Timothy Dwight - Revision history

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 '''Timothy Dwight''' (May 14, 1752&ndash;January 11, 1817) was an American educator, Congregationalist minister, poet, travel writer, and the eighth president of Yale College (1795&ndash;1817). His most important work, the posthumously published ''Travels in New England and New York'' (4 vols., 1821&ndash;22) is one of the earliest detailed accounts of the northeastern United States during the years 1796&ndash;1815, providing an invaluable source of information and opinion on the social, agricultural, and economic conditions in his own time.
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-'''Timothy Dwight''' (May 14, 1752&ndash;January 11, 1817) was an American educator, Congregationalist minister, poet, travel writer, and the eighth president of [[Yale College/University|Yale College]] (1795&ndash;1817). His most important work, the posthumously published ''Travels in New England and New York'' (4 vols., 1821&ndash;22) is one of the earliest detailed accounts of the northeastern United States during the years 1796&ndash;1815, providing an invaluable source of information and opinion on the social, agricultural, and economic conditions in his own time.
+'''Timothy Dwight''' (May 14, 1752&ndash;January 11, 1817) was an American educator, Congregationalist minister, poet, travel writer, and the eighth president of Yale College (1795&ndash;1817). His most important work, the posthumously published ''Travels in New England and New York'' (4 vols., 1821&ndash;22) is one of the earliest detailed accounts of the northeastern United States during the years 1796&ndash;1815, providing an invaluable source of information and opinion on the social, agricultural, and economic conditions in his own time.
 ==History==
 [[File:2183.jpg|thumb||Fig. 1, William Dunlap, ''Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) BA 1769, MA 1772'', c. 1813.]]
-A sixth-generation American and direct descendant of influential Puritan divines, Dwight was also the son of a New England farmer and held a deep commitment to agriculture and the agrarian way of life. Encouraged to read the Bible at the age of four, Dwight entered [[Yale College/University|Yale College]] at thirteen, graduated at the top of his class in 1769, and remained at the college as a graduate tutor.<ref>Peter K. Kafer, “The Making of Timothy Dwight: A Connecticut Morality Tale,” ''William and Mary Quarterly'' 47 (3rd series) (April 1990): 190&ndash;93, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/I2WZB3RU view on Zotero].</ref> In addition to studying theology and preparing for the bar, he immersed himself in reading modern literature&mdash;particularly English writers of the Augustan age&mdash;whose neoclassical style he adapted to his own poetic celebrations of America. Meeting regularly to discuss contemporary politics and literature with other [[Yale College/University|Yale]] scholars and tutors (including John Trumbull, Joel Barlow, and [[Noah Webster]]), he became a key figure in a group of intellectuals who together constituted the first American school of poetry.<ref>Colin Wells, “Connecticut Wit and Augustan Theology: John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, and the New Divinity,” ''Religion & Literature'' 34 (2002): 1&ndash;3, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5TPXX9JI view on Zotero]; Leon Howard, ''The Connecticut Wits'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TDIBG35Q view on Zotero].</ref> In 1771 Dwight composed 300 lines of heroic couplets entitled “America; Or, a Poem on the Settlement of the British Colonies” and began work on a biblical epic, ''The Conquest of Canaan,'' published in 1785 with a dedication to [[George Washington]]. Both works imbued the abundant American landscape with a sense of millennial destiny and led John Trumbull to predict, “Mr. Dwight is to be our American poet.”<ref>Howard 1943, 834, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TDIBG35Q view on Zotero].</ref>
+A sixth-generation American and direct descendant of influential Puritan divines, Dwight was also the son of a New England farmer and held a deep commitment to agriculture and the agrarian way of life. Encouraged to read the Bible at the age of four, Dwight entered Yale College at thirteen, graduated at the top of his class in 1769, and remained at the college as a graduate tutor.<ref>Peter K. Kafer, “The Making of Timothy Dwight: A Connecticut Morality Tale,” ''William and Mary Quarterly'' 47 (3rd series) (April 1990): 190&ndash;93, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/I2WZB3RU view on Zotero].</ref> In addition to studying theology and preparing for the bar, he immersed himself in reading modern literature&mdash;particularly English writers of the Augustan age&mdash;whose neoclassical style he adapted to his own poetic celebrations of America. Meeting regularly to discuss contemporary politics and literature with other Yale scholars and tutors (including John Trumbull, Joel Barlow, and [[Noah Webster]]), he became a key figure in a group of intellectuals who together constituted the first American school of poetry.