Timothy Dwight V - Biography

Biography

Dwight was born in Norwich, Connecticut, the son of James Dwight, whose father, Timothy Dwight IV, served as president of Yale College from 1795 to 1817. He was the great-grandson of Major Timothy Dwight and Mary (Edwards) Dwight, the latter's father being Rev. Jonathan Edwards, the third president of Princeton University. His mother was Susan, daughter of John McLaren Breed, by his second wife Rebecca (Walker) Breed, who was the daughter of Robert Walker, a judge of the Superior Court of Connecticut.

Timothy Dwight entered Yale in 1845, and during his undergraduate course received prizes in mathematics and Latin, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Skull and Bones. As the Clark Scholar, he spent the period from 1849 to 1851 in graduate work at Yale, in the fall of the latter year entering the Theological Department, where he studied for two years. He served as a tutor in the College from 1851 to 1855, and then went abroad to continue his studies at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin.