Ezra Stiles and Timothy Dwight

In the southeast corner of New Haven's Grove Street Cemetery are two small weather-worn headstones almost touching each other. They can be easily overlooked amid all the much larger, gaudier monuments to the dead and those of more well-known figures such as Roger Sherman, Noah Webster, and Eli Whitney. These stones mark the final resting places of Ezra Stiles and Timothy Dwight, both presidents of Yale. Stiles, who died in May 1795, was originally interred behind the Center Church on the New Haven Green. Sometime after 1797, his headstone, at least, was transferred over to the Grove Street Cemetery.¹ Dwight died in January 1817, and three days later, following a funeral service, was transported to his final resting place.² Whoever decided to inter these two Presidents of Yale next to each other may have had a puckish sense of humor or possibly the hope at some point in...