Theodore Dwight (1796-1866)

He was born at Hartford, Connecticut. He was a nephew of Timothy Dwight, President of Yale University, and a great-grandson of Jonathan Edwards, President of Princeton University. He graduated from Yale (1814) and in 1821 he published his uncle's travelogues. In 1825, he published The Northern Traveller, the second tourist guide ever printed in the United States which he regularly updated for subsequent editions until 1841. He was a founder of the American Ethnological Society and a member of the New York Colonization Society. He conversed readily in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Greek, and had a grasp of Hebrew and Arabic. He loved liberty and was a ready friend to many political exiles in America, including Mosquera, Rivera, Orestes, and most notably of all Garibaldi - he passionately believed in the unification of Italy. He was also interested in Islam and in educating Americans about Africa and the people they were capturing and enslaving. He was among those who persuaded the Prince (and slave) Ibn Said to write his autobiography to undermine claims that justified slavery in the States. In 1827, he married Eleanor, daughter of Samuel Boyd, Lawyer, of New York City. They lived in Brooklyn, New York, and had seven children.

His works included: A Journal of a Tour in Italy in the Year 1821 with a Description of Gibraltar (1821); The Northern Traveller (1825; sixth edition, 1841); First Lessons in Modern Greek (1833); The Roman Republic of 1849 (1851); History of Connecticut (1841); The Kansas War: or, the Exploits of Chivalry in the Nineteenth Century (1859)