Dwight, Timothy
educator, clergyman, college president, author, was born May 14, 1752, in Northampton, Mass. He was a congregational clergyman who was a very prominent figure in the early history of the republic, and as president of Yale college, 1795-1817, of great influence as an educator as well. His most important work is Theology Explained and Defended in a Course of One Hundred and Seventy-three Sermons, which has gone into more than one hundred editions.
Other prose works are Genuineness and Authenticity of the Old Testament; Observations on Language; Essay on Light; Travels in New England and New York, which still furnishes entertaining reading.
His writings in verse include The Conquest of Canaan, a very ponderous epic; Greenfield Hill, a pastoral; and The Triumph of Infidelity, a satire. He died Jan. 11, 1817, in New Haven, Conn.