REV. TIMOTHY DWIGHT Few families in the annals of Massachusetts and Connecticut, from the early Colonial period to the present, have been more conspicuous than the one whose name is represented by the venerable Rev. Timothy Dwight, D. D., of New Haven, late president of Yale University, and the immediate family of the first Rev. Timothy Dwight, S. T. D., LL. D., also president of Yale. Rev. Timothy Dwight, D. D., of New Haven, is a son of James and Susan (Breed) Dwight, and a descendant in the eighth generation from John Dwight, the common ancestor, it is believed, of all the Dwights in this country, who with his wife, Hannah, and two sons came from Dedham England to New England in 1634 or 1635, settling first in Watertown Massachusetts of which town he was a proprietor. He early removed to Dedham, where he was a farmer of means and an eminently useful citizen and a Christian. He was selectman for sixteen years. He died Jan. 24, 1660, and his wife, Hannah, passed away Sept. 5, 1656. From this emigrant settler Dr. Dwight's line is through Captain Timothy, Justice Nathaniel, Col. Timothy, Maj. Timothy, President Timothy and James Dwight. (II) Captain Timothy Dwight, son of John, born in England, in 1629, came to this coun-try with his father in 1634-5. He was for ten years town clerk, selectman for twenty-five years and a representative of the town in the general court in 1691-2. He was cornet of a troop in his younger years, and afterwards a captain of foot. He went out ten times against the Indians. He married (third) January 9, 1665, Anna Flint, daughter of Rev. Henry, of Braintree, Massachusetts. Captain Dwight died January 31, 1717, and his wife Anna died January 29, 1686. (III) Justice Nathaniel Dwight, son of Captain Timothy, born November 20, 1666, removed from Dedham to Hatfield, Massachusetts, at first, and afterwards (about 1695) to Northampton where he passed the remaining sixteen years of his life. He was a trader and farmer, and a justice of the peace and surveyor of land on a large scale. He married December 9, 1693. Mehitable Partridge, born August 26, 1675, daughter of Col. Samuel Partridge, of Hatfield, Massachusetts and Mehitable Crow. Justice Dwight died November 7, 1711. His wife died at Northampton, October 19, 1756. (IV) Colonel Timothy Dwight, son of Justice Nathaniel, born October 19, 1694, at Hatfield, Massachusetts, married August 16, 1716, Experience King born April 17, 1693, daughter of Lieut. John King (2), of Northampton and Mehitable Pomeroy, and lived and died in Northampton. He was a lawyer by profession. He was selectman, judge of probate and of the county court of Hampshire county, then including in it also what is now Berkshire, being some of the time its Chief Justice. He was for many years a representa-tive from the town in the legislature. He was colonel of a regiment, and in the old French war was captain of a company. He died April 30, 1771, and his wife passed away December 15, 1763. (V) Major Timothy Dwight, son of Colonel Timothy, born at Fort Dummer, Vermont, May 17, 1726 was graduated at Yale in 1744, married November 8, 1750, Mary Edwards, born April 4, 1734, daughter of Rev. Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, Massachusetts, and Sarah Pierpont. Major Dwight was graduated from Yale 'in 1744, and became a merchant of Northampton. He was selectman, 1760-74; town recorder, 1760-75; register of probate and judge of the Court of Common Pleas, 1758-74, succeeding the father in the eame position, who resigned it in 1757. He purchased a large body of land at Natchez, Mississippi in 1776, went thither and there died June 10, 1777. His wife died at Northampton, February 28, 1807. (VI) President Timothy Dwight, son of Major Timothy, born May 14, 1752, at Northampton, Massachusetts, married March 3, 1777, Mary, born April 11, 1754, daughter of Benjamin Woolsey of Dosoris, Long Island, and Esther Isaacs, of Norwalk, Connecticut. Young Dwight spent one year at Middletown, Connecticut, under Rev. Enoch Huntington, in preparation for college. He was graduated from Yale College at seventeen, and ever afterward supported himself. He taught in the Hopkins Grammar School at New Haven for two years, and was tutor in Yale, 1771-77, and during this time he went thoroughly through, for his own pleasure and profit, the Principtia of Newton; and he also pursued the study of law, with the expectation of making it his chosen profession for life. In 1774 he made an open profession of religion, and turned away his thoughts from the many brilliant inducements offered him to enter upon legal practice and political life. Mr. Dwight was among the earliest advocates of the independence of the American colonies, being in his whole mental makeup a man of progress and of patriotism, and was swayed by his ideas of what was right and best, instead of by his fears of what might come out of the effort to put