Timothy Dwight

Timothy Dwight was an American Congregational minister, theologian, educator, poet, and president of Yale College. Born in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1752, he graduated from Yale in 1769, served as a Yale tutor, and was a chaplain in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. In 1783 he became pastor at Greenfield Hill in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he also directed an academy. He returned to Yale as president and professor of divinity in 1795 and remained there until his death in 1817.

Dwight’s presidency coincided with major religious and educational change at Yale. He became associated with the evangelical revivals that helped shape the Second Great Awakening while also expanding the college’s academic life. His writings included the epic poem “The Conquest of Canaan,” the posthumously published “Theology Explained and Defended,” and “Travels in New England and New York.” Modern Yale-related scholarship also notes that Dwight owned at least one enslaved person, an important complication in assessing his historical legacy.

At the request of the General Association of Connecticut, Dwight revised Isaac Watts’s psalter. His Christianized third part of Psalm 137, headed “Love to the Church,” became “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord” and was first published in the 1801 edition commonly called “Dwight’s Watts.”