Education and Early Career.

Ezra Stiles was born on 29 November 1727 in North Haven, Connecticut, to Isaac Stiles, a Congregational minister, and Kezia Taylor Stiles, who died five days after giving birth to Ezra. Isaac married Esther Hooker in 1728. Ezra received his early education at home and entered Yale College in 1742 with twelve other freshmen. He studied the classical curriculum of liberal arts: classical languages, logic, rhetoric, geometry, geography, natural philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, and divinity. After graduation in 1746 he stayed at Yale to study theology to prepare for the ministry, and in 1749 he received a masters degree. In April of that year he was appointed tutor at Yale for a salary of twentythree pounds a year, and the following May he was licensed to preach by the New Haven County Association of Ministers. Stiles was hesitant to enter...