Gamaliel Lyman Dwight was born in 1841 to Gamaliel Lyman Dwight and Catherine Eliza Jones Dwight, who both died before their son's maturity, Gamaliel Lyman Dwight was a Freshman at Brown University when the Civil War began in April 1861. In 1862 he joined a Battery in the Rhode Island First Regiment and rose through the offices of corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, and captain. He saw action at several major battles, including Gettysburg. His commission for captain noted his "gallant conduct before Petersburgh, 15th June, 1864." When he left military service, with honor, on July 17, 1864, he was in command of Battery A, First R.I. Light Artillery. Dwight finished at Brown in 1865, then went to study medicine at Harvard Medical School and in Berlin, Germany. He married Anne Ives Carrington, daughter of Edward Carrington and Candice Crawford Dorr of Providence, in January 1871. That same year the happy couple journeyed to Europe and their daughter Margarethe Carrington Dwight was born in Berlin in November. They returned to Providence but Dwight's health deteriorated and he was unable to practice medicine. He was advised to spend winters in a warmer climate, which he did at Nassau, New Providence (the Bahamas). He died in Nassau on January 19, 1875.

Erik Christiansen, PhD, Rhode Island College