Ezra Stiles was born in North Haven, Connecticut, on November 29, 1727. He was a man who lived in the United States during the era of its foundations. Because he was able to experience first hand, the early beginnings for our country, he had extremely intense opinions about the United State and the freedoms and rights that it stood for. During his lifetime he pursued many of his interests; he was a librarian, pastor, professor, writer, and the president of Yale University, among other things. He later used his standing in the community to celebrate his views on independence, and staunchly supported the rights and liberties of the citizens of the then newly formed United States of America. Ezra Stiles valued education and religion above all. He graduated from Yale University in 1746, and was licensed to preach and tutor at Yale three years later. He became a member of the Bar Association in Connecticut in 1753, and in 1756 was the librarian of the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, where he was quite influential in obtaining works for the library.
The next year he was ordained as Pastor of the Second Congregational Church, where he was a clergyman for thirty years. He went on to be the President of Yale University from 1778 until his death in 1795. Ezra Stiles was "reputed to be the most learned scholar in New England ... He wrote the charter founding Rhode Island College (1764, later Brown University), and taught ecclesiastical history during his tenure as a secularizing president of Yale". While at Yale he also encouraged the sciences. Ezra was a good friend of Benjamin Franklin -- they corresponded while Franklin was Ambassador to France. While at Yale, Stiles engaged in electrical experiments which were instigated by Franklin, who sent him the equipment for experimentation. Stiles believed our nation would come to thrive in many different facets, and would do so because America was founded in religion's name, and thus was blessed.
In 1783 he gave a sermon celebrating independence. He believed tha, within 100 years, our nation would grow to a population of fifty million, and that "The Lord shall have made his American Israel high above all nations which he hath made." Ezra Stiles was truly a man who held religion as his highest priority in this life, and believed whole heartedly in the dream of America. In a beautifully spoken oration, which ties together not only Stiles' beliefs, but those of our founding fathers, he said, "The right of conscience and private judgment is unalienable, and it is truly the interest of all mankind to unite themselves into one body for the liberty, free exercise, and unmolested enjoyment of this right ... And being possessed of the precious jewel of religious liberty, a jewel of inestimable worth, let us prize it highly and esteem it too dear to be parted with on any terms lest we be again entangled with that yoke of bondage which our fathers could not, would not, and God grant that we may never, submit to bear ... Let the grand errand into America never be forgotten".
http://genforum.genealogy.com/stiles/messages/26.html
http://www.biography.com/cgi-bin/biomain.cgi
http://www3.edgenet.net/redwood/notables/stiles_bib.htm
http://www.denverpost.com/books/chap1.htm
http://www.wlu.ca/~wwwaar/syllabi/matthews/rel466/four.htm
Written by Martha Renner