JUKES-EDWARDS

A STUDY

IN EDUCATION AND HEREDITY

BY

A. E. WlNSHIP, LlTT.D.

HARRISBtmo, PA.:

X. foyers & Co.

1900.

COPYRIGHT, 1900,

BY
R. L. MYERS A CO.

HI/

Til?

To HIM

Who, more than any other, has taught us how to
afford opportunity for neglected, unfortunate and
wayward boys and girls to transform themselves
into industrious, virtuous and upright citizens
through the most remarkable institution in the land,

WILLIAM R. GEORGE,

FOUNDER OF

THE GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC,
THIS STUDY IS DEDICATED.

(ill)

R. L. MYERS & CO.,

PUBLISHERS OF

Standard Helps for Teachers,
Standard School Books.

SEND FOR CATALOGUE.

HARRISBURG, PENNA.

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PREFACE.

Of all the problems which America faces on the land
and on the seas, no one is so important as that of making
regenerates out of degenerates. The massing of people
in large cities, the incoming of vast multitudes from the
impoverished masses of several European and Asiatic coun-
tries, the tendency to interpret liberty as license, the con-
tagious nature of moral, as well as of physical, diseases
combine to make it of the utmost importance that American
enterprise and moral force find ways and means for accom-
plishing this transformation. The grand results of the
movement in New York city inspired by Jacob Riis ; the
fascinating benevolence of the Roycroft Shop in East Aurora,
N. Y. ; the marvelous transfiguration of character — I speak
it reverently — at the George Junior Republic, Freeville, N.
Y., added to the College Settlement and kindred efforts
merely indicate what may be accomplished when philan-
thropy supplements saying by doing, and when Christianity
stands for the beauty of wholeness and is satisfied with
nothing less than the physical, mental and moral conver-
sions of all classes among the masses at home as well as
abroad, in the East as well as in the West.

A problem is primarily something thrown at us as a chal -
lenge for us to see through it. To solve a problem is to
loosen it so that it may be looked into or seen through.
Whatever contributes to the loosening of a problem by
throwing light upon the conditions is of value in aiding in
its solution, hence the publication of this study of the
family of Jonathan Edwards as a contrast to the Jukes.

A. E. W.

Somerville, Mass.. June 1, 1900.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Page.

THK JUKES 7

A STUDY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS, 15

THK INHERITANCE AND TRAINING OF MR. EDWARDS 20

THE CHILDREN'S START IN LIFE, 29

MRS. EDWARDS AND HOME TRAINING 87

CAPACITY, CHARACTER AND TRAINING, 41

AARON BURR, 44

CONTRASTS 53

TIMOTHT EDWARDS 61

COLONEL WILLIAM EDWARDS 67

THE MARY EDWARDS DWIGHT FAMILY, 74

CHAPTER I

THE JUKES

Education is something more than going to school
for a few weeks each year, is more than knowing
how to read and write. It has to do with charac-
ter, with industry, and with patriotism. Educa-
tion tends to do away with vulgarity, pauperism,
and crime, tends to prevent disease and disgrace,
and helps to manliness, success and loyalty.

Ignorance leads to all those things that educa-
tion tries to do away with, and it tends to do
away with all the things that education tries to
cultivate. It is easy to say these things, and every
one knows they are true, but few realize how
much such statements mean. It is not easy to
take a view of such matters over a long range of
time and experience.

A boy that leaves school and shifts for himself by
blacking boots, selling papers, and "swiping" fruit
often appears much smarter than a boy of the same
age who is going to school all the time and does
not see so much of the world. A boy of twelve
who has lived by his wits is often keener than a
boy of the same age who has been well brought
up at home and at school, but such a boy knows

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8 JUKES— ED WARDS

about as much and is about as much of a man at
twelve as he will ever be, while the boy that gets
an education becomes more and more of a man as
long as he lives.

But this might be said a thousand times to
every truant, and it would have very little effect,
because he thinks that he will be an exception.
He never sees beyond his own boyish smartness.
Few men and women realize how true it is that
these smart rascally fellows, who persist in remain-
ing in ignorance, are to be the vicious, pauper,
criminal class who are to fill the dens of vice, the
poorhouses, and the prisons; who are to be burg-
lars, highwaymen, and murderers. In place of
opinions, it is well sometimes to present facts so
clear and definite that they cannot be forgotten.

B. A. Dugdale, of New York State, began the
study of "The Jukes" family in 1874, and in 1877
in the twentieth annual report of the New York
Prison Commission he made a statement of the
results.* This brief summary of "the Jukes" is
based upon the facts which Mr. Dugdale has pub-
lished.

"The Jukes" is a name given to a large family
of degenerates. It is not the real name of any
family, but a general term applied to forty-two dif-
ferent names borne by those in whose veins flows
the blood of one man. The word "jukes" means
"to roost." It refers to the habit of fowls to have

*G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, reprinted this study in " The
Jnke«."

THE JUKES 9

no home, no nest, no coop, preferring to fly into
the trees and roost away from the places where
they belong. The word has also come to mean
people who are too indolent and lazy to stand up
or sit up, but sprawl out anywhere. "The Jukes"
are a family that did not make good homes, did
not provide themselves with comforts, did not
work steadily. They are like hens that fly into
the trees to roost.

The father of "The Jukes" Mr. Dugdale styled
"Max." He was born about 1720 of Dutch stock.
Had he remained with his home folk in the town
and been educated, and thrifty like the rest of the
boys, he might have given the world a very dif-
ferent kind of family from "The Jukes."

Max was a jolly good fellow and not very bad.
He was popular and he could tell a good story that
made everybody laugh. Of course he was vulgar,
such jolly good fellows are usually vulgar. He
would not go to school, because he did not like
it. He would not stay in evenings, for he did not
like that. He did not enjoy being talked to, but
always wanted to talk himself, and to talk to boys
who would laugh at his yarns. He would not
work for he did not like it. He wanted to go
fishing, hunting, and trapping ; so he left home
early and took to the woods.

Max liked nature. He thought he was lots bet-
ter than town people because he knew more about
nature. He found a lovely spot on the border of
a beautiful lake in New York State, where the

10 JUKES— KD WA RD8

rocks are grand, the waters lovely, the forest glori-
ous. There was never a more charming place in
which to be good and to love God than this place
where Max built his shanty about 1750. But he
did not go there to worship or to be good. He
went simply to get away from good people, to get
where he would not have to work, and where he
would not be preached to, and this beautiful spot
became a notorious cradle of crime. Nature is
lovely, but it makes all the difference in the world
how we know nature and why we love it.

lu 1874 Richard L. Dugdale was employed by
the New York Prison Commission to visit the
prisons of the state. In this visit he was surprised
to find criminals in six different prisons whose
relatives were mostly criminals or paupers, and the
more surprised to discover that these six criminals,
under four different names, were all descended
from the same family. This led Mr. Dugdale to
study their relatives, living and dead. He gave
himself up to this work with great zeal, studying
the court and prison records, reports of town poor-
houses, and the testimony of old neighbors and
employers. He learned the details of 540 descend-
ants of Max in five generations. He learned the
exact facts about 169 who married into the family.
It is customary to count as of a family the men
who marry into it. He traced in part others, which
carried the number up to 1,200 persons of the
family of the Jukes.

