Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/303

Rh wounded at Antietam, and died in hospital two days later. His " Life and Letters " were published by his mother, Elizabeth Amelia, daughter of Daniel Appleton White, of Salem, Mass. (Boston, 1868).— Two other brothers, Howard (1887-63) and Charles (1842). were also in the national military service during the civil war.— Thomas, physician, another grandson of Jonathan, b. in Boston, Mass., 18 Oct., 1848, spent two years at Harvard, and then entered the medical school, where he received his degree in 1867, taking the first Boylston prize by an essay on " Inter- cranial Circulation." After studying abroad for two years, he was instructor in comparative anatomy at Harvard in 1872-'8, lecturer and professor of anatomy at Bowdoin in 1873-'6, instructor in his- tology at Harvard in 1874-'88, and in the latter year succeeded Oliver Wendell Holmes as professor of anatomy. Dr. Dwight is a Roman Catholic, and the first of that faith to hold a Harvard professor- ship. In 1878 he won the prize of the Massachusetts medical society by an essay on the " Identification of the Human Skeleton." He is a member of various medical societies, and in 1880-'l was presi- dent of the Catholic union of Boston. He was an editor of the Boston " Medical and Surgical Journal " in 1878-'8. delivered a course of lectures at the Lowell institute in 1884 on the " Mechanics of Bone and Muscle," and has published "Anatomy of the Head " (Boston, 1876) ; " Frozen Sections of a Child " (New York, 1881) ; and various papers.

DWIGHT, Timothy, educator, b. in Northamp- ton, Mass., 14 May, 1752 ; d. in New Haven, Conn., 11 Jan., 1817. He was the great-grandson of Na- thaniel, who was brother to Capt. Henry Dwight, of Hatfield (see Dwight, Joseph). His father, Maj. Timothy Dwight (Yale, 1744), was a lawyer by education, and became a prosperous merchant of Northampton ; his mother was Mary, third daugh- ter of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, a lady of great mental ability and force of character. During the boy's earlier years she devoted herself to his edu- cation. At twelve he was sent to the Rev. Enoch Huntingdon's school in Middletown, where he was fitted for college, matriculating at Yale in 1765. He was gradu- ated in 1769, hav- ing but one rival in scholarship, Nathan Strong. After leaving col- lege he was prin- cipal of the Hop- kins grammar- school in New Haven for two years. In the au- tiunn of 1771 he was given the post of tutor in his alma mater, and in the same year began his ambitious epic, "The Conquest of Canaan." He was made M. A. in 1773, and on taking his degree delivered a dissertation on the "History, Eloquence, and Poetry of the Bible," which attracted much attention. While a tutor, he studied law, with the intention of adopting it as a profession ; but in 1777, there being a great dearth of chaplains in the Continental army, he was licensed to preach, and soon afterward became chaplain in Parsons's brigade, of the Connecticut line. While holding this office he wrote several stirring patriotic songs, one of which, "Columbia," became a general favorite. His father's sudden death in 1778 recalled him to the care of his widowed mother and her family, with whom he remained at Northampton, Mass., five years, tilling the farm and preaching occasionally in the neighboring churches. He also kept a day-school for both sexes, in which Joel Barlow, the poet, was a teacher; and after the capture of New Haven by the British he had under his care several of the students of Yale. In 1782 he was a member of the Massachusetts legislature, but refused a nomination to congress. Receiving a call from the church at Greenfield Hill, a beautiful rural parish in Fairfield, Conn., he removed thither in 1783 ; and shortly afterward he established an academy, which soon acquired a national reputation, students being attracted from all parts of the country and from the West Indies. In this school Dr. Dwight became the pioneer of higher education for women, assigning his female students the same advanced studies as those pursued by the boys, and earnestly advocating the practice. The College of New Jersey gave him the degree of S. T. D. in 1 787, and Harvard that of LL. D. in 1810. In 1799 he declined a call from the Dutch Reformed church at Albany. During this period he proposed and agitated, until he secured, the union of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches of New England. In 1795, on the death of Dr. Stiles, he was called to the presidency of Yale college, an office which he held until his death in 1817. On this long and successful adminstration of the affairs of Yale college Dr. Dwight's claims to distinction largely rest. When he assumed control there were but 110 students; the curriculum was still narrow and pedantic ; the freshmen were in bondage to the upper-class men, and they in turn to the faculty. President Dwight abolished the primary-school system, and established among the class-men, and between them and the faculty, such rules as are usually observed by gentlemen in social intercourse. He introduced the study of oratory into the curriculum, and himself gave lectures on style and composition. He also abolished the system of fines for petty offences. At his death the number of students had increased to 813. In politics he was a federalist of the Hamilton school, and he earnestly deprecated the introduction of French ideas of education. His published works fill thirteen large octavo volumes, and his unpublished manuscripts would fill almost as many more. While he was a tutor in college, imprudence in the use of his eyes had so weakened them that he could use them neither for study nor writing, and he was afterward obliged to employ an amanuensis very frequently. His most ambitious work was his epic, "The Conquest of Canaan." A critic, writing in the "North American Review " (vii., 847), said its author had invented a medium between absolute barbarism and modern refinement. " There is little that is really distinctive, little that is truly oriental, about any of his persons or scenes. ... It is occasionally animated, and in description sometimes picturesque and poetical." His pastoral poem, " Greenfield Hill " (1794), in which was introduced a vivid description of the burning of Fail-field by the British in 1779, was much more popular. In 1800 he revised Watts's Psalms, adding translations of his own, and a selection of hymns, both of which were adopted by the general assembly of the Presbyterian church. The best known of these is the version of the 137th Psalm, beginning. "I love thy kingdom, Lord, the house of thine abode." His