an appointment in July 1861 as U. S. Consul at Genoa, Italy. In 1867 at age 38, Wheeler joined the faculty of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, as a professor of English literature and history. In 1883 he was hired as the seventh president of Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He was as highly regarded with the students and faculty at Allegheny as he had been with those at Northwestern. Lauded as a powerful teacher and preacher, his classes were crowded because of his popularity. He remained at the helm until 1893. He died in 1902 at age 72.

Cornell College was fortunate to have men such as George Bowman, Samuel Fellows, and David Hilton Wheeler as its founders and leaders. Over the past 160 plus years, hundreds of talented and dedicated professors like Wheeler have inspired and cultivated generations of students who have made significant contributions in myriad ways all over the world. I think we can all recall those teachers who impacted our lives as much as Wheeler did the lives of his students.

I can picture David Wheeler, in a classroom on a hilltop long ago, supplying words of wisdom to his students from the great Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”