THE JUKES 11

The Jukes rarely married foreign-born men or
women, so that it may be styled a distinctively
American family. The almost universal traits of
the family were idleness, ignorance, and vulgarity.
They would not work, they could not be made to
study, and they loved vulgarity. These character-
istics led to disease and disgrace, to pauperism and
crime. They were a disgustingly diseased family
as a whole. There were many imbeciles and many
insane. Those of "the Jukes" who tended to pau-
perism were rarely criminal, and those who were
criminal were rarely paupers. The sick, the weak,
and goody-goody ones were almost all paupers;
the healthy, strong ones were criminals.

It is a well-known fact in sociology that crimi-
nals are of three classes : First, those who direct
crime, the capitalists in crime, who are rarely
arrested, who seldom commit any crime, but inspire
men to crime in various ways. These are intelli-
gent and have to be educated to some extent.
They profit by crime and take slight risks.

Second, those who commit heroic crimes and find
some satisfaction in the skill and daring required.
Safe-breaking, train robbery, and some types of
burglary require men of ability and pluck, and
those who do these things have a species of pride
in it.

Third, those who commit weak and imbecile
crimes, which mark the doer as a sneak and a
coward. These men rob hen roosts, waylay help-
less women and old men, steal clothing in hallways,

12 .1UKK8-RDWARD8

and burn building*. They are always cowardly
about everything they do, and never have the pluck
to steal chickens even until they are half drunk.
They often commit murder, but oiily when they
are detected in some sneaking crime and shoot
because they are too cowardly to face their dis-
coverer.

Now the Jukes were almost never of the first or
second class. They could not be criminals that
required capital, brains, education or nerve. Even
the kind of pauperism and crime in which they
indulged was particularly disgraceful. This is
inevitably true of all classes of people who com-
bine idleness, ignorance, and vulgarity. They are
not even respectable among criminals and paupers.

There is an honorable pauperism. It is no dis-
grace to be poor or to be in a poorhouse if there
is a good reason for it. One may be manly in
poverty. But the Jukes were never manly or hon-
orable paupers, they were weaklings among paupers.

They were a great expense to the state, costing
in crime and pauperism more than $1,250,000.
Taken as a whole, they not only did not contribute"
to the world's prosperity, but they cost more than
$1,000 a piece, including all men, women, and chil-
dren, for pauperism and crime.

Those who worked did the lowest kind of ser-
vice and received the smallest wages. Only twenty
of the 1,200 learned a trade, and ten of those
learned it in the state prison. Even they were
not regularly employed. Men who work regularly

THE JUKES 13

•ren at unskilled labor are generally honest men
and provide for the family. A habit of irregular .
work is a species of mental or moral weakness, or
both. A man or woman who will not stick to a
job is morally certain to be a pauper or a criminal.

One great benefit of going to school, especially
of attending regularly for eight or ten months each
year for nine years or more, is that it establishes
a habit of regularity and persistency in effort.
The boy who leaves school to go to work does not
necessarily learn to work steadily, but often quite
the reverse. Few who graduate from a grammar
school, or who take the equivalent course in a rural
school, fail to be regular in their habits of effort.
This accounts in part for the fact that few unskilled
workmen ever graduated from a grammar school.
Scarcely any of the Jukes were ever at school any
considerable time. Probably no one of them ever
had so much as a completed rural school education.

It is very difficult to find anyone who is honest
and industrious, pure and prosperous, who has not
had a fair education, if he ever had the oppor-
tunity, as all children in the United States now
have. It is an interesting fact developed from a
study of the Jukes that it is much easier to reform a
criminal than a pauper.

Here are a few facts by way of conclusion. On
the basis of the facts gathered by Mr. Dugdale,
310 of the 1,200 were professional paupers, or more
than one in four. These were in poorhouses or its
equivalent for 2,300 years.

14 JUKES— EDWARD*

Three hundred of the 1,200, or one in four, died
in infancy from lack of good care and good condi-
tions.

There were fifty women who lived lives of notori-
ous debauchery.

Four hundred men and women were physically
wrecked early by their own wickedness.

There were seven murderers.

Sixty were habitual thieves who spent on the
average twelve years each in lawless depredations.

There were 130 criminals who were convicted
more or less often of crime.

What a picture this presents! Some slight
improvement was apparent when Mr. Dugdale
closed his studies. This resulted from evening
schools, from manual training schools, from im-
proved conditions of labor, from the later methods
of treating prisoners.

CHAPTER II

A STUDY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS

The story of the Jukes as published by Mr. Dug-
dale has been the text of a multitude of sermons,
the theme of numberless addresses, the inspiration
of no end of editorials and essays. For twenty
years there was a call for a companion picture.
Every preacher, orator, and editor who presented
the story of the Jukes, with its abhorrent features,
wanted the facts for a cheery, comforting, convinc-
ing contrast. This was not to be had for the ask-
ing. Several attempts had been made to find the
key to such a study without discovering a person
of the required prominence, born sufficiently long
ago, with the necessary vigor of intellect and
strength of character who established the habit of
having large families.

In 1897 a professional scholarly organization —
to which the author has the honor to belong —
assigned to him, without his knowledge or consent,
the duty of preparing an essay upon Jonathan
Edwards for the May meeting of 1898. The study
then begun led to a search for the facts regarding
his family, and when it came to light that one of
Jonathan Edwards' descendants presided over the

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16 JUKES— EDWARDS

New York Prison Commission when it employed
Mr. Dngdale to make a study of the Jukes, the
appropriateness of the contrast was more than ever
apparent

In this study the sources of information are the
various genealogies of families in which the de-
scendants of Mr. Edwards play a part, various town
histories and church and college publications, but
chiefly the biographical dictionaries and encyclo-
paedias in which the records of the men of the
family are chronicled. It would be impossible to
follow out the positions occupied by the various
members but for the pride they all feel in record-
ing the fact that they are descendants of Jonathan
Edwards. A good illustration of this may be had
in the current announcements of the marvelously
popular novel, "Richard Carvel," in which it is
always emphasized that Mr. Winston Churchill, the
author, is a descendant of Jonathan Edwards.

Only two Americans established a considerable
and permanent reputation in the world of Euro-
pean thought prior to the present century, — Ben-
jamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards. In 1736,
Dr. Isaac Watts published in England Mr. Ed-
wards' account of the beginning of the great
awakening in the Connecticut valley. Here more
than a century and a half ago, when the colonies
were small, their future unsuspected and the ability
of their leaders unrecognized, Jonathan Edwards
" erected the standard of Orthodoxy for enlightened
Protestant Europe." Who can estimate the elo-

A STUDY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS 17

quence of that simple fact? Almost everything
of his which was published in the colonies was
speedily republished in England. Of what other
American philosopher and theologian has this been
true? Here are a few of the tributes to Mr. Ed-
wards :

Daniel Webster: "The Freedom of the Will"
by Mr. Edwards is the greatest achievement of the
human intellect.

Dr. Chalmers: The greatest of theologians.

Robert Sail: He was the greatest of the sons
of men.

Dug aid /Stewart: Edwards on the Will never
was answered and never will be answered.

^Encyclopaedia : One of the greatest metaphysi-
cians of his age.

.Edinburgh Review: One of the acutest and
most powerful of reasoners.

London Quarterly Review: His gigantic speci-
men of theological argument is as near to perfec-
tion as we may expect any human composition to
approach. He unites the sharpness of the scimetar
and the strength of the battle-axe.

