The Co-op is advertising a pair of pants with the year 1763 on them.

That’s right, it’s the “Appropriation 250th Anniversary 1763 Dartmouth Banded Pant”:

New for the upcoming 2013 Dartmouth Co-op Apparel Season: Honoring the 250th Anniversary of New Hampshire Colonial Governor Benning Wentworth’s approval of a £50 appropriation and a promise of a tract of land in western New Hampshire for the purpose of Reverend Eleazar Wheelock to found a school to train missionaries for service among the native population, which would become our beloved Dartmouth College six years later. Celebrate the sestercentennial of this conception moment in Dartmouth College’s history. (Mayo, Lawrence Shaw. John Wentworth: Governor of New Hampshire, 1767-1775. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1921. 104-105. Print.)

Although it is inspiring to see catalog copy citing its sources, this explanation is bewildering. One almost suspects that the Co-op found itself stuck with a shipment of misprinted pants and had to figure out how to unload them¦

The cited source provides on page 105:

The Reverend Eleazar Wheelock of Lebanon, Connecticut, after at least one failure, succeeded in interesting the governor in his school which trained missionaries, both white and red, for service among the Indians. How much Benning Wentworth cared about civilizing the savages is a question, but he approved an appropriation of £50 for this purpose in 1763, and offered Wheelock a tract of land for his school if he should choose to move it to western New Hampshire. This was encouraging to Wheelock, but he did not at once avail himself of the latter proposition because the continuance of his work depended largely upon funds which he hoped to raise in Great Britain.

The “school which trained missionaries” was Moor’s Charity School, and the text suggests that the appropriation was meant simply to support the operation of that existing school. Benning Wentworth obviously wanted Wheelock to move the school to New Hampshire, but the 1763 gift did not establish or even support Dartmouth College any more than did the ca. 1754 gift of Colonel Joshua More/Moor (or Wheelock’s early-1740s entry into the Latin School market). See, for example, Washington & Lee University, an 1813 college that evolved from a grammar school established about 20 miles away in 1749; it uses the 1749 date without hesitation (Wikipedia).

As the text goes on to state, Lord Dartmouth kicked off the fundraising with a 1767 gift that, although directed at the charity school, actually would be used to establish the college. Benning Wentworth’s nephew John succeeded him as the colonial governor and granted the college a charter in December of 1769. On July 5, 1770, Wheelock selected Hanover as the site of the school.

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[Update 08.12.2012: Minor wording change in final paragraph.]