Ezra Stiles

Ezra Stiles 1727-95, American theologian and educator, b. North Haven, Conn., grad. Yale, 1746. He studied theology, was ordained in 1749, and tutored (1749-55) at Yale. Resigning from the ministry, he studied law and practiced in New Haven from 1753 to 1755, when he returned to the ministry for 22 years. He was pastor at Newport, R.I. (1755-77), and Portsmouth, N.H. (1777-78), and from 1778 until his death was president of Yale. While holding his pastorates, he studied science and European and Oriental languages and literature and corresponded with many scholars. At Yale he also was professor of ecclesiastical history and divinity and lectured on philosophy and astronomy. Stiles encouraged the sciences at Yale. Using equipment donated to the college by Benjamin Franklin, he conducted the first electrical experiments in New England. His more important writings are History of Three of the Judges of King Charles I (1794), Literary Diary (ed. by F. B. Dexter, 1901), Extracts from the Itineraries and Other Miscellanies, 1755-1794 (ed. by F. B. Dexter, 1916), and his Letters and Papers (ed. by I. M. Calder, 1933).

Bibliography: See biographies by his son-in-law, Abiel Holmes (1798), and E. S. Morgan (1962); F. Parsons, Six Men of Yale (1939).

Stiles, Ezra (1727–95),grandson of Edward Taylor, graduated from Yale (1746) and became a tutor at the college (1749–55). During two of these years he practiced law at New Haven, after which for 22 years he was a pastor of Congregational churches in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, returning to Yale to become its president (1778–95). He was one of the most learned Americans of his time, and his ruling passion was to be a universal scholar. He was engaged in activities that ranged from the promulgation of silk manufacture in New England to helping found Brown University, and his boundless intellectual pleasure in the acquisition of knowledge is evidenced in the posthumously published Literary Diary (3 vols., 1901), Extracts from the Itineraries and Other Miscellanies (1916), and Letters and Papers (1933), although he wrote little for publication during his lifetime. Except for a few Latin orations and some sermons, he produced only An Account of the Settlement of Bristol, Rhode Island (1785) and A History of Three of the Judges of King Charles I (1794), a study of the regicides Whalley, Dixwell, and Goffe, who had fled to New England. The Life of Ezra Stiles (1798) was written by his son‐in‐law, Abiel Holmes.