[1] His paternal ancestor, Edmond Gale, came to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the early 17th century from England, and died in Boston.
[6] At the age of thirteen, Gale was enrolled into Yale University, where he graduated in 1733, and received his Master of Arts three years later.
[1] Though this was then seen as a controversy, when Benoni Hillyer, a wheelwright who built the model, claimed that he was the sole constructor of it and that Gale had only acted as an agent communicating with the society.
[12] Subsequently in 1755, Gale began his avocation of added control and launched a political attack on Yale president Thomas Clap,[1] who was quoted as a "calm and still judicious great Man," who was firm to the point of "absolute "Despotism", and as such seen as a strategic and vulnerable target.
[13] Gale wrote The Present State of the Colony of Connecticut Considered, in which he called Clap "an Assuming, Arbitrary, Designing Man; who under a Cloak of Zeal for Orthodoxy, design'd to govern both Church and State and Damn all who would not worship the Beast", as response to Clap's pamphlet, which he wrote in 1754 at the time of Wolcott's defeat, called The Religious Constitution of Colleges, Especially of Yale-College,[1] in which he pointed out that Yale had been founded and governed by ministers for the purpose of properly training the clergy.
[1] The next pamphlet called A Letter to a Member of the Lower House of Assembly of the Colony of Connecticut: Shewing, That the Taxes at Yale-College, Are Stated Higher Than Necessary to Defray the Annual Expences was published in March 1759, by Gale,[1] in which he claimed that Yale was not only making a profit of students' fees, but also that Clap should be investigated by the Connecticut General Assembly.
[15] Gale helped bring attention to Abel Buell's experiments with type-founding, sending them to prominent New England intellectuals and some specimen to the American Philosophical Society, of which he was one of the earliest Connecticut members.
[17] An amateur vintner and distiller, Gale sent a specimen of his grape wine Peter Collinson, who dubbed him as "the American Bacchus".