<ref>Colin Wells, “Connecticut Wit and Augustan Theology: John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, and the New Divinity,” ''Religion & Literature'' 34 (2002): 1&ndash;3, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5TPXX9JI view on Zotero]; Leon Howard, ''The Connecticut Wits'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TDIBG35Q view on Zotero].</ref> In 1771 Dwight composed 300 lines of heroic couplets entitled “America; Or, a Poem on the Settlement of the British Colonies” and began work on a biblical epic, ''The Conquest of Canaan,'' published in 1785 with a dedication to [[George Washington]]. Both works imbued the abundant American landscape with a sense of millennial destiny and led John Trumbull to predict, “Mr. Dwight is to be our American poet.”<ref>Howard 1943, 834, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TDIBG35Q view on Zotero].</ref>
 Following his father’s death in 1777, Dwight returned to Northampton, Massachusetts, to manage the family’s farms while also preaching and operating a local school. From 1783 to 1795 he served as pastor of Greenfield parish in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he founded an educational academy and tended a large fruit and [[flower garden]]. Keenly interested in botany and horticulture, he was among the first to cultivate strawberries in America and carried out experiments in improving several varieties.<ref>Benjamin W. Dwight, ''The History of the Descendants of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass.'', 2 vols. (New York: John F. Trow & Son, 1874), 1:146, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/WVGGJRI3 view on Zotero]; Timothy Dwight, ''Travels; in New-England and New-York'', 4 vols. (New Haven: The Author, 1821&ndash;22), 1:43, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VHBP7TH2 view on Zotero].</ref> Recounting a visit to Dwight's home, Greenfield Hill, in September 1789, Samuel Davis (1765&ndash;1829) noted: “Dr. Dwight resides there, and commands a beautiful and extensive view of Long Island. His mansion is all neat, and his gardens are well cultivated.”<ref>He added, “His rooms are ornamented with paintings from the pencil of Mr. [William] Dunlap, his brother-in-law. Some of the subjects are from his ‘Conquest of Canaan.’” Samuel Davis, “Journal of a Tour to Connecticut in the Autumn of 1789,” ''Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society'' 11 (April 1869): 18, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/45M8HTSG view on Zotero].</ref> Greenfield Hill, which Dwight described as a “pleasant and beautiful [[eminence]],” inspired an eponymous poem (published in 1794 with a dedication to John Adams) in which he extolled the idyllic scenery and agrarian lifestyle of his village as an American utopia, contrasting the liberty and virtue of the young republic with the corruption and decadence of Europe.<ref>Gamble 2007, 13&ndash;35; Larry Kutchen, “Timothy Dwight’s Anglo-American Georgic: Greenfield Hill and the Rise of United States Imperialism,” ''Studies in the Literary Imagination'' 33 (2000): 109&ndash;28, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UEBD23DM view on Zotero]; Peter M. Briggs, “Timothy Dwight ‘Composes’ a Landscape for New England,” ''American Quarterly'' 40 (1988): 365&ndash;69, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/J9CTDWUA view on Zotero].</ref>
-In 1795 Dwight returned to New Haven, having succeeded Ezra Stiles as president of [[Yale College/University|Yale College]]. As a respite from his administrative duties, he soon developed the habit of rambling through the northeastern states during the breaks between school terms. In nearly 20 years of travel, he covered an estimated 12,000 miles&mdash;on horseback, by cart, and on foot&mdash;as far north as Maine and as far west as Lake Erie.<ref>Timothy Dwight, ''Travels in New England and New York'', ed. Barbara Miller Solomon, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), 1: xxv&ndash;xxvii, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/52S4K4Z7 view on Zotero]; Kenneth Silverman, ''Timothy Dwight'' (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1969), 114, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NDXD9DZW view on Zotero].</ref> Dwight’s acutely detailed observations, recorded in notebooks and subsequently revised for publication, took the form of letters to an English gentleman and were intended as rebuttals to the inaccurate, often disparaging portraits of America penned by foreign travel writers, such as Isaac Weld, [[John Lambert]], Samuel Peters, and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt.<ref>Dwight 1821&ndash;22, 4:150&ndash;94, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/QU72U3QZ view on Zotero]; see also Silverman 1969, 116&ndash;25, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NDXD9DZW view on Zotero].</ref> America was a work in progress, Dwight acknowledged, but one that was speeding toward fruition, thanks to the unparalleled civilizing industry of New Englanders: “The efforts by which they have changed its vast forests into fruitful fields and gardens, are unparalleled, perhaps in the world. It is questionable whether mankind have [''sic''] ever seen so large a tract changed so suddenly from a [[wilderness]] into a well-inhabited and well-cultivated country.”<ref> Dwight 1821&ndash;22, 3:530, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/7D8MGMDN view on Zotero].</ref> Reflecting on the changes he had witnessed over the course of his travels, Dwight observed, “Considerable tracts I have traced through their whole progress from a desert to a garden, and have literally beheld the [[wilderness]] blossom as the rose.”<ref>Dwight 1821&ndash;22, 2:212, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MNHG9C8B view on Zotero].</ref>
