THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN. 255
dinarian course of out-door exercise, to which he was indebted for his subsequent vigour and health.
In the year 1774, Dwight joined the college -church. He was at that time studying for the practice of the law ; and, in 1777, he was married to Mary, the daughter of Benjamin Woolsey, of Long Island. Their family consisted of eight sons, of whom six survived their father. The same year he was licensed as a preacher, and became a chaplain in the United States army. In this capacity he laboured for the spiritual good of the soldiers. He also wrote patriotic songs. These were popular, especially one, his " Columbia." But at the end of a year, the death of his father rendered it necessary that he should leave the army, and go to the comfort and assistance of his mother. He was the eldest of thirteen children, and the circumstances of the country rendered the maintenance and care of so large a family a matter of grave difficulty and responsibility ; but Dwight did not shrink from it. Bringing his various talents to bear on the work, he, at the same time, carried on a school at Northampton, preached on Sunday to vacant congregations, and superintended the profitable cultivation of the family estate. He also represented his native town in the State Legislature, in the years 1781-2 ; and there was an intention of obtaining for him a seat in Congress, but he declined this in order to give himself to the Christian ministry.
In 1783, he became the pastor of the church at Greenfield, a parish in the town of Fairfield, in Connecticut. There he was regularly ordained, and continued his pastorate for twelve years. During that period he conducted an academy with great success, training, during the time, more than a thousand young men and women. In this way he supplemented his inadequate ministerial stipend. At the age of thirty-five, Dwight received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the college at Princeton, New Jersey. In the year 1794, he published a poem, in seven parts, called " Greenfield Hill," from the place of his residence. In it he shows that he possessed an intimate knowledge of agriculture along with his other acquirements. In the following year, he was
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