At twenty-two, General Washington
appointed him a chaplain in the army, and personally requested that he
accept. His widow received $350 a year pension because of this service.
He was a member of the Massachusetts legislature and secured an
important grant to Harvard university. He was offered a professorship
at Harvard and could have gone to Congress without opposition, but
he declined both, and at thirty-two accepted a country pastorate at
Greenfield Hill, Connecticut. He remained there twenty-two years. His
salary was $750. He also had a gift of $1,500 for accepting the call,
a parish lot of six acres, and twenty cords of wood annually. This was
said to be the largest ministerial salary in New England. At forty-three
he was called from the country parish to the presidency of Yale. His
salary as president was $334. Later he had $500, from which he paid $150
for two amanuenses which he required because his sight had failed him.
He published fourteen important works. He was largely instrumental in
organizing the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions; the
American Missionary Society and the American Bible Society. To him is
largely due the establishment of theological seminaries in the country.
For forty-six years he taught every year either in a public or private
school or college, and all but one year of that time he preached every
week and almost invariably he prepared a new sermon. When he died, from
a cancer at sixty-five, the children insisted that the estate should be
for the mother during her lifetime, and when she died there was found
to be $26,000 although his salary had always been ridiculously small.

The eight children were all boys, and all but one grew to manhood.
Timothy was a hardware merchant in New Haven and New York for more
than forty years. He endowed the "Dwight Professorship of Didactic
Theology in Yale," which was named for him. There were nine children,
grandchildren of President Dwight by his eldest son. Of these the
eldest, also Timothy, was the leading paper manufacturer in the trust
mill headquarters at Chicago, and his six children were enterprising and
successful business men in Illinois and Wisconsin. John William Dwight
was one of the leading manufacturers of chemicals in Connecticut. Edward
Strong Dwight, of Yale, 1838, and of Theological Seminary, Yale, was for
many years a trustee of Amherst and a prominent clergyman. J.H. Lyman,
M.D., and Edward Huntington Lyman, M.D., w