+In 1795 Dwight returned to New Haven, having succeeded Ezra Stiles as president of Yale College. As a respite from his administrative duties, he soon developed the habit of rambling through the northeastern states during the breaks between school terms. In nearly 20 years of travel, he covered an estimated 12,000 miles&mdash;on horseback, by cart, and on foot&mdash;as far north as Maine and as far west as Lake Erie.<ref>Timothy Dwight, ''Travels in New England and New York'', ed. Barbara Miller Solomon, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), 1: xxv&ndash;xxvii, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/52S4K4Z7 view on Zotero]; Kenneth Silverman, ''Timothy Dwight'' (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1969), 114, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NDXD9DZW view on Zotero].</ref> Dwight’s acutely detailed observations, recorded in notebooks and subsequently revised for publication, took the form of letters to an English gentleman and were intended as rebuttals to the inaccurate, often disparaging portraits of America penned by foreign travel writers, such as Isaac Weld, John Lambert, Samuel Peters, and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt.<ref>Dwight 1821&ndash;22, 4:150&ndash;94, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/QU72U3QZ view on Zotero]; see also Silverman 1969, 116&ndash;25, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NDXD9DZW view on Zotero].</ref> America was a work in progress, Dwight acknowledged, but one that was speeding toward fruition, thanks to the unparalleled civilizing industry of New Englanders: “The efforts by which they have changed its vast forests into fruitful fields and gardens, are unparalleled, perhaps in the world. It is questionable whether mankind have [''sic''] ever seen so large a tract changed so suddenly from a [[wilderness]] into a well-inhabited and well-cultivated country.”<ref> Dwight 1821&ndash;22, 3:530, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/7D8MGMDN view on Zotero].</ref> Reflecting on the changes he had witnessed over the course of his travels, Dwight observed, “Considerable tracts I have traced through their whole progress from a desert to a garden, and have literally beheld the [[wilderness]] blossom as the rose.”<ref>Dwight 1821&ndash;22, 2:212, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MNHG9C8B view on Zotero].</ref>
 Although he was among the first to adapt [[picturesque]] aesthetics to the description of American scenery, Dwight unfailingly ascribed moral and religious significance to the orderly New England landscape, discerning fulfillment of a divine providential plan in the steady conversion of raw nature into neatly enclosed farms, gardens, and village [[green]]s that he considered “the garden of God.”<ref>Dwight’s “Virtuous Rulers a National Blessing” (1791) quoted in Jane Kamensky, “‘In These Contrasted Climes, How Chang’d the Scene’: Progress, Declension, and Balance in the Landscapes of Timothy Dwight,” ''New England Quarterly'' 63 (March 1990): 80, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/N4DDNNVM view on Zotero]. See also John S. Pipkin, “Goodness, Beauty, and the Aesthetics of Discipline in Timothy Dwight’s Landscapes,” ''Journal of Cultural Geography'' 26 (February 2009): 26&ndash;48, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XJ32E7HX view on Zotero]; Briggs 1988, 360&ndash;77, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/J9CTDWUA view on Zotero]; John F. Sears, “Timothy Dwight and the American Landscape: The Composing Eye in Dwight’s ‘Travels in New England and New York,’” ''Early American Literature'' 11 (Winter 1976/1977): 312&ndash;14, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9C4H3RTJ view on Zotero].</ref> Dwight also engaged in the emerging fields of geology, botany, ecology, and meteorology, and recorded detailed scientific observations during his travels.<ref>Kathryn Whitford and Philip Whitford, “Timothy Dwight’s Place in Eighteenth-Century American Science,” ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'' 114 (February 1970): 63&ndash;71, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8GHFM7TU view on Zotero]. </ref> He carried out minute investigations of this kind in the vicinity of New Haven during his many years of residence there, ultimately publishing ''A Statistical Account of the City of New-Haven'' (1811), whose wide-ranging topics included a list of every vegetable and fruit that grew in local [[kitchen garden]]s, the structure and materials most commonly used for [[fence|fencing]], and the types of shrubs that had failed to thrive as [[hedge]]s.