David Hilton Wheeler (November 18, 1829 – June 18, 1902)[1] was a 19th-century American academic, newspaperman and college president, and also served as the US ambassador to Italy under the Lincoln administration.

[3][4] He also served for a time as editor of the town newspaper, the Carroll County Republican, and was active in working for educational reform and the formation of a union school in the community.

[1] In 1867, he returned to the United States, not wishing to raise his children overseas, and took a position as a professor of English literature at Northwestern University.

[1] Wheeler obtained his first taste of administrative grandeur when he assumed the presidency of Northwestern University on an interim basis in 1868.

[2] There he saw the college through a difficult period of internal dissension, and oversaw administrative and curricular changes that included the start of postgraduate education at Allegheny.