Timothy Dwight

Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), an American Congregational minister, was president of Yale College and New England's leading religious politician.

Timothy Dwight was born in Northhampton, Mass., into one of New England's most extraordinary families on May 14, 1752. His maternal grandfather was the famed theologian Jonathan Edwards. His mother, a woman of great intellect, educated him according to her own ideas. A child prodigy, Timothy was ready for college at 8, but Yale did not enroll him until he was 13. Studying 14 hours a day, he earned highest honors at graduation in 1769 but also developed an eye ailment that plagued him all his life.

Dwight assumed the headship of the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Conn., for 2 years before returning to Yale as a tutor. There he joined the brilliant "Connecticut Wits," John Trumbull and Joseph Howe, who were patriotic belles-lettrists ambitious to make America "the first in letters as the first in arms." When Yale's aging president was forced to resign in 1777, Dwight, only 25, was pushed by some for the presidency. But the Yale Corporation had other opinions of the witty young man and called for his resignation instead. Before he left, Dwight married Mary Woolsey on March 3, 1777.

The following October the U.S. Congress appointed Dwight chaplain of the Connecticut Continental Brigade. A year later, on his father's death, he returned to his family in Northampton. He spent 5 vigorous years running two farms, preaching, sitting in the Massachusetts Legislature in 1781 and 1782, and founding a coeducational academy in 1779 to teach modern subjects as well as Latin and Greek. He left the school for the pulpit of Greenfield Hill, Conn., on July 20, 1783, where he established another school.

Dwight's journalistic assault against Yale started in 1783 in the Connecticut Courant; he used the pen name Parnassus. But when Yale's president Ezra Stiles prevented any legislative "intermeddling in college affairs," Dwight returned to the writing that had earned him prominence among the Connecticut Wits. The Conquest of Canaan, written earlier but published in 1785, was the first epic poem produced in America.

On June 25, 1795, Dwight accepted the presidency of Yale, a few weeks after the death of Stiles. For almost 22 years "Pope Dwight" (as the unregenerate called him) administered the college with great ability, ushering it into its modern era. No scholar himself, he had the vision to appoint men who were or would become scholars, and he allowed greater faculty participation in college government, traditionally the monopoly of the Yale Corporation and the president. Student relations were significantly improved, though Dwight held autocratic sway. Besides administering an exuberant college and giving counsel of weight in the affairs of state to visiting dignitaries, he taught the moral philosophy course to the seniors, supplied the college pulpit twice a Sabbath, and served as professor of divinity.

On Jan. 11, 1817, Dwight ceased to reign. His stormy life had personified the contradictions and strengths of New England Puritanism wedded to Federalism.

Further Reading

The definitive biography of Dwight is Charles E. Cunningham, Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817 (1942). Kenneth Silverman, Timothy Dwight (1969), is a scholarly study. See also Leon Howard, The Connecticut Wits (1943). Ralph Henry Gabriel, Religion and Learning at Yale: The Church of Christ in the College and University, 1757-1957 (1958), contains a chapter on Dwight and American Protestantism.

Additional Sources

Cuningham, Charles E., Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817: a biography, New York: AMS Press, 1976.

Wenzke, Annabelle S., Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1989. □

Dwight, Timothy (1752–1817),born in Massachusetts, was a grandson of Jonathan Edwards and brother of Theodore Dwight. He showed precocious brilliance by entering Yale at the age of 13, and as a tutor there (1771–77) worked and studied so excessively that he precipitated a physical breakdown. To recuperate, he turned to an equally disproportionate amount of hiking and horseback trips, and his observations furnished much of the material for his later Travels in New England and New York (4 vols., 1821–22). His literary interests at Yale and his attempts with John Trumbull to introduce contemporary English literature into the curriculum may be considered the genesis of the Connecticut Wits. After a brief period as an army chaplain and in local politics, he became pastor (1783–95) of the Congregational church at Greenfield Hill, Conn. Preacher, author, community leader, and proprietor of a coeducational school, Dwight established himself as a leading Calvinist and stalwart Federalist. His literary reputation as a leader of the Wits was based mainly on his poems, The Conquest of Canaan (1785), Greenfield Hill (1794), and The Triumph of Infidelity (1788). His staunch belief in theocracy and Federalism appears in such works as The True Means of Establishing Public Happiness (1795), The Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy (1798), and The Duty of Americans, at the Present Crisis (1798). As guardian of public morality, he wrote and preached on many subjects, including even a sermon on the Folly, Guilt, and Mischiefs of Dueling (1805), following the duel between his cousin Burr and Hamilton. He was president of Yale (1795–1817), where, despite his narrow political, social, and religious views, he proved a great teacher and college leader. The beginnings of Yale's modern importance are attributed to his enlargement of the curriculum and employment of prominent scholars. His series of 173 sermons delivered at Yale, Theology, Explained and Defended (5 vols., 1818–19), is a complete exposition of his theological system. His Travels is his most famous prose work, a thorough record of scenery, history, social and religious conditions, and statistical information. The best known of his short poems is the patriotic song, Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise.

Timothy Dwight 1752–1817, American clergyman, author, educator, b. Northampton, Mass., grad. Yale, 1769. He renounced legal for theological studies and after 1783 was pastor for 12 years of a Congregational church at Greenfield Hill, Conn. During his pastorate he became famous throughout New England for his preaching and for the excellent private school he established near his church. One of the leaders of the Connecticut Wits , he tried to modernize the curriculum at Yale. At the death of Ezra Stiles, Dwight was named president of Yale, and from 1795 to 1817 he presided over the college. A great leader and teacher in his day and a strong believer in theocracy and Federalism, he vigorously opposed the rising Republicanism of Connecticut and the nation. His theology owed much to that of his grandfather, Jonathan Edwards .

Bibliography: See his Theology, Explained and Defended (5 vol., 1818–19) and Conquest of Canäan (1788, repr. 1970); biographies by C. E. Cunningham (1942) and K. Silverman (1969).

Timothy Dwight 1828–1916, American educator, b. Norwich, Conn., grad. Yale, 1849; grandson of Timothy Dwight (1752–1817). Appointed professor of sacred literature at Yale, he assisted in the reorganization of the divinity school, edited the New Englander (1866–74), and served on the American committee on the revision of the Bible (1873–85). In 1886 he succeeded Noah Porter as president of Yale. He expanded the institution, securing the legislative charter that authorized the title university instead of college, and retired in 1898. He is the author of Thoughts of and for the Inner Life (1899) and Memories of Yale Life and Men (1903).

Bibliography: See F. Parsons, Six Men of Yale (1936, repr. 1971).