Woolsey, Theodore Dwight, , New York 1801 1889 Male College President Educator Scholar scholar, educator, and president of Yale College, was born in New York City, where his father, William Walton Woolsey, was a prosperous hardware merchant.
The Woolsey family moved to New Haven in 1808 for the education of two older sons, and Theodore attended the Hopkins Grammar School there, and, after the family's return to New York, a school in Hartford, where he lived with his uncle Theodore Dwight, 1764-1846 [q. v. ].
Finishing his preparation for college in Greenfield Hill, Connecticut, Woolsey entered Yale toward the close of his fifteenth year and graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1820.
After studying law for a brief period in the office of Charles Chauncey of Philadelphia, his step-mother's brother--Woolsey's mother died in 1813--he entered Princeton Theological Seminary, where he remained until 1823, when he returned to Yale as tutor and there completed his theological studies.
The first winter he spent in Paris, where he did work in Arabic; he then moved on to Germany, where he attended lectures at Leipzig, Bonn, and Berlin, devoting himself principally to the Greek language and literature; he visited England, and spent some months in Rome.
Career
He was a descendant of George Woolsey who came to New England by the way of Holland about 1623, went to New Amsterdam, and finally settled on Long Island.
Accordingly, in May 1827 he went abroad for further study.
.
With this ambition possessing him, he accepted in 1831 the professorship of the Greek language and literature in Yale College.
For the next fifteen years, however, he devoted himself chiefly to the Greek classics.
They included The Alcestis of Euripides (1834), The Antigone of Sophocles (1835), The Prometheus of 'schylus (1837), The Electra of Sophocles (1837), and The Gorgias of Plato, Chiefly According to Stallbaum's Text with Notes (1842).
"As a disciplinarian he was strict, but yet always just.
In the last two subjects he became a recognized authority at home and abroad.
His Introduction to the Study of International Law, Designed as an Aid in Teaching and in Historical Studies, which first appeared in 1860, went through several subsequent editions both in the United States and in England.
Both works are largely historical but contain many practical observations and implications.
Among his other publications were The Religion of the Present and of the Future (1871), a collection of sermons, and Helpful Thoughts for Young Men (1874); he edited, also, the third edition of On Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1874) by Francis Lieber [q. v. ], and the second edition of Lieber's Manual of Political Ethics (2 vols. , 1875).
Woolsey was tall but somewhat bent, and of slender, wiry frame.
His scholarly countenance was enlivened by eyes of remarkable brightness and penetration.
His dignity and reserve tended to keep people at a distance.
Honest and thorough himself, he despised superficiality and pretense.
Woolsey Hall at Yale was named in his honor, and numerous other memorials to his character and services have been established there.
[Family Records of the Ancestry of My Father and Mother, Charles William Woolsey and Jane Eliza Woolsey (copr.
1900); B. W. Dwight, The Hist.
of the Descendants of John Dwight of Dedham, Massachussets (1874); T. S. Woolsey, "Theodore Dwight Woolsey, " Yale Rev. , Jan. , Apr. , July 1912; F. B. Dexter, Sketch of the Hist.
of Yale Univ. (1887); G. P. Fisher, "The Academic Career of Ex-President Woolsey, " Century Mag. , Sept. 1882; Timothy Dwight, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, D. D. , LL. D. , Memorial Address (1890), and Memories of Yale Life and Men (1903); A. P. Stokes, Memorials of Eminent Yale Men, vol.
I (1914); Morning Journal and Courier (New Haven), July 2, 1889. ]
Religion
Two less ambitious treatises were his Essay on Divorce and Divorce Legislation (1869), much of which had appeared in articles published in the New Englander, and Communism and Socialism (1880), a reprint of articles contributed to the Independent, New York, of which Woolsey was one of the founders.
Personality
He was licensed to preach, but being extremely conscientious and subject to periods of acute consciousness of sin and moral responsibility that depressed him at intervals all his life, he seriously doubted his fitness to undertake the work of the ministry; furthermore, his tastes were preeminently those of the scholar.
Connections
"One thing, however, " he wrote his father, "remains in my mind unchanged, and that is an utter repugnance and a fixed decision not to engage in the work of the ministry.
By his first wife he had nine children, one of whom was Theodore Salisbury Woolsey [q. v. ]; and by the second, four.
Father:
,
Mother:
Timothy
Theodore's mother, Elizabeth, was a sister of the elder Timothy Dwight q.v., and a granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards q.v..
Sister:
Timothy
Theodore's mother, Elizabeth, was a sister of the elder Timothy Dwight q.v., and a granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards q.v..
married:
Martha
He was twice married: first, Sept. 5, 1833, to Elizabeth Martha Salisbury, who died Nov. 3, 1852; second, Sept. 6, 1854, to Sarah Sears Prichard.
step-mother:
Charles
Acquaintance:
T.
I have endeavored to gain a minute and thorough knowledge of the Greek language, and to lay a foundation for an acquaintance such as few in America possess with classical literature, in order to teach it" (T. S. Woolsey, post, p. 636).
granddaughter :
Timothy
Theodore's mother, Elizabeth, was a sister of the elder Timothy Dwight q.v., and a granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards q.v..
