Rauner Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library

Biographical Sketch (from the Connecticut Historical Society)

Samson Occom of the Mohegan tribe was born in 1723 at Mohegan, Connecticut. At age sixteen he was deeply influenced by the preaching of the Reverend James Davenport, an evangelist of the "Great Awakening." Occom subsequently adopted the Christian religion, and from 1743 until 1747 was a pupil of the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock of Lebanon, Connecticut. In 1749 Occom became schoolmaster and minister to the Montauk tribe on eastern Long Island. He was supported in this work by the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and received a salary of £20 per annum. He also worked as cooper, fisherman, farmer and bookbinder to supplement this income.

Occom's evangelizing received a great deal of attention, and despite his lack of formal theological training -- he had not gone to college on account of his poor eyesight -- he was ordained by the Presbytery of Long Island in 1759. In 1761 and again in 1763 Occom went to preach among the Oneida tribe in New York under the instruction of Eleazar Wheelock. In 1764 he returned with his wife, Mary, from Long Island to settle in Mohegan. At the end of 1765 he and the Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker of Norwich, Connecticut undertook a journey to England to raise funds for Wheelock's Indian Charity School. By their return to the Connecticut Colony in 1768 the party, with the backing of George Whitefield and the Second Earl of Dartmouth, had secured £12,000 for the new school.

Occom was encouraged by Wheelock to undertake missionary work among the Iroquois, but after a disagreement over Wheelock's plan to use the Indian Charity School funds to establish what was to become Dartmouth College, Occom preached alone, itinerant, and poor among the various tribes of New England. In 1773 Occom formed a plan to establish a land grant from the Oneida to set aside a tract of land for American Indian habitation. Interrupted by the Revolutionary Wars, Brothertown was formally established in 1785. Occom and his family later moved from his native Connecticut to live in Brothertown, where, for the remainder of his life, he would serve as as minister and advisor.

Samson Occom was married to Mary Fowler of the Monatauk tribe native to Long Island with whom he had ten children. He died in Brothertown, New York on July 14, 1792.

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