Timothy Dwight

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).

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.