CHAPTER XI

THE MARY EDWARDS DWIGHT FAMILY

After studying at some length the family of the eldest son of Jonathan Edwards, it is worth while to study the family of one of the daughters. Mary, the fourth child born at Northampton (1734), was married at the age of 16 to Timothy Dwight, born in Vermont (1726) and graduated from Yale in 1744.

It is interesting to find a daughter of Jonathan Edwards marrying a Yale graduate, who "had such extreme sensibility to the beauty and sweetness of always doing right, and such a love of peace, and regarded the legal profession as so full of temptations to do wrong, in great degree and small" that he persistently refused to study law, though it had been his father's great desire. The conscientiousness of Major Dwight is well illustrated by this incident. There was a lottery in the interest of Princeton college, authorized by the legislature of New Jersey, and Dwight was sent twenty tickets for sale. He returned them, but the time required for the mail in those days was so long that they did not reach the destination until after the drawing. Major Dwight was notified that one of his twenty tickets had drawn $20,000 and all but one ticket had drawn

some prize. Major Dwight paid for the one blank ticket and would not take a cent of the large prize money. This was worthy a son-in-law of Mr. Edwards, the progenitor of a family of mighty men.

Major Dwight was a merchant in Northampton, a selectman, judge of probate for sixteen years and was for several years a member of the legislature. At the time of his death, 1778, he was possessed of 3,000 acres of valuable land in Northampton, and he willed his wife $7,050, and each of his thirteen children $1,165. At that time there were but five painted houses in Northampton and but two were carpeted. Of the fourteen children, thirteen grew up, and twelve were married; and their entire family adds greatly to the glory of the family of Jonathan Edwards. The oldest son, Dr. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale, said with much tenderness and force, "All that I am and all that I shall be, I owe to my mother." She was a woman of remarkable will power and intellectual vigor. She was but seventeen when her first child was born and was the mother of fourteen children at forty-two.

The first-born, President Timothy Dwight, S.T. D., LL.D., born 1752, was one of the most eminent of Americans. He learned his alphabet at a single sitting while a mere child, and at four knew the catechism by heart. He graduated from Yale at seventeen; taught the Hopkins school in New Haven at seventeen and eighteen; was tutor in Yale from nineteen to twenty-five years of age; wrote the "Conquest of Canada," which was reprinted in London, at

nineteen. This work was dedicated to George Washington by permission. At twenty-three, he was in the fore front of the advocates of independence. At twenty-two, General Washington appointed him a chaplain in the army, and personally requested that he accept. His widow received $350 a year pension because of this service. He was a member of the Massachusetts legislature and secured an important grant to Harvard university. He was offered a professorship at Harvard and could have gone to Congress without opposition, but he declined both, and at thirty-two accepted a country pastorate at Greenfield Hill, Connecticut. He remained there twentytwo years. His salary was $750. He also had a gift of $1,500 for accepting the call, a parish lot of six acres, and twenty cords of wood annually. This was said to be the largest ministerial salary in New England. At forty-three he was called from the country parish to the presidency of Yale. His salary as president was $334. Later he had $500, from which he paid $150 for two amanuenses which he required because his sight had failed him. He published fourteen important works. He was largely instrumental in organizing the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions; the American Missionary Society and the American Bible Society. To him is largely due the establishment of theological seminaries in the country. For forty-six years he taught every year either in a public or private school or college, and all but one year of that time he preached every week and almost invariably he prepared a new sermon.

When he died, from a cancer at sixty-five, the children insisted that the estate should be for the mother during her lifetime, and when she died there was found to be $26,000 although his salary had always been ridiculously small.

The eight children were all boys, and all but one grew to manhood. Timothy was a hardware merchant in New Haven and New York for more than forty years. He endowed the "Dwight Professorship of Didactic Theology in Yale," which was named for him. There were nine children, grandchildren of President Dwight by his eldest son. Of these the eldest, also Timothy, was the leading paper manufacturer in the trust mill headquarters at Chicago, and his six children were enterprising and successful business men in Illinois and Wisconsin. John William Dwight was one of the leading manufacturers of chemicals in Connecticut. Edward Strong Dwight, of Yale, 1838, and of Theological Seminary, Yale, was for many years a trustee of Amherst and a prominent clergyman. J. H. Lyman, M. D., and Edward Huntington Lyman, M. D., were names that added luster to the family of President Dwight. Benjamin Woolsey Dwight, M. D., another son of the President of Yale, was a graduate of Yale and treasurer of Hamilton college for nineteen years. Among his descendants are Richard Smith Dewey, M. D., of Ann Arbor, in charge of Brooklyn City Hospital; charge of military hospital at Hesse Cassel in Franco-Prussian war; assistant superintendent Illinois State Insane hospital at Elgin. Also Elliott

Anthony, of Hamilton, 1850; Chicago lawyer; city attorney; a member of the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1862 and again in 1870; founder of the Law Institute, Chicago, and for several years the president. Also Edward Woolsey Dwight, who was a leading citizen and legislator of Wisconsin.

It is impracticable to give the record of many of the distinguished members of such a family, but a brief notice of a few will give some idea of the standard of the family.

Benj. Woodbridge Dwight, Ph.D., b. 1816, g. Hamilton 1835, Yale Theological Seminary, professor in Hamilton; founded Central Presbyterian church, Joliet, Ill.; established "Dwight's High School," Brooklyn; editor-in-chief of "The Interior" of Chicago, which he owned and edited; contributor to many magazines; author of several scholarly works; had the first preparatory school which placed German on a level with Greek in importance, and founded a large preparatory boarding school at Clinton, N. Y. He was a man of rare ability, character and success.

Prof. Theodore William Dwight, LL.D., b. 1822, g. Hamilton 1840, g. Yale Law S.; professor Hamilton College sixteen years; dean of Columbia College Law S. from 1858 to 1892. James Brice of England placed him at the head of legal learning in the United States and said: "It would be worth an English student's while to cross the Atlantic to attend his course." Another eminent English lawyer, A. V. Dicey, in "Legal Education" wrote of