DWIGHT, TIMOTHY (I 7 5 7) , American divine, writer, and educationalist, was born at Northampton (Mass.), May 14, 17 5 2. His father, Timothy Dwight, a merchant, was a graduate of Yale ; his mother, Mary, was the third daughter of Jonathan Edwards. After his graduation from Yale in 1769 he taught in a grammar school at New Haven, and he was a tutor in Yale college from 1771 to 7 7 ; then, having been licensed to preach, he was a chaplain for a year in a revolutionary regiment. He inspired the troops by his sermons and by several war songs, the most famous of which is "Columbia." From 1778 until 1783 he lived at Northampton, studying, farming, preaching and dab bling in politics. From 1783 until 1795 he was pastor of the Con gregational church at Greenfield (Conn.), where he opened an academy which at once acquired a high reputation. From 1 795 un til his death at Philadelphia (Penn.), Jan. II, 1817, he was presi dent of Yale college, and by his judicious management, by his remarkable ability as a teacher, and by his force of character he won great influence and did much to raise the standard of the col lege. President Dwight was also well known as an author. In verse he wrote an ambitious epic in I 1 books, the Conquest of Canaan, virtually finished in 1774 but not published until 1785; a somewhat ponderous and solemn satire, The Triumph of Infidelity (1788) , directed against Hume, Voltaire and others; Greenfield Hill (I 794) ; and a number of minor poems and hymns. Many of his sermons were published posthumously in Theology Explained and Defended (5 vol., 9) , to which a memoir of the author by his two sons, W. T. and Sereno E. Dwight, is prefixed, and in Ser mons by Timothy Dwight (2 vols., 1828), which had a large circu lation. Probably his most important work, however, is his Travels in New England and New York (4 vols., 1821-2 2), which contains much material of value concerning social and economic New England and New York during the period His fifth son, SERENO EDWARDS DWIGHT born in Greenfield (Conn.), graduated at Yale in 1803, was a tutor there, a lawyer, a preacher and president of Hamilton college, Clinton, New York. His publications include Life and Works of Jonathan Edwards (io vol., 183o) ; The Hebrew Wife (1836) ; and Select Discourses (185I), to which was prefixed a biographical sketch by his brother, William Dwight (1795-1865), who was also succes sively a lawyer and a Congregational preacher.
President Dwight's grandson, TIMOTHY DWIGHT preacher and educationalist, was born at Norwich (Conn.), Nov. 16, 1828. Educated at Yale, Bonn and Berlin, he was professor in the Yale Divinity school from 1858 to 1886, was licensed to preach in 1861 , and from 1886 to 1899 was president of Yale, which during his administration greatly prospered. Dr. Dwight was also a member in 1872-85 of the American committee for the revision of the English Bible, was an editor from 1866 to 1874 of the Englander, which corresponded to the Yale Review; and in addi tion to his translating and editorial work he published numerous magazine articles and a collection of sermons, Thoughts of and for the Inner Life (1899).
For the elder Timothy Dwight, see W. B. Sprague's "Life of Timothy Dwight" in vol. iv., znd series, of Jared Sparks's Library of American Biography; also, "A Great College President and What He Wrote" in M. C. Tyler's Three Men of Letters (1895). For the younger Timothy Dwight, see Timothy Dwight : Memorial Addresses, issued by Yale university ; also, for a full record of his scholastic life, see his Memories of Yale Life and Men,