Dwight family.
Biographical notes:
The following chart shows the direct line of descent from the first Dwight to settle in America to the Ferris sisters, who donated these papers to the library. For more detailed genealogical information, see the Appendix, the Dwight Family chart in Box 5, Folder 101, and the summary in Box 4, Folder 95. Names of family members particularly well represented in this collection are in italics.
John Dwight m. Hannah (they arrived from England ca. 1635) --Timothy Dwight (1629-1717) m. Anna Flint (3rd of six wives) ----Nathaniel Dwight (1666-1711) m. (1693) Mehitable Partridge ------ Timothy Dwight (1694-1771) m. (1716) Experience King --------Timothy Dwight (1726-1777) m. Mary Edwards (1734-1807) ----------Theodore Dwight (1764-1836) m. (1792) Abigail Alsop ------------ Theodore Dwight (1796-1866) m. (1827) Ellen Boyd ---------------Augusta Moore Dwight m. Sherwood Bissell Ferris ------------------ Eleanor Augusta Ferris (b. 1872) ------------------Mary Dwight Ferris ------------------Isabel Stuart Ferris ------------------Anna Edwards Ferris m. (ca. 1900) Charles Ingalls Marvin
Timothy Dwight (1694-1771) was the son of Nathaniel Dwight (1666-1711) of Northampton, Massachusetts. As an officer in the Massachusetts Militia, he built and commanded Fort Dummer during the Indian conflict known as Dummer's War, circa 1723-26. He rose in rank from Lieutenant in 1724 to Colonel by the 1740s, by which time he had moved from Fort Dummer back to Northampton, and become a lawyer and surveyor. In the 1750s he served as Judge of Probate for Hampshire County, Massachusetts.
His only son, Timothy Dwight (1726-1777), was born at Fort Dummer. Like his father, the younger Timothy Dwight served in the Massachusetts Militia. He married Mary Edwards, daughter of the theologian Jonathan Edwards, and lived in Northampton for most of his life. He remained loyal to the Crown during the American Revolution and died in Natchez, Mississippi.
Theodore Dwight, Sr. (1764-1846), son of Timothy Dwight (1726-1834) and brother of Yale President Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), was born in Northampton but lived for most of his adult life in Hartford, Connecticut, and New York City. He was a lawyer, newspaper editor, member of the Connecticut State Council, and a member of Congress in 1806-07. He served as Secretary of the Hartford Convention in 1814, and wrote a history of that event.
His son, Theodore Dwight, Jr. (1796-1866), born in Hartford, was an author and educator. He graduated from Yale College in 1814, and studied theology with his uncle, Yale President Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), but never became a minister. On his first trip to Italy in 1820, he established a lasting friendship with the revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose autobiography he translated for publication in 1859. After marrying Ellen Boyd in 1827, he settled in Brooklyn, New York, where he worked for his father as an editorial assistant, and wrote many books and articles on education, travel, history, linguistics, and ethnography. He was involved in several scholarly and philanthropic societies, and was an active promoter of the settlement of Kansas as a Free State in the 1850s. (For a more detailed biography, see Box 4, Folder 85.)
Eleanor Augusta Ferris (b. 1872) was Theodore Dwight, Jr.'s granddaughter. She edited a periodical called "The Villager," begun in 1929 and published by the Bronxville Women's Club, of Bronxville, New York, where she lived with her sisters Mary and Isabel. Her own short stories also appeared in "The Villager." Among her many literary friends were John and Ada Galsworthy, whom she met circa 1920; she maintained a correspondence with Ada Galsworthy throughout the rest of her life.
From the guide to the Dwight and Ferris family papers, 1711-1951 (inclusive), (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
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Subjects:
- Abenaki Indians
Occupations:
Places:
- Vermont (as recorded)
- Massachusetts (as recorded)
- Fort Dummer (Vt.) (as recorded)
- New Hampshire Grants. (as recorded)
