STILES, EZRA American clergyman and edu cationalist, seventh president of Yale college, was born on Nov. 29, 1727 in North Haven, a parish of New Haven (Connecticut). He graduated at Yale in 1746; was licensed to preach in 1749 and was a tutor at Yale in He also preached in 1750 to the Indians at Stockbridge, was admitted to the bar in 1753, and practised in New Haven for two years. After pastorates at Newport (R.I.) and Portsmouth (N.H.) he became in 1778 president of Yale college and professor of ecclesiastical history, becoming for a few years after 1780 professor of divinity and lecturing on many subjects. He died in New Haven on May 12, 1795. His wise administration as president made possible the speedy recovery of Yale college after the War of Independence; his intellectual and theological breadth helped to secularize and strengthen the college. He carefully kept thermometric and meteorological statistics; he imported silkworms and books on silk culture; he corresponded with many litterati; he undertook the study of Hebrew at the age of 4o and became an able scholar; in short, his hunger for knowledge was insatiable. On
Franklin's recommendation he was made a doctor of divinity by the University of Edinburgh in 1765, and he was awarded other honorary degrees in his own country. Dr. Stiles published a number of sermons, an Account of the Settlement of Bristol, Rhode Island (1785) ; and a History of Three of the Judges of King Charles I. (1794). His Literary Diary (3 vol., 1901) was edited by F. B. Dexter, who quotes largely from Dr. Stiles's Itineraries. Extracts from the Itineraries and Other Miscellanies with selections from Dr. Stiles's correspondence prepared by the same editor appeared in 1916. Both give a valuable picture of New England life and contemporary figures.
See the Life of Ezra Stiles (1798), by his daughter's husband, Abiel Holmes, the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the life by J. L. Kingsley in Jared Sparks, American Biography (ser. 2, vol. vi., 1845).