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Thornton Niven Wilder was born in
Madison, Wisconsin on April 17, 1897, the son of Amos Parker Wilder and
Isabella Niven Wilder. His twin brother died at birth, and Wilder grew up
with an older brother, Amos, and three younger sisters, Charlotte, Isabel,
and Janet. This multi-talented family lived in China for a time, where Amos
Parker Wilder was U.S. consul general to Hong Kong and Shanghai. Thornton
Wilder began writing as a boy. He finished high school in California,
attended Oberlin College in Ohio, and received his undergraduate degree at
Yale and his graduate degree at Princeton. By the time he died on December
7, 1975, at his home in Hamden, Connecticut, Thornton Wilder was an American
icon, and an internationally famous playwright and novelist. To this day,
his works are read, performed and appreciated by audiences worldwide.
The Wilder Family
The Wilder family did not just produce one brilliant writer and thinker. The
entire family was, by any measure, filled with successful and highly
educated and accomplished people. Thornton Wilder's father, Amos Parker
Wilder, was a newspaper owner and editor, a powerful speaker, and the United
States Consul General to Hong Kong and Shanghai. His mother, Isabella Niven
Wilder, was a cultured, educated woman who instilled a love of literature,
drama and languages in her children, and who wrote vivid poetry.
Thornton's older brother, Amos Niven Wilder,
was a highly acclaimed professor of New Testament scholarship, an insightful
essayist, and a distinguished poet, as well as a tennis champion. Sister
Charlotte was a professor of English and an award-winning poet. Sister
Isabel was the author of three popular novels and the curator of Yale
University's theater archive. The youngest Wilder sibling, Janet Wilder
Dakin, was a professor of biology, an author, and a noted environmentalist.
Indeed, the Wilder family made its mark across generations and in many
different fields.
Amos Parker Wilder (1863-1936), Father
Thornton's father, Amos Parker Wilder (1863-1936), was born in Calais, Maine
and grew up in Augusta where his father had an oil cloth factory in a
neighboring town. He attended Yale, where he earned a B.A. in 1884 and a
Ph.D. in 1892, writing on municipal reform. After short stints of teaching
in Connecticut and Minnesota, Wilder became a journalist, working in a
variety of places, among them New York, Albany, Philadelphia, and New Haven.
In 1894, the year he married, he bought an interest in The Wisconsin State
Journal where he remained as editor until 1906. In that year, with the
support of his admirer, William Howard Taft, President Theodore Roosevelt
appointed him consul general in Hong Kong. He remained in the consular
service (moving to Shanghai in 1909) until poor health forced him to resign
in 1914. He then returned to New Haven where he directed the Yale-in-China
Association and returned to journalism. Throughout his life Wilder was a
nationally renowned public speaker.
Thornton's father exerted a commanding role over the early lives of his
children, decreeing which schools and colleges they attended, and how they
spent their summers. For Thornton and Amos Niven, for example, that meant
working on farms and in selected offices during their teenage summers.
Amos Parker Wilder once wrote to young Thornton that he had only a 'limited
admiration' for art. Instead of art, the father told the son, a person
should strive to achieve character. This was his goal for all of his
children, and they did not disappoint him.
Isabella Niven Wilder (1873-1946), Mother
Thornton's mother, Isabella Thornton Niven Wilder (1873-1946) was the
daughter of a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman in Dobbs Ferry, New York. She
attended the Misses Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, and married Amos Parker
Wilder in 1894, when she was twenty-one. Throughout her life, she remained
well versed in contemporary authors and dramatists, loved languages -- she
translated the work of Carducci and Verhaeren -- and stood at the center of
cultural life in communities where she lived, encouraging her children to do
likewise as they grew up. She especially liked poetry and wrote poetry. In
1920 she became the first woman elected to public office in Hamden,
Connecticut. Thornton referred to her as being "like one of
Shakespeare's girls -- a star danced and under it I was born."
Amos Niven Wilder (1895-1993), Brother
Thornton's older brother Amos Niven Wilder (1895-1993) received his B.A.,
B.D., and Ph.D. from Yale and also studied at Oxford, the University of
Brussels, and several other schools in Europe. During World War I, he served
with the American Field Service (AFS) in France and Macedonia and as a
corporal of artillery with the American Expeditionary Forces. He was
ordained a Congregational American minister in 1926. Following a pastorate
for several years in North Conway, New Hampshire, he went on to a teaching
and scholarly career at Hamilton College, Andover Newton Theologial School,
Chicago Theological School, the University of Chicago, and finally Harvard
Divinity School, where he became Hollis Professor of Divinity. Amos Wilder
was also a prize-winning poet, literary critic, and nationally-ranked tennis
player. At the time of his death, he was the oldest living man who had
played on center court at Wimbledon. He married Catharine Kerlin in 1935.
They had two children, Catharine Dix and Amos Tappan.
Charlotte Wilder (1898-1980), Sister
Thornton Wilder's oldest sister Charlotte Wilder (1898-1980) was a poet who
shared the Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry in 1937 with Ben Belitt. She
attended high schools in Berkeley, California, and in China, and graduated
from Berkeley High School. She was an outstanding student at Mount Holyoke
College, majoring in English, and receiving her degree in 1919, magna cum
laude. She was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Later, she received an M.A.
degree from Radcliffe, and went on to a teaching career at Wheaton College
and Smith College. In 1934, Charlotte moved to New York to devote all her
time to writing. In 1941, she suffered a severe nervous breakdown. With the
exception of a short period in the early 1950s, she remained in institutions
the rest of her life.
Isabel Wilder (1900-1995), Sister
Thornton's sister Isabel Wilder (1900-1995) attended some thirteen schools
by the time she was twenty. As a result she never attended college. She was,
however, a member of the first graduating class of the Yale School of Drama
(1928) and wrote three successful novels in the 1930s. She never married. Of
all the Wilder family members, Isabel was closest to Thornton, remaining his
personal agent, spokesperson, hostess and representative in this country and
abroad. After 1930, Isabel made her permanent residence with her parents
and, following their deaths, with her brother Thornton in the family home in
Hamden, Connecticut.
Janet Wilder Dakin (1910-1994), Sister
Thornton Wilder's youngest sister, Janet Wilder (1910-1994), was the only
Wilder child born in Berkeley, California. She attended schools in Berkeley
and Oxford, England, and was graduated from New Haven High School in
Connecticut. She then went to Mount Holyoke College, where she earned her
B.A. degree in 1933, magna cum laude; she was also elected to Phi Beta
Kappa. She earned an M.A. in biology in 1935, and completed a Ph.D. in
zoology at the University of Chicago in 1939. She then returned to Mount
Holyoke to teach.
In 1941, Janet Wilder married Winthrop Saltonstall (Tony) Dakin, an attorney
and civic leader, and they lived in Amherst, Massachusetts. They had no
children, and Janet devoted her energy to conservation issues, equestrians
affairs, and animal rights. She wrote a book about raising a Morgan horse.
At her death in 1994, she was remembered as "The First Lady of
Amherst."
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