Theodore Dwight (author)


Theodore Dwight, was an American author.

Life

Theodore Dwight was born on March 3, 1796, in Hartford, Connecticut. His father was Theodore Dwight of the New England Dwight family. His mother was Abigail Alsop, the sister of Richard Alsop. He graduated from Yale College in 1814.
He compiled the travelogues of his uncle, Timothy Dwight IV, previously president of Yale, which he brought to publication in 1821. In 1825, he published the second tourist guidebook in the United States, The Northern Traveller, which he updated with regular editions until 1841. A commentator on American society, he wrote a number of works on child rearing and school reform and, in the 1850s and 1860s, passionately advocated for the cause of Garibaldi and the unification of Italy.
He married Eleanor Boyd on April 24, 1827. Their children were:
  1. Maria Bayard Dwight
  2. Ellen Boyd Dwight, married Captain Charles C. H. Kennedy, who served in the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War
  3. Theodore Dwight III
  4. Mary Alsop Dwight
  5. Anna Maria Dwight, ran a girls' school with sister Mary
  6. Augusta Moore Dwight, married Sherwood Bissel Ferris
  7. Rebecca Jaffray Dwight, married Fenton Rockwell and had one child Benjamin Fenton Rockwell on December 17, 1868
He died on October 16, 1866, in Brooklyn, New York, from injuries in a train accident while traveling to Newark, New Jersey.
After accompanying his daughter and two grandchildren, he had jumped off the train as it left the station.

Publications

A Journal of a Tour in Italy in the Year 1821 with a Description of Gibraltar The Northern Traveller First Lessons in Modern Greek The Roman Republic of 1849 History of Connecticut The Kansas War: or, the Exploits of Chivalry in the Nineteenth Century Dwight's American Penny Magazine, and Family Newspaper, later Dwight's American Magazine, and Family Newspaper, weekly, from February 8, 1845, to at least vol. 3, no. 52, December 25, 1847.