Timothy Dwight IV
Timothy Dwight (May 14, 1752 – January 11, 1817) was an American academic and educator, a Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He was the eighth president of Yale College (1795–1817).[1]
Timothy Dwight IV
May 14, 1752
Northampton, Province of Massachusetts Bay
January 11, 1817 (aged 64)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Mary Woolsey
Theodore (brother)
Theodore Dwight Woolsey (nephew)
Theodore Dwight (nephew)
Timothy Dwight V (grandson)
Early life[edit]
Timothy Dwight was born May 14, 1752, in Northampton, Massachusetts.
The Dwight family had a long association with Yale College, as it was then known.
Dwight's paternal grandfather, Colonel Timothy Dwight, was born 19 October 1694, and died April 30, 1771.
His father, a merchant and farmer known as Major Timothy Dwight, was born May 27, 1726, graduated from Yale in 1744, served in the American Revolutionary War, and died June 10, 1777.[2] His mother Mary Edwards (1734–1807) was the third daughter of theologian Jonathan Edwards.
Dwight was said to have learned the alphabet at a single lesson, and to have been able to read the Bible before he was four years old.[2] He had 12 younger siblings, including journalist Theodore Dwight (1764–1846).
Dwight graduated from Yale in 1769 (when he was only 17 years old). For two years, he was rector of the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Connecticut. Dwight was a tutor at Yale College from 1771 to 1777.[2] Licensed to preach in 1777, he was appointed by Congress chaplain in General Samuel Holden Parsons's Connecticut Continental Brigade. Dwight served with distinction, inspiring the troops with his sermons and the stirring war songs he composed, the most famous of which is "Columbia".[3]
On March 3, 1777, Dwight married Mary Woolsey (1754–1854), the daughter of New York merchant and banker Benjamin Woolsey (1720–1771). This marriage connected him to some of New York's wealthiest and most influential families. Woolsey had been Dwight's father's Yale classmate, roommate, and intimate friend.
On news of his father's death in the fall of 1778, Dwight resigned his commission and returned to take charge of his family in Northampton. Besides managing the family's farms, he preached and taught, establishing a school for both sexes. During this period, he served two terms in the Massachusetts legislature.
Legacy[edit]
Dwight's 1785 poem The Conquest of Canaan is considered to be the first American epic poem.[17]
Greenfield Hill's Timothy Dwight Elementary School is named after him in Fairfield, Connecticut, as well as Timothy Dwight Park.
In the twentieth century, Yale named Timothy Dwight College for him and his grandson.[18]
In NYC, University Heights, Bronx, has PS 33, Timothy Dwight school, recently expanded.
In 2008, The Library of America selected Dwight's account of the murders of Connecticut shopkeeper William Beadle for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.