Ezra Stiles

Ezra Stiles (10 December [O.S. 29 November] 1727 – May 12, 1795) was an American educator, academic, Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He is noted as the seventh president of Yale College (1778–1795) and one of the founders of Brown University. According to religious historian Timothy L. Hall, Stiles' tenure at Yale distinguishes him as "one of the first great American college presidents."

Ezra Stiles was born on 10 December [O.S. 29 November] 1727 in North Haven, Connecticut, to Rev. Isaac Stiles and Kezia Taylor Stiles (1702–1727). His maternal grandfather, Edward Taylor had emigrated to Colonial America from Leicestershire, England, in 1668. Kezia Taylor Stiles died four days after giving birth to Ezra.

Stiles received his early education at home and matriculated at Yale College in September 1742, as one of 13 members of the college's freshman class. At Yale, he studied a liberal arts curriculum characterized by an uncertain period of transition between moribund Puritan thought and that of newer thinkers like John Locke and Isaac Newton. Stiles also studied works by Thomas Farnaby, Isaac Watts, and John Ward. According to biographer Edmund Morgan, the young Stiles read "a strange conglomeration of the first-rate and the third-rate" authors. He graduated in 1746. Stiles was conferred a perfunctory Master of Arts degree from Yale and became ordained in 1749 after further studies in theology.

From 1749 to 1755, Stiles worked as a tutor at Yale. During this period, he drifted away from Calvinism and preached to Native Americans in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In a 1762 letter, Samuel Johnson notes that the young Stiles at one point nearly became an Anglican, writing that he "was once on the point of conforming to the Church, but was dissuaded by his friends, and is become much of a Latitudinarian."

In 1753 Stiles resigned from his position as a tutor to pursue a career in law and practice at New Haven. Stiles qualified for the New Haven bar by November 13, 1753, after reading law. After two years, he returned to his service as a Congregationalist minister.

In 1768, Stiles was elected to the American Philosophical Society. In 1784, he was elected an honorary member of the Society of the Cincinnati of Connecticut, one of the first so honored, for his ardent support of the Patriot cause.

In 1752, Stiles traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, for his health. During his trip, the city's Trinity Church—the largest Anglican congregation in New England—sought Stiles to serve as its minister, offering him a salary of £200 sterling. Stiles rejected the offer and departed from the city, writing "that all his Art and Address and fine offers were ineffectual."

In 1755, the Second Congregational Church of Newport likewise sought out the young minister. In August, after serving in an interim capacity, he joined the church as for a salary of £65 Sterling. In the later months 1756, a clapboard house was constructed for Stiles on Clark Street, across from the meeting house of his congregation. Since 1972, the residence has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.