<ref>Timothy Dwight, ''A Statistical Account of the City of New-Haven'' (New Haven: Timothy Dwight, 1811), 21&ndash;29, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3JNBBXX7 view on Zotero].</ref> Finding a publisher for Dwight’s voluminous ''Travels'' proved difficult, despite the efforts of his close associates Jedidiah Morse and Benjamin Silliman. It was not until after his death&mdash;and probably as a result of Dwight’s deathbed plea&mdash;that his invaluable account of post-revolutionary New England and New York was finally issued.<ref>Dwight 1969, ix, xxvii, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/52S4K4Z7 view on Zotero].</ref>
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-* Dwight, Timothy, October 14, 1796, describing [[Pleasant Hill]], MA (1821&ndash;22: 1:489&ndash;91)<ref name="Dwight_1821&ndash;22: 1"></ref>
+* Dwight, Timothy, October 14, 1796, describing Pleasant Hill, MA (1821&ndash;22: 1:489&ndash;91)<ref name="Dwight_1821&ndash;22: 1"></ref>
-:“MONDAY, October, 14th, we visited [[Pleasant Hill|Cobble Hill]]; the handsome [[seat]] of Joseph Barrell Esq. This ground, while the British continued in Boston, was a place of much notoriety as a scene of military transactions. It is now a beautiful [[plantation]]; and, considering the short period since it was begun, highly improved. . . .
+:“MONDAY, October, 14th, we visited Cobble Hill; the handsome [[seat]] of Joseph Barrell Esq. This ground, while the British continued in Boston, was a place of much notoriety as a scene of military transactions. It is now a beautiful [[plantation]]; and, considering the short period since it was begun, highly improved. . . .
 :“Boston contains one hundred and thirty-five streets, twenty-one lanes, eighteen courts, and, it is said, a few [[square]]s: although, I confess, I have never seen any thing in it, to which I should give that name. . . .

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 ==History==
-[[File:2183.jpg|thumb||Fig. 1, William Dunlap, ''Timothy Dwight'', c. 1813.]]
+[[File:2183.jpg|thumb||Fig. 1, William Dunlap, ''Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) BA 1769, MA 1772'', c. 1813.]]
 A sixth-generation American and direct descendant of influential Puritan divines, Dwight was also the son of a New England farmer and held a deep commitment to agriculture and the agrarian way of life. Encouraged to read the Bible at the age of four, Dwight entered [[Yale College/University|Yale College]] at thirteen, graduated at the top of his class in 1769, and remained at the college as a graduate tutor.<ref>Peter K. Kafer, “The Making of Timothy Dwight: A Connecticut Morality Tale,” ''William and Mary Quarterly'' 47 (3rd series) (April 1990): 190&ndash;93, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/I2WZB3RU view on Zotero].</ref> In addition to studying theology and preparing for the bar, he immersed himself in reading modern literature&mdash;particularly English writers of the Augustan age&mdash;whose neoclassical style he adapted to his own poetic celebrations of America. Meeting regularly to discuss contemporary politics and literature with other [[Yale College/University|Yale]] scholars and tutors (including John Trumbull, Joel Barlow, and [[Noah Webster]]), he became a key figure in a group of intellectuals who together constituted the first American school of poetry.<ref>Colin Wells, “Connecticut Wit and Augustan Theology: John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, and the New Divinity,” ''Religion & Literature'' 34 (2002): 1&ndash;3, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5TPXX9JI view on Zotero]; Leon Howard, ''The Connecticut Wits'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TDIBG35Q view on Zotero].</ref> In 1771 Dwight composed 300 lines of heroic couplets entitled “America; Or, a Poem on the Settlement of the British Colonies” and began work on a biblical epic, ''The Conquest of Canaan,'' published in 1785 with a dedication to [[George Washington]]. Both works imbued the abundant American landscape with a sense of millennial destiny and led John Trumbull to predict, “Mr. Dwight is to be our American poet.”<ref>Howard 1943, 834, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TDIBG35Q view on Zotero].</ref>

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 <gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">
-Image:2183.jpg|William Dunlap, ''Timothy Dwight'', c. 1813.
+Image:2183.jpg|William Dunlap, ''Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) BA 1769, MA 1772'', c. 1813.
 </gallery>

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 ==Other Resources==
 [http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50028771 Library of Congress Name Authority File]
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 ==Notes==
 <references/>
 [[Category: People|Dw]]