Westminster Review: From the days of Plato
there has been no life of more simple and imposing
grandeur than that of Jonathan Edwards.

President McCosh, of Princeton: The greatest
thinker that America has produced.

Lyman Meecher : A prince among preachers.
In our day there is no man who comes within a
thousand miles of him.

18 JUKES— EDWARDS

Griswold'a Prose Writers : The first man of the
world during the second quarter of the eighteenth
century.

JIbllister'a History of Connecticut: The most
gifted man of the eighteenth century, perhaps the
most profound thinker in the world.

Mosea Coit Tyler : The most original and acute
thinker yet produced in America.

This is the man whose intellectual life has thrilled
in the mental activity of more than 1,400 men and
women of the past century and a half, and which
has not lost its virtue or its power in all these
years.

England and Scotland are not wont to sit at our
feet even in this day, and yet they sat at the feet
of Jonathan Edwards as in the presence of a mas-
ter when he was a mere home missionary, living
among the Indians, to whom he preached every
Lord's day.

The birth of fame is always an interesting study.
It is easy to play the part of a rocket if one can
sizzle, and flash, and rise suddenly in darkness, but
to take one's place among luminaries and shine
with permanent brilliancy is so rare an experience
as to present a fascinating study.

Jonathan Edwards was twenty-eight years of
age, had been the pastor of a church on the fron-
tier, as Northampton was, for four years without
any notable experience, when he was invited to
preach the annual sermon before the association
of ministers at Boston. Never since that day have

A STUDY OP JONATHAN EDWARDS 19

Boston and Harvard been more thoroughly the
seat of culture and of intellectual power than then.
It was a remarkable event for a young man of
twenty-eight to be invited to come from the West-
ern limit of civilization and preach the annual ser-
mon before the philosophical, theological, and
scholastic masters of the East. This sermon was
so powerful that the association published it.
This was his first appearance in print. So pro-
foundly moved by this effort were the churches
of New England that the clergymen generally gave
public thanks to the Head of the Church for rais-
ing up so great a teacher and preacher. Thus was
born the fame of Jonathan Edwards.

It is nearly 170 years since then. Science and
invention, enterprise and ambition have done great
things for America and for Americans. We have
mighty universities, libraries, and laboratories, but
we have no man who thinks more clearly, writes
more logically, speaks more vigorously than did
Jonathan Edwards, and we have never had such a
combination of spirit and power in any other Amer-
ican. This mastery is revealing itself in various
ways in hundreds of his descendants to-day, and
it has never ceased to do it since his blood gave
tonic to the thought and character of his children
and his children's children.

CHAPTER III

THE INHERITANCE AND TRAINING OF
MR. EDWARDS

No man can have the intellectual power, nobility
of character, and personal grandeur of Jonathan
Edwards and transmit it to his children's children
for a century and a half who has not himself had
a great inheritance. The whole teaching of the
culture of animals and plants leaves no room to
question the persistency of character, and this is
so grandly exemplified in the descendants of Mr.
Edwards that it is interesting to see what inherit-
ances were focused in him.

It is not surprising to find that the ancestors
of Mr. Edwards were cradled in the intellectual
literary activities of the days of Queen Elizabeth.
The family is of Welsh origin and can be traced
as far as 1282, when Edward, the conqueror,
appeared. His great-great-grandfather, Richard
Edwards, who went from Wales to London about
1580, was a clergyman in the Elizabethan period.
Those were days which provided tonic for the
keenest spirits and brightest minds and pro-
fessional men profited most from the influence of
Spencer, Bacon, and Shakespeare.

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INHERITANCE AND TRAINING 21

Among the first men to come to the new colonies
in New England was William, a son of this clergy-
man, born about 1620, who came to Hartford,
where his son Eichard, born 1647, the grandfather
of Jonathan, was an eminently prosperous merchant.
Richard was an only son. The father of Jonathan,
Timothy Edwards, was an only son in a family of
seven. Aristocracy was at its height in the house-
hold of the merchants of Hartford in the middle
of the seventeenth century.

Harvard was America's only college, and it was
a great event for a young man to go from Hart-
ford to Harvard, but this Timothy Edwards did,
and he took all attainable honors, graduating in
1661, taking the degrees of A.B. and A.M. the
same day, "an uncommon mark of respect paid
extraordinary proficiency in learning." This bril-
liant graduate of Harvard was soon settled over the
church at East Windsor, Conn., where he remained
sixty-five years as pastor.

Who can estimate the inheritance which comes
to a child of such a pastor who had been born
in a merchant's home. In the four generations
which stood behind Jonathan Edwards were two
merchants and two preachers, a grand combination
for manly and intellectual power.

In this pastor's home Jonathan Edwards was
born October 5, 1703. Those were days in which
great men came into the world. There were born
within fifteen years of Jonathan Edwards a won-
derful array of thinkers along religious and philo-

22 JUKSS—BD WARDS

sophic lines, men who have molded the thought
and lives of a multitude of persons. Among these
intellectual giants born within fifteen years of Mr.
Edwards were John Wesley, George Whitefield,
Swedenborg, Voltaire, Kousseau, and Hume.

In order to appreciate the full significance of
Mr. Edwards' legacy to the world, it is well to
study some conditions of his life. It would not
/ be easy to find a man whose surroundings and
training in childhood were better than those of
Jonathan Edwards. The parsonage on the banks
of the Connecticut was a delightful home. His
parents and his grandparents were ideal American
Christian educated persons. He was prepared for
college by his father and mother. He was a devout
little Christian before he was twelve years of age.
When he was but ten years old he, with two other
lads about his own age, made a booth of branches
in a retired spot in a neighboring wood, where the
three went daily for a season of prayer.

He began the study of Latin at six and at twelve
had a good preparation for college in Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew, all of which had come from home
study. He not only knew books, but he knew
nature and loved her. From early childhood to
advanced years this remained true. He entered
Yale college at twelve years of age. In a letter
which he wrote while a college freshman he speaks
of himself as a child. Not many freshmen take
that view of themselves, but a lad of twelve, away
from home at college could have been little more
than a child.

INHERITANCE AND TRAINING 23

He was the fifth in a family of eleven children,
so that he had no lack of companionship from both
older and younger sisters. The older sisters had
contributed much to his preparation for college.
They were a never-failing source of inspiration.
At fourteen he read in a masterly way "Locke on
the Human Understanding." It took a powerful
hold on his mind and greatly affected his life In
a letter to his father he asked a special favor that
he might have a copy of " The Art of Thinking, '
not because it was necessary to his college work,
but because he thought it would be profitable.

While still in his teens he wrote a series of
"Resolutions," the like of which it would be diffi-
cult to duplicate in the case of any other youth.
These things are dwelt upon as indicating the way
in which every fibre of his being was prepared for
the great moral and intellectual legacy he left his
children and his children's children. Here are ten
of his seventy resolutions:

Resolved, to do whatever I think to be my duty,
and most for the good and advantage of man kind
in general.

Resolved, so to do, whatever difficulties I meet
with, how many soever, and how great soever.

Resolved, to be continually endeavoring to find
out some new contrivance and invention to pro-
mote the forementioned things.

Resolved, never to lose one moment of time, but
to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly
can.

24 JUKEB— EDWARDS

Resolved, to live with all my might while I do
live.

