Jeremiah Day - Early Life

Early Life

Day was the son of Rev. Jeremiah and Abigail (Noble) Osborn Day, who were descendants of Robert Day, who came from Ipswich, England in 1634, settled in Newtown Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later became one of the original proprietors of Hartford, Connecticut. He was born in the parish of New Preston, Connecticut, then a part of New Milford, but since 1779, of Washington, where his father was pastor of the Congregational Church. (For biography of Jeremiah Day, Sr., see W.B. Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit, 1857, I, 688.)

One of the latter's theological pupils, David Hale, brother of Nathan, first instructed him, and later he continued his preparation for college under John Kingsbury of Waterbury, Connecticut. He entered Yale College in 1789, left because of pulmonary trouble in 1791, reentered in 1793, having taught school in the meantime, and graduated in 1795.