them into effect. In June, 1777, he was licensed to preach, and in September following he was appointed a chaplain in the army in General Parsons' brigade, but owing to his father's death he resigned the position in March, 1779, going to Northampton to comfort and aid his mother in her great bereavement, and to provide for the maintenance of the large family cast upon his care, which he did by carrying on the farm, teaching and preaching. He was a member of the legislature of Massachusetts in 1782, and was there urged to accept a nomination for congress, but he refused to be drawn away from the church. In November, 1783, at the age of thirty-one, he entered upon a rural pastorate, accepting a call to Greenfield Hill, Fairfield county, and for twelve succeeding years performed his duties laboriously and happily. He conducted at the same time a large and prosperous coeducational school during the whole period. From Greenfield Hill Rev. Dwight was called, in 1795, at the age of forty-three, to the presidency of Yale College, as successor to Dr. Ezra Stiles, and for twenty-two years of high intellectual and spiritual activity he filled out the full measure of his capabilities of usefulness. The published works of President Dwight would fill many volumes, and his unpublished manuscript would fill as many more. He wrote his Conquest of Canaan at nineteen. His pastoral poem, Grecneld Hill (1794), in which was introduced a vivid description of the burning of Fairfield by the British in 1779, was popular. His Theology Explained and Defended in a course of one hundred and seventy-three sermons has gone through a score of editions in this country and at least one hundred abroad, and on it rests his reputation as a theologian. While chaplain in the army he wrote several stirring, patriotic songs, one of which Columbia, became a general favorite. He won great merit as a writer of sacred lyrics. He versified thirty-three of David's Psalms. No other American poet has yet written so many hymns that the church has gladly accepted as its own, and none have been written by any one in the land which have been greater favorites than some that have come from his pen. His Travels in New England and New York was pronounced by Robert Southey the most important of his works. Probably President Dwight's chief services to mankind were not so much those of a preacher as of a teacher. For forty-six years continuously, except the one and a little more of his chaplaincy in the army, he spent the united force of his great intellect and heart, girding up such of the youth of his generation, as he could reach with his influence. For twenty-one years of this period, until his death, he abounded, in every way, in the most magnanimous and untiring interest in the duties and privileges of the presidency of Yale. When he assumed control there were but one hundred and ten students; the curriculum was still narrow and pedantic; the freshmen were in bondage to the upper-class-men, and they in turn to the faculty. President Dwight abolished the primary school system and established among the class-men, and between them and the faculty, such rules as are usually observed by gentlemen in social intercourse. He introduced the study of oratory into the curriculum, and himself gave lectures on style and composition. At his death the number of students had increased to three hundred and thirteen. In his political views President Dwight was a Federalist of the Hamilton school. He received the degree of M. A. in 1772, and on taking it delivered a dissertation on the history and poetry of the Bible, which attracted much attention. He received the degree of S. T. D. from the College of New Jersey in 1787, and that of LL. D. in 1810 from Harvard. He died while president of Yale, January 11, 1817. Several of the brothers of President Dwight were men of prominence and distinction, notably Theodore Dwight, of Hartford, Conn., and New York, and Dr. Nathaniel, for a time assistant surgeon in the United States army; both born in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1764 and 1770, respectively. (VII) James Dwight, son of President Timothy, born September 1, 1784, pursued the first two years of the college course at Yale, class of 1804, and went into the hardware business with his brother Timothy, at New Haven, which he afterward carried on at Petersburg, Va., for ten years or more with success, when he removed to New York and there established the hardware firm of James & George A. Dwight. In later life he returned to the South and spent several years as a merchant in Columbus, Georgia. In 1854 he retired from all further active business to New Haven, Connecticut, where he spent the rest of his life. He joined the Presbyterian Church in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1824. His faith in God was simple and childlike. He possesed superior business qualities and unfailing energy of character at all times. He was of sanguine temperament, but quite self-distrustful in his religious experiences. On March 13, 1811, Mr. Dwight was married to Aurelia Darling, born January 11, 1788, daughter of Joseph Darling, M. D., of New Haven, and Aurelia Mills. She died September 17, 1813, and he married August 8, 1815, Susan Breed, born in Norwich, December 17, 1785, daughter of John McLaren Breed and Rebecca Walker. She died at her ancestral home in Norwich, August 29, 1851, and Mr. Dwight died at New Haven, March 24, 1863. One child was born to the first marriage, Elizabeth Smith, born July 20, 1812, married August 29, 1833, to Rensselaer Havens, of New York, and died May 30, 1848, without issue. To the second marriage were born the following children: Aurelia, born July 31, 1816, married July 15, 1846, Rev. Richard Hooker and died in New Haven. January 25, 1874, leaving one son, Thomas, born September 3, 1849, in Macon, Georgia, who was graduated at Yale in 1869, and resides in New Haven. On June 29, 1874, he married Sarah A. Bowles, daughter of the late Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, and they have had three children: Aurelia Dwight, who died January 37, 1899, in her twenty-fourth year; Richard, who was graduated from Yale in 1899; and Thomas, of the class of 1903, Yale University. Timothy, born June 20, 1820, at Norwich, died August 11, 1822. John Breed, born December 8, 1821, in Norwich, was graduated from Yale in 1840, and died October 20, 1843. Of James McLaren Breed and Timothy Dwight, sketches follow: (VIII) James McLaren Breed Dwight, son of James, born at Norwich, Connecticut August 11, 1825, was graduated from Yale in the class of 1846. He was a tutor in that institution from 1849 to 186s, and from 1854 to 1856 was a student of theology at Andover, Massachusetts, and at New Haven, Connecticut. He was graduated from Columbia College Law School in 1861, and was identified with that institution as an instructor in law from 1861 to 1866, and also was engaged in the practice of the law in New York city. For a number of years following 1869 Mr. Dwight and wife were traveling abroad. Their place of residence was later changed to New Haven. On June G. 1866, Mr. Dwight was married at Philadelphia to Cora Charlesina Talmadge, daughter of Major Charles B. Talmadge, U. S. A., and Margaret Kennedy, and one child, James McLaren, was born to them May 4, 1872, in London, England, and died on the same date. Rev. Timothy Dwight, D. D., LL. D., of New Haven, and who in 1899 resigned from the presidency of Yale University, was born Nov. 16, 1828, in Norwich, Connecticut. He was graduated from Yale College in 1849, and from 1851 to 1855 was a tutor in that institution. He studied theology at the New Haven Theological Seminary from 1850 to 1853, then spent two years (1856-58) in Germany at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He has since until his retirement been connected with the affairs of Yale University. Since 1858 he has been professor of sacred literature and N. T. Greek in Yale Theological Seminary. He was for some years one of the editors of the New Englander, and in 1870-71 he published a series of articles in it on "The True Ideal of an American University," which was afterward issued separately, and attracted much attention. He has published a translation of Godet's Commentary on John's Gospel, with additional notes, and has edited with additional notes several volumes of Meyer's Comments on the New Testament; he lias also published a volume of sermons entitled Thoughts of and for the Inner Life, also various articles on educational and other subjects. He was a member of the Committee for the Revision of the Bible from 1872 till its completion in 1885. During the foregoing years, he also preached frequently and with great acceptance in the college pulpit, as well as elsewhere in the city. In 1886 Professor Dwight was chosen the successor of Noah Porter as president of Yale, and was formally installed in the office July 1st, delivering an inaugural address which was published with an account of the ceremonies at his induction in pamphlet form. In 1903 he published "Memories of Yale Life and Men." At celebration of the Bicentennial of Yale in 1901, Dr. Dwight was president of the general bicentennial committee. He died on May 26, 1916. On December 31, 1866, Timothy Dwight was married to Jane Wakeman Skinner, daughter of Roger Sherman Skinner, of New Haven, and Mary Lockwood De Forest, and their children were: Helen Rood and Winthrop Edwards, of whom the latter graduated at Yale University in 1893. (Photo attached)
Modern History of New Haven
Illustrated Volume II New York – Chicago
pgs 346 - 351 |
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NEW HAVEN COUNTY BIOGRAPHIES pages / text are copyrighted by Elaine Kidd O'Leary & Anne Taylor-Czaplewski May 2002 |