Resolved, to be endeavoring to find out fit
objects of charity and liberality.

Resolved, never to do anything out of revenge.

Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of
anger towards irrational beings.

Resolved, never to speak evil of any one, so that
it shall tend to his dishonor, more or less, upon no
account except for some real good.

Resolved, to maintain the strictest temperance
in eating and drinking.

Yale in the days of Mr. Edwards was not the
Yale of the closing year of the nineteenth cen-
tury. It has now 2,500 students and has had
19,000 graduates. It had a very humble begin-
ning in March, 1702, the year before Mr. Edwards
was born. It began with one lone student. The
father of Jonathan Edwards had been greatly inter-
ested in the starting of the college. In 1701, Rev.
Mr. Russell, of Branf ord, a graduate of Harvard, as
was the senior Edwards, invited to his home ten
other Connecticut pastors of whom nine were
graduates of Harvard. Each brought from his
library some of his most valuable books, and lay-
ing them upon Mr. Russell's table, said: "I give
these books for the founding of a college in this
colony." This produced a profound impression
upon the clergymen of Connecticut, notably upon
the graduates of Harvard. The first year the col-
lege was nominally located at Saybrook, but as

INHERITANCE AND TRAINING 26

there was only one student lie lived with the presi-
dent at Killingworth, now Clinton, nine miles
away.

When Jonathan Edwards, a lad of twelve, entered
college, there had been, all told, only about fifty
graduates. It was during the time that he was a
student that the college took the name of Yale.
The first year he was there the college was in three
places at the same time because of dissensions
among the students, and the very small class gradu-
ated in two places because neither faction would
go to the other place. In all these agitations
Mr. Edwards took no part. He simply devoted
himself to his studies and followed the line of least
resistance so far as taking sides in a senseless con-
troversy was concerned. After graduation he
remained at Tale two years for post-graduate work,
mostly in theology, and then accepted an invitation
to preach for the leading Presbyterian church in
New York City; but after eight months he returned
to Yale as a tutor and remained two years.

At this time he was very severe in discipline,
bending every energy to securing the right condi-
tions for the most and best work. This is what he
wrote in his diary when he was twenty-one :

"By a sparingness in diet, and eating, as much as
may be, what is light and easy of digestion, I shall
doubtless be able to think more clearly, and shall
gain time:

1. By lengthening out my life.

2. Shall need less time for digestion after meals.

26 JUKES— EDWARDS

3. Shall be able to study more closely, without
injury to my health.

4. Shall need less time for sleep.

5. Shall more seldom be troubled with the head-
ache."

Mr. Edwards was twenty-three years of age when
he was ordained at Northampton as associate pastor
with his grandfather Stoddard, then in his 84th
year, and the 54th year of his pastorate. Soon
after this Mr. Stoddard died and Mr. Edwards
became pastor in full charge and remained for
twenty-five years. He was a great student and
thinker. He rose at four o'clock and spent thir-
teen hours a day in his study. It is worth while
to follow the personal intellectual habits of the
man whose descendants we are to study. When
he was ready for the consideration of a great sub-
ject he would set apart a week for it and mounting
his horse early Monday morning would start off for
the hills and forests. When he had thought him-
self up to a satisfactory intensity he would alight,
fasten his horse, go off into the woods and think
himself through that particular stage of the argu-
ment, then he would pin a bit of paper on some
particular place on his coat as a reminder of the
conclusion he had reached. He would then ride
on some miles further and repeat the experience,
Not infrequently he would be gone the entire week
on a thinking expedition, returning with the front
of his coat covered with the scalps of intellectual
victories. Without stopping for any domestic salu-

INHERITANCE AND TRAINING 27

tations he would go at once to his study and taking
off these bits of paper in the same order in which
he had put them on would carefully write out his
argument. In nothing did Jonathan Edwards
stand out so clearly as boy, youth and man as in
his sacrifice of every other feature of his life for
the attainment of power as a thinker.

Mr. Edwards has gone into history as a theolo-
gian of the most stalwart character. It is undeni- V
able that he preached the most terrific doctrine
ever uttered by an American leader, but this was
only the logical result of the intellectual projection
of his effort to make sacrifices in order to benefit
humanity. As a child he sacrificed everything for
health and virtue that he might have influence,
and as a man he knew no other plan or purpose in
life. His masterpiece is upon the "will" which he
developed to the full in himself.

The greatest religious awakening that the West-
ern world has ever known was started in his church
at Northampton, not over ecclesiastical differences,
or theological discussion but over a question of
morality among the young people of the town. It
had to do with the impropriety of the young ladies
entertaining their gentlemen friends on Sunday
evenings and especially of their allowing them to
remain to such unreasonable hours. And the issue
which ultimately drove him from his pastorate,
after twenty-five years of service, by an almost
unanimous vote was not one of ecclesiasticism or
theology, but of morals among the young people.

28 JUKBB—BDWARD8

He insisted upon vigorous action in relation to the
loose and as he thought immoral reading of the
youth of the town. As this involved some promi-
nent families he had to retire from the pastorate.
The views of Mr. Edwards on pastoral work
reveal the singleness of purpose of the man as a
student and thinker. He never made pastoral
calls. He had no criticism to make of those pastors
who had talent for entertaining people by occa-
sional calls, but as he had no gifts in that direc-
tion he regarded it advisable to use his time in
cultivating such talents as he had. Whoever
wished to talk with him about personal, moral or
religious conditions found in him a profitable coun-
sellor. In his preaching, which was equal to any-
thing America has ever known, he made no attempt
to win his hearers by tricks of oratory or by emo-
tional appeals, though he had a most fascinating
personality. He was six feet in height, slender in
form, with a high, broad forehead, eyes piercing
and luminous and a serene countenance. In the
pulpit he was graceful, easy, natural and earnest,
though he had little action. He rested his left
elbow on the pulpit and held his manuscript in
his left hand while with his right he turned the
leaves. In him were combined the intellectual and
moral vigor which are calculated to make the
progenitor of a great family.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHILDREN'S START IN LIFE

The eleven children of Jonathan Edwards had
an unenviable start in life so far as their environ-
ment was concerned. The oldest was still in her
teens when serious trouble arose in the parish at
Northampton. Mr. Edwards was pastor at North-
ampton for twenty-five years, and a more fruitful
pastorate or a more glorious ministerial career for
a quarter of a century no man could ask. He
made that church on the frontier the largest
Protestant church in the world, and it was the
most influential as well as the best known. There
began the greatest religious awakening of modern
times. In his church, resulting from his preaching,
began a revival which stirred into activity every
church in Massachusetts, every church in the
colonies, and most of the Protestant churches of
Great Britain and Europe.

After this long and eminently successful pas-
torate, Mr. Edwards preached a sermon about the
reading and conversation of young people upon
subjects of questionable propriety, which led to
such local excitement that upon the recommenda-
tion of an ecclesiastical council he was dismissed by

(29)

30 JUKES— EDWARDS

a vote of 200 to 20, and the town voted that he be
not permitted on any occasion to preach or lecture
in the church. Mr. Edwards was wholly unpre-
pared financially for this unusual ecclesiastical and
civic action. He had no other means of earning a
living, BO that, until donations began to come in
from far and near, Mrs. Edwards, at the age of
forty, the mother of eleven children with the young-
est less than a year old, was obliged to take in
work for the support of the family. After a little
time Mr. Edwards secured a small mission charge
in an Indian village where there were twelve white
and 150 Indian families. Here he remained eight
years in quiet until, a few weeks before his death,
he was called to the presidency and pastorate of
Princeton, then a young and small college.

The last four years of their life at Northampton
were indescribably trying to the children. Human
nature was the same then as now, and everyone
knows how heavily the public dislike of a prominent
man bears upon his children. The conventionalties
which keep adults within bound in speech and
action are unknown to children, and what the
parents say behind a clergyman's back, children say
to his children's face. This period of childhood
social horror ended only by removal to a missionary
parsonage among the Stockbridge Indians, where
they lived for eight years. Their playmates were
Indian children and youth. Half the children of
the family talked the Indian language as well and
almost as much as they did the English language.

THE CHILDREN'S START IN LIFE 31

In the years of aspiration these children were
away from all society life and educational institu-
tions, in the home of a poor missionary family
among Indians when Indian wars were a reality.
When Mr. Edwards accepted gratefully this mission
church his oldest child, a daughter, was twenty-
two, his youngest son was less than a year old. All
of the boys and three of the girls were under twelve
years of age when they went to the Indian village,
and all but one were under twenty. When their
missionary home was broken up five of them were
still under twenty, so that the children's inheritance
was not of wealth, of literary or scholastic envi-
ronment, or of cultured or advantageous society.
Everything tends to show how completely Mr. Ed-
wards' sons and daughters were left to develop
and improve their inheritance of intellectual, moral,
and religious aspiration.

In these years Mr. Edwards was writing the
works which will make him famous for centuries.
One of the daughters married Kev. Aaron Burr, the
president of Princeton, then a very small institution.
Upon the death of this son-in-law, Mr. Edwards was
chosen to succeed him, but while at Princeton,
before he had fairly entered upon his duties at
the college, he died of smallpox. His widowed
daughter, who cared for him, died a few days later
leaving two children, and his widow, who came for
the grandchildren, soon followed the husband and
daughter to the better land.

32 JUKES— ED WARDS

Mr. Edwards died at fifty-six, and his widow a few
weeks later. Both died away from home, for the
family was still among the Stockbridge Indians.
The oldest son was but twenty, and there were five
children younger than he. The youngest son was
eight and the other only thirteen. To make the pic-
ture more clear it must be understood that to these
six orphans, under twenty-one, there came at the
time of their father's and mother's deaths two little
orphans aged four and two respectively, Sarah Burr
and her brother Aaron. Here was a large family
from which father and mother, older sister and
brother-in-law had been taken almost at a single
blow, with two extra orphans to care for.

And with all this there was no adequate financial
inheritance. The inventory of Jonathan Edwards'
property is interesting. Among the live stock, which
included horses and cows, was a slave upon whom a
moderate value was placed. The slave was named
Titus, and he was rated under "quick stock" and not
"live stock," at a value of $150. The silver was
inventoried as a tankard valued at $60, a can and
porringer at $47, and various other articles valued
at $85. The chief material legacy was his library,
which was inventoried as consisting of 301 volumes,
536 pamphlets, forty-eight maps, thirty unpublished
manuscripts and 1,074 manuscript sermons prepared
for the printer. It was valued at $415.

If Jonathan Edwards did not leave a large finan-
cial legacy, he did impart to his children an intel-
lectual capacity and vigor, moral character, and

THE CHILDREN'S START IN LIFE 33

devotion to training which have projected them-
selves through eight generations without losing the
strength and force of their great ancestor. Of
the three sons and eight daughters of Jonathan
Edwards there was not one, nor a husband or wife
of one, whose character and ability, whose purpose
and achievement were not a credit to this godly
man. Of the seventy-five grandchildren, with their
husbands and wives, there was but one for whom
an apology may be offered, and nearly every one
was exceptionally strong in scholarship and moral
force.

We have paused long enough on the threshold
of the descendants of Jonathan Edwards. We have
seen the estimate in which he was held by his con-
temporaries at home and abroad, and by close stu-
dents of the history of his times. We have seen
what he inherited and by what training and in
what environment he was developed. We have
also seen the terrible strain to which his children
were subjected in childhood from lack of school
privileges and pleasing social conditions. It re-
mains to be seen what kind of men and women
these children became with childhood disadvan-
tages, but with a grand inheritance and the best of
home training.

Remember the size, ages, and financial condition
of the family when the father died — the sons being
aged eight, thirteen and twenty — and then con-
sider the fact that the three sons graduated from
Princeton, and five of the daughters married college
3

34 JUKES— ED WA RDB

graduates, three of them of Yale and one each of
Harvard and Princeton. A man might well be
content to die without lands or gold when eight
sons and sons-in-laws were to be men of such
capacity, character, and training as are found in
this family.

They were not merely college graduates, but
they were eminent men. One held the position of
president of Princeton and one of Union College,
four were judges, two were members of the Conti-
nental Congress, one was a member of the gover-
nor's council in Massachusetts, one was a member
of the Massachusetts war commission in the Revo-
lutionary war, one was a state senator, one was
president of the Connecticut house of representa-
tives, three were officers in the Revolutionary war,
one was a member of the famous constitutional con-
vention out of which the United States was born,
one was an eminent divine and pastor of the his-
toric North church of New Haven, and one was
the first grand master of the Grand Lodge of
Masons in Connecticut. This by no means exhausts
the useful and honorable official positions occupied
by the eight sons and sons-in-law of Jonathan
Edwards, and it makes no account of their writings,
of noted trials that they conducted, but it gives
some hint of the pace which Mr. Edwards' children
set for the succeeding generations. It should be
said that the daughters were every way worthy
of distinguished husbands, and it ought also to
be said that the wives of the sons were worthy

THE CHILDREN'S START IN LIFE 35

of these men in intellectual force and moral qual-
ities.

Contrast this group of sixteen men and women
with the five sons of Max and the women with
whom they lived. In this group there was not a
strain of industry, virtue, or scholarship. They
were licentious, ignorant, profane, lacking ambition
to keep them out of poverty and crime. They
drifted into whatever it was easiest to do or to be.
Midday and midnight, heaven and its opposite,
present no sharper contrasts than the children and
the children-in-law of Jonathan Edwards and of
Max.

The two men were born in rural communities,
they both lived on the frontier; but the one was
born in a Christian home, was the son of a clergy-
man, of a highly educated man who took the
highest honors Harvard could give, was himself
highly educated in home, school, and at Yale Col-
lege, always associated with pure-minded, earnest
persons, and devoted his thought and activity to
benefiting mankind.

Max was the opposite of all this. There is no
knowledge of his childhood or of his parentage.
He was not bad, as bad men go; he was jolly,
could tell a good story, though they were always
off color, could trap unwary animals skillfully, was a
fairly good shot ; but no one was the better for any-
thing that he ever said, thought, or did. Jollity,
shiftlessness, and lack of purpose in one man have
given to the world a family of 1,200, mostly pau-

36 JUKES— ED WA RD8

pers and criminals; while Mr. Edwards, who never
amused any one, who was always chaste, earnest,
and noble, has given to the world a family of
more than 1,400 of the world's noblemen, who
have magnified strength and beauty all over the
land, illustrating grandly these beautiful lines of
Lowell :

" Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own. "

CHAPTER V

MRS. EDWARDS AND HOME TRAINING

Much of the capacity and talent, intensity and
character of the more than 1,400 of the Edwards
family is due to Mrs. Edwards. None of the
brothers or sisters of Jonathan Edwards had
families with any such marvelous record as his, and
to his wife belongs not a little of the credit.

At the age of twenty-four Mr. Edwards was mar-
ried to Sarah Pierrpont, aged seventeen. She had
an inheritance even more refined and vigorous
than that of Mr. Edwards. She was descended on
her father's side from the choicest of the Pierrpont
family of England and New England. Her father
was one of the most famous of New Haven clergy-
men, one of the principal founders, and a trustee
and lecturer of Yale College. On her mother's
side she was a granddaughter of Rev. Thomas
Hooker, of Hartford, "the father of the Connecti-
cut churches," and one of the grand men in early
American history.

Personally, she was so beautiful and so noble-
minded that at the age of thirteen she was known
far and near for her Christian character and excep-
tional ability. While she was still but thirteen and

(37J

38 JUKES— ED WA RDti

Mr. Edwards twenty, he wrote in a purely disinter-
ested way of the remarkable girl: "She is of a
wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevo-
lence of mind. She will sometimes go about from
place to place singing sweetly; and seems to be
always full of joy and pleasure ; and no one knows
for what."

Mr. Edwards was desirious of being married when
he went to Northampton as associate pastor with
his grandfather, Dr. Stoddard. Miss Pierrpont
was only sixteen years of age, and she declined to
be married until she was seventeen. He insisted,
but she persisted in her refusal.

Mrs. Edwards lived in her children. To her hus-
band came honor and glory in his lifetime, but to
her came denial, toil and care. At eighteen, this
young, beautiful, brilliant wife became a mother,
and until she was forty, there was ntver a period
of two years in which a child was not born to them,
and no one of the eleven children died until after
the last child was born. It was a home of little
children. Her husband had no care for the house-
hold and she wished him to have none. It was her
insistence that he should have thirteen hours of
every twenty-four for his study. Whatever may
have been the contribution of Mr. Edwards to the
inheritance of the family, they owed the charming
environment of the home to their mother.

This was a delightful home, as many persons have
testified who knew it. I saw recently the diary of
the famous George Whitefield, where he wrote that

MRS. EDWARDS AND HOME TRAINING 39

he sometimes wondered if it was not the Lord's
will that he should marry, that he might thereby
be more useful, and that if it was the Lord's will
that he should marry, he wished to be reconciled
thereto, but he did hope that the Lord would send
him as a wife such a woman as Mrs. Edwards,
whom he considered the most beautiful and noble
wife for a Christian minister that he had ever
known. If there be a more charming tribute to
woman than this, I have not seen it.

In view of the character of her children and their
great success in life, it may be interesting to know
how she brought up the children, of whom there
were so many, and for which the schools did so
little. This is the testimony of one who knew of
her home life well : " She had an excellent way of
governing her children; she knew how to make
them regard and obey her cheerfully. She seldom
punished them, and in speaking to them used gen-
tle and pleasant words. When she had occasion to
reprove or rebuke, she would do it in a few words,
without warmth and noise, and with all calmness
and gentleness of mind. In her directions and
reproofs of matters of importance, she would ad-
dress herself to the reason of her children, that
they might not only know her inclination and will,
but at the same time be convinced of the reason-
ableness of it She had need to speak but once
and she was obeyed; murmuring and answering
again were not known among them. In their man-
ners they were uncommonly respectful to their

40 JUKES— EDWARDS

parents. When their parents came into the room,
they all rose instinctively from their seats and never
resumed them until their parents were seated; and
when either parent was speaking, no matter with
whom they had been conversing, they were all
immediately silent.

"Quarreling and contention were in her family
wholly unknown. She carefully observed the first
appearance of resentment and ill-will in her young
children towards any person whatever, and did not
connive at it, but was careful to show her displeas-
ure, and suppress it to the utmost; yet not by
angry, wrathful words.

"Her system of discipline began at a very early
age, and it was her rule to resist the first, as well
as every subsequent exhibition of temper or disobe-
dience in the child, however young, until its will
was brought into submission to the will of the
parents."

It is needless to say that all this added materi-
ally to the good inheritance of the children.

CHAPTER VI

CAPACITY, CHARACTER AND TRAINING

In view of what has been learned regarding Jona-
than Edwards, his ancestors and his children, his
grandchildren might have found some excuse for
presuming upon the capacity and character which
they inherited. In their veins was the blood of
famous lines of noble men and women ; the blood
of Edwards, Stoddard, Pierrpont, and Hooker was
thrilling in their thought and intensifying their
character. They had inherited capacity and char-
acter at their best, but they did not presume upon
it. If ever inheritance would justify indifference
to training, it was in the case of the grandchildren
of Jonathan Edwards, but they were far from indif-
ferent to their responsibility.

It must be understood that the "family of Jona-
than Edwards " includes not only his descendants,
but the men who married into the family and whose
children became descendants of Mr. Edwards. At
first this may not seem the proper interpretation,
but there is no other that is legitimate. In the
case of the "Jukes" Mr. Dugdale includes in the
family both the men and the women who married
into the family, but in the case of Mr. Edwards

(41)

42 JUKR8— Kl) WA KDS

there is no call to include the women who thus
came into the family, and it would have magnified
the study needlessly.

Until quite recently there has been no way to
discover the standing of married women in Ameri-
can life except as we know the social, scholastic,
and professional position of their husbands. In
most families a son-in-law becomes a representative
factor of a family. Therefore, whenever the "Ed-
wards family " is spoken of it includes the sons-in-
law, but it does not include the daughters-in-law,
nor does it go beyond Jonathan Edwards to include
his brothers and sisters or their descendants.

The "Jukes" had no inherited capacity or train-
ing upon which they could safely presume. Their
only chance lay in nursing every germ of hope by
means of industry and education, through the dis-
cipline of the shop, the training of the schools, and
the inspiration of the church. Did they appreciate
this ? Far from it. Instead of developing capacity
by training, not one of the 1,200 secured even a
moderate education, and only twenty of them ever
had a trade, and ten of these learned it in the
state prison.

On the other hand, although the Edwards family
inherited abundant capacity and character, every
child has been educated from early childhood. Not
all of the college members of the family have been
discovered, and yet among the men alone I have
found 285 graduates and a surprisingly large num-
ber of these have supplemented the college course

CAPACITY, CHARACTER, TRAINING 43

~1

with post-graduate or professional study. Just as

the "Jukes" have intensified their degeneracy by
neglect, the Edwards family has magnified capacity
and character by industry and education.

Among the 285 college graduates of the Edwards
family there are thirteen presidents of colleges and
other higher institutions of learning, sixty-five pro-
fessors of colleges, and many principals of impor-
tant academies and seminaries. Forty-five Ameri-
can and foreign colleges and universities have this
family among the alumni. From this family have
come presidents for Yale, Princeton, Union, Hamil-
ton, Amherst, the University of California, the Uni-
versity of Tennessee, the famous Litchfield (Conn.)
law school, the Columbia law school, and Andover
Theological Seminary. Among these are such men
as President Timothy Dwight, Yale, 1794-1817;
Theodore Dwight Woolsey, Yale, 1846-71 ; Timothy
Dwight, Yale, 1886-97; Jonathan Edwards (Jr.),
Union, 1799-1801; Daniel C. Gilman, Johns Hop-
kins; Merrill E. Gates, Amherst; and Edwards A.
Park, Andover.

CHAPTER VII

AARON BURR

Undoubtedly some readers are already impatient
at the delay in dealing with Aaron Burr. There
was a time when it was the fashion to refer to
Colonel Burr as sufficiently infamous to prove that
heredity was of no appreciable value. As a matter
of fact it is rather refreshing to have one upon
whom the imagination can play. It simply inten-
sifies the white light of the rest of the record.

Colonel Burr was not a saint after the model pre-
sented by his father, the Rev. Dr. Aaron Burr, the
godly president of Princeton; by his grandfather,
Jonathan Edwards ; or by at least 1,394 of the other
members of the family of Mr. Edwards. There is
no purpose to give him saintly enthronement, but
it may not be amiss to suggest that the abuse of
him has been overdone.

Colonel Aaron Burr died at eighty after thirty
years of the worst treatment ever meted out to a
man against whom the bitterest enemies and the
most brilliant legal talent could bring no charge
that would stand in the eyes of the law. I have
no purpose to lessen the verdict of prejudice, for
the study of the Edwards family is all the more

(44)

AARON BURR 45

fascinating because of one such meteor of error.
It must be confessed, however, that a study of
the last thirty years of Colonel Burr's life makes
one more exasperated with human nature under a
political whip than with Colonel Burr's mistake.

At forty-nine Aaron Burr was one of the most
brilliant, most admired, and beloved men in the
United States. For thirty years his had been a
career with few American parallels. He had but
one real and intense enemy, and that man had
hated him all those years. Alexander Hamilton
had never missed an opportunity to vilify Mr. Burr,
and his attack had never been resented. Calmly
had Aaron Burr pursued his upward and onward
course, simply smiling at the vituperation of Hamil-
ton. Could those two men have agreed, they
would have been the greatest leaders any nation
ever had. Their hatred was as expensive as was
that of Blaine and Conklin in after years.

Every age must have a political scapegoat, one
upon whose head is placed symbolically the sins of
the period, and after he is sent into the wilderness
of obscurity it becomes a social and political crime
to befriend him. There have been several such in
our country's history, and there will be others.
Aaron Burr suffered more than any other simply be-
cause the glory from which he departed was greater.

On March 2, 1805, Aaron Burr, vice-president of
the United States, and president of the senate,
retired from the chair two days before his term
expired. He made a farewell address, which pro-

4fi JUKES— HOWARDS

duced a greater impression upon that body than
any other words ever spoken there. Every senator
was weeping, and for a long time no one could
leave his seat or propose any business. It was a
sight for the nation to look upon and wonder.
For fourteen years he had been one of the most
conspicuous members of that body.

Aaron Burr's ultimate ruin was wrought by his
colonization experiment in Louisiana. In popular
opinion, there was something traitorous in that un-
successful venture of his. In 1805 Mr. Burr paid
$50,000 for 400,000 acres of land which had been
purchased of Spain in 1800, before it passed to
France and then to the United States in 1803. Of
the motive of Colonel Burr we must always be
ignorant ; that he was not guilty of any crime in
connection therewith we are certain, for the highest
tribunal of the land acquitted him. President Jef-
ferson and the entire political force of the adminis-
tration were bent upon his conviction, but Chief
Justice Marshall, as capable, honorable, and incor-
ruptible a jurist as the country has known, would
not have it so. Unfortunately, the brilliant arraign-
ment by William Wirt was printed and read for
half a century, while the calm rulings of Chief
Justice Marshall never went beyond the court room.

Why did a man of his capabilities, upon retire-
ment from the vice-presidency, attempt, at fifty
years of age to start life anew under such unprom-
ising conditions? Because he was suddenly politi-
cally and professionally ruined. Euined because

AARON BURR 47

he had killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Why
did he do it? It is a long story.

To make it intelligent, his life must be reviewed.
After a brilliant military career, which began when
he was nineteen and left him an heroic colonel, he
studied law and practiced in Albany. At the age
of twenty-eight he was a leader in the New York
legislature, and was chairman of the most import-
ant committees, always with the people, against
the aristocracy — an unpardonable mistake in those
times. At thirty-four he was attorney-general of the
state, and his great decisions were accepted by all
other states. At thirty-four he established the
Manhattan bank of New York city. He was the
only man with the ability or courage to find a way
to establish a bank for the people, and the solidity
of that institution for a hundred years is an all-
sufficient vindication of his plan. At thirty-five he
was appointed and confirmed as a supreme court
judge of New York state, but he declined the
honor, and was the same year elected to the United
States senate. He was re-elected, serving in all
fourteen years.

At the second presidential election Senator Burr
received one vote in the electoral college, at the
the third he received thirty, and in the fourth
received seventy-three. Jefferson also received
seventy-three and the election was thrown into the
house. This was in 1800 and Mr. Burr was forty-
years of age. The choice lay with New York,
which could be carried by no man but Aaron Burr.

48 J UKKS— ED WA RDS

Alexander Hamilton was the leader of the Fed-
eralists. He also was of New York. It was a
battle of the giants. These two men measured
swords. The presidency of the United States was
the prize both parties — the Federalists and the
Democrats — were seeking. New York had always
been with the Federalists. In this great struggle
it went against Hamilton and for Burr. This ended
the political career of Hamilton, and would have
done so had he lived longer. He was one of
America's greatest statesmen, but one of the
poorest politicians. No one could get along with
him but Washington, and when he died the politi-
cal end of Hamilton came.

Jefferson and Burr each received seventy-three
votes for president, and Adams received sixty-five.
New York had twelve votes, so that if she had
remained with the Federalist candidate Adams, he
would have won, seventy-seven to sixty-one. This
defeat angered Hamilton beyond endurance. He
and Burr had been deadly rivals for thirty years,
first for the love of woman, then for military pre-
ferment, and later in the political arena. When
Burr established the Manhattan bank, Hamilton's
brother-in-law, inspired by Hamilton, attacked
Burr's motive, with the result of a duel in which
neither was harmed.

Notwithstanding Hamilton's greatness, he was
always in trouble with men and women. He never
ceased his abuse of Burr, whose election as senator
angered him. Later, when Burr was the choice of

AARON BURR 49

congress as minister to Paris, backed especially
by Madison and Monroe, Hamilton succeeded in
compassing his defeat. Again, when Adams
had decided upon some important appointment
for Burr, Hamilton succeeded in defeating him.
This made Burr's promotion to the vice-presi-
dency and his own downfall the more exaspera-
ting to Hamilton.

Four years passed. Burr won high honor as
president of the senate, and the party nominated
him for governor of New York with practical una-
nimity. This was too much for Hamilton, who had
nothing to lose by indulging his enmity to the full.
The campaign against Burr was one of the basest
on record. It was one of vilification. Being vice-
president, he was at a disadvantage when it came
to conducting the campaign, and he was defeated.

There were many features of this campaign that
were peculiarly annoying to Burr, and for the
second time in his life he resorted to the duel, and
Hamilton was killed. Had Burr died in that hour,
history would have a different place for him as well
as for Hamilton, but in his death Hamilton was
glorified. The most preposterous stories, such as
his firing into the air, were invented and believed.
The time and the conditions were as bad as they
could be for Burr. The North never condoned a
duel that ended fatally, and then less than ever. I
have no word of apology to offer for the duel. It
was weakness, as it always is, and from it came all
the ills that befell Aaron Burr.
4

.",0 JUKES— ED WA RDX

Censure him all you choose, and then look at the
conditions of his childhood and wonder that he
lived to fifty years of age before the lack of early
care brought forth its fruit. Aaron Burr received
as good an intellectual and moral legacy as any one
of the 1,400 of the Edwards family. His father
and mother, grandfather and grandmother would
have given him as good an environment and train-
ing as any one of them enjoyed, but — his father
died before he was two years old, and his mother,
grandfather, and grandmother died when he was
two years old, and he and his sister, four years old,
went to live with his oldest uncle, Timothy Ed-
wards, who was only twenty. This uncle was also
bringing up two younger brothers aged eight and
thirteen, and three young sisters. While Timothy
Edwards made an eminently worthy citizen and
reared a family of noble sons and daughters, he
was not prepared at nineteen to support so many
younger children and give a two-year-old boy the
attention that he needed.

At twelve years of age Aaron Burr went to col-
lege, and after this time he never had even the
apology of a home, indeed he never had a home
such as his nature demanded. There are three pic-
tures of the child which satisfy me that the right
training would have enabled Aaron Burr to go into
history as the noblest Roman of them all.

At four years of age he was at school, where the
treatment was so severe that he ran away from

AARON BURR 51

school and home and could not be found for three
days.

At seven years of age he was up in a cherry tree
when a very prim and disagreeable spinster came to
call, and he indulged in the childish luxury of
throwing cherries at her. She sought "Uncle Tim-
othy," who took the seven-year-old child into the
house, gave him a long and severe lecture, offered a
long prayer of warning, and then "licked me like a
sack."

At ten years of age he ran away from the severity
of his uncle, and went to New York and shipped as
cabin boy. His uncle followed him, and when the
little fellow saw him he went to the top of the
masthead and refused to come down until his
uncle agreed not to punish him. It is easy to see
that his uncle aroused in him all the characteristics
that should have been calmed, and gave him none of
that care which father or mother would have pro-
vided him.

At twelve he entered Princeton, and graduated
with honors at sixteen. College life had its tempta-
tions, but he conducted himself with unusual deco-
rum, and upon graduation went to study with an
eminent clergyman. Apparently he expected to
enter the ministry, but the theology of Dr. Bellamy
did not commend itself to him, and even less did
the spirit with which the theologian met his queries,
so that for the remaining sixty odd years of life he
would not talk about theology. Here was a brilliant
lad, fresh from college, with the inheritance of Burr

52 JUKES— BD WARDS

and Edwards, who might have been led into a
glorious career, bat was instead repelled, and went
back to his uncle's home, with no profession and
no plan for life, with no one to advise him.

The battle of Bunker hill aroused Burr to patri-
otic purpose, and, though but nineteen, he started
for Cambridge to enlist. He was stricken with
fever, however, and before he was recovered he
heard of Arnold's proposed expedition to Quebec,
and, though he had better be in bed, he took his
musket and walked to Newburyport, 30 miles, in
season to ship with the troops. Two men were
there ahead of him awaiting his arrival with instruc-
tions from his uncle to bring him back to New
Jersey. This was too much for young Burr, who
did not recognize the right of his uncle to interfere,
and he expressed his mind so vigorously as to com-
mand the admiration of the soldiers and arouse the
fears of the two messengers, who returned without
him. This was the last of his uncle's interference.
Who that reads of the childhood life of this orphan
can wonder that he lacked patience under the severe
reverse of political fortune at fifty years of age?
That he is the one illustrious exception among the
1,400 need cause no surprise.

CHAPTER VIII

CONTRASTS

It has already been emphasized that the Jukes
always mingled blood of their own quality in their
descendants, and that the Edwards family has
invariably chosen blood of the same general tone
and force. Who can think for a moment that the
Jukes would have remained on so low a level if the
Edwards blood had been mixed with theirs, or
that the Edwards would have retained their intel-
lectual supremacy if they had married into the
Jukes. The fact is that in 150 years the Jukes
never did mingle first-class blood with their own,
and the Edwards family has not in 150 years
degenerated through marriage.

It is pre-eminently true that a mighty intellec-
tual and moral force does plough the channel of its
thought and character through many generations.
It would be well for any doubter to study the
records of thoroughbreds in the animal world.
The highest record ever made for milk and butter
was by an animal of no family, and she was valu-
able only for what she could earn. None of her
power went to her offspring. She was simply a
high-toned freak, but an animal with a clean pedi-

54 -/ lf K KB- SD WARDS

gree back to Borne great progenitor is valuable inde-
pendently of individual earning qualities.

No more would any one claim that the Jukes
would not have been immensely improved by edu-
cation and environment, or that the Edwards
family could have maintained its record without
education, training, and environment. The facts
show that the Jukes first, last, and all the time
neglected these advantages, and that the Edwards
family, with all its intermarrying, has never neg-
lected them.

The Jukes were notorious law breakers, while
the Edwards family has furnished practically no
lawbreakers, and a great array of more than 100
lawyers, thirty judges, and the most eminent law
professor probably in the country. James Bryce in
his comments upon America places one of this
family at the head of legal learning on this conti-
nent. This was Theodore William D wight, LL.D.,
born in New Haven, July 18, 1822; graduated from
Hamilton College, 1840; professor there 1842-58.
In 1858 he went to Columbia College, organized
the law school and was its president for thirty-
three years.

Some of the most eminent official city attorneys
of Philadelphia, New York and Chicago have been
found in this family. Ex-Governor Hoadley, of
Ohio, a descendant of Jonathan Edwards, is now
the head of perhaps the leading law firm of New
York City or of the country. When one studies
the legal side of the family it seems as though

CONTRASTS 55

they were instinctively and chiefly lawyers and
judges. It simply means that whatever the Ed-
wards family has done it has done ably and nobly.
There is no greater test of intellectual majesty than
that which the practice of law puts upon a man.
When James Bryce pays his grand tribute to Dr.
Theodore "W. Dwight, president of Columbia Col-
lege law school, it signifies more intellectually than
to have said that he was president of the United
States.

None of the Jukes had the equivalent of a com-
mon school education, while there are few of the
Edwards family that have not had more than that.
Few were satisfied with less than academy or semi-
nary if they did not go to college. There is not
a leading college in the country in which their
names are not to be found recorded. They have
not only furnished thirteen college presidents and
a hundred and more professors, but they have
founded many important academies and seminaries
in New Haven and Brooklyn, all through the New
England states, and in the Middle, Western, and
Southern states. They have contributed liberally
to college endowments. One gave a quarter of a
million as an endowment for Yale.

In Yale alone have been more than 120 gradu-
ates. Among these are nearly twenty Dwights,
nearly as many Edwards, seven Woolseys, eight
Porters, five Johnsons, four Ingersolls, and several
of most of the following names: Chapin, Win-
throp, Shoemaker, Hoadley, Lewis, Mathers, Reeve,

56 JUKES— ED WARDS

Rowland, Carmalt, Devereaux, Weston, Heermance,
Whitney, Blake, Collier, Scarborough, Yardley,
3ilman, Raymond, Wood, Morgan, Bacon, Ward,
Foote, Cornelius, Shepