14 Facts About Jeremiah Day

Jeremiah Day was an American academic, a Congregational minister and President of Yale College.

Day was the son of Rev Jeremiah and Abigail Osborn Day, who were descendants of Robert Day, who came from Ipswich, England in 1634, settled in Newtown Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later became one of the original proprietors of Hartford, Connecticut.

Jeremiah Day was born in the parish of New Preston, Connecticut, then a part of New Milford, but since 1779, of Washington, where his father was pastor of the Congregational Church.

Jeremiah Day entered Yale College in 1789, left because of pulmonary trouble in 1791, reentered in 1793, having taught school in the meantime, and graduated in 1795.

Two years later Jeremiah Day accepted a similar position at Yale.

On January 14,1805, Jeremiah Day married Martha, the daughter of the Hon.

Martha died in 1806 and on September 24,1811, Jeremiah Day married Olivia, daughter of Major Daniel and Olive Jones of Hartford, Connecticut.

Jeremiah Day was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1813.

For sixty-nine years Jeremiah Day was officially connected with Yale College.

In 1835, Jeremiah Day had been urged to become head of Andover Theological Seminary, but had declined.

Jeremiah Day was a man of dignity and extreme reserve.

Jeremiah Day combined serenity, self-control, modesty, and unselfishness in such a degree that all of the 2,500 students who had been under him, according to President Theodore Dwight Woolsey, would have unquestionably declared him the best man they had ever known.

In 1814, Jeremiah Day published An Introduction to Algebra, which went through many editions.

Jeremiah Day contributed numerous articles to periodicals, and published a few sermons.