Timothy Dwight IV
American historian (1752-1817)
Timothy Dwight (May 14, 1752 – January 11, 1817) was an American academic and educator, a Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He was the eighth president of Yale College (1795–1817).
Early life
Timothy Dwight was born May 14, 1752, in Northampton, Massachusetts. The Dwight family had a long association with Yale College, as it was then known. Dwight's paternal grandfather, Colonel Timothy Dwight, was born on 19 October 1694 and died on April 30, 1771. His father, a merchant and farmer known as Major Timothy Dwight, was born May 27, 1726, graduated from Yale in 1744, served in the American Revolutionary War, and died June 10, 1777. His mother Mary Edwards (1734–1807) was the third daughter of theologian Jonathan Edwards. Dwight was said to have learned the alphabet at a single lesson and to have been able to read the Bible before he was four years old. He had 12 younger siblings, including journalist Theodore Dwight (1764–1846).
Dwight graduated from Yale in 1769 (when he was only 17 years old).
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q325553. VIAF identifies the subject as 22371861. The Library of Congress control number is n50028771. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1752, 1817, 1795 and 1694.
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This entry incorporates text from “Timothy Dwight IV” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.