Can a new chain mess up wheel bearings?

I bought a bike from a guy it's a 79 with a broken chain and he said he would have to do a conversion because he couldn't find the original chain. Well after that I went to ride it home and the rear wheel started wobbling back and forth, the bearings had gone out but the guy said he rode it for like 30 miles that morning to test out the new chain. I'm about to put new bearings on it but I was wondering if it's a possibility that the new chain threw the bearings off, etc. it's a 32 year old bike and everything that went wrong with it was origianl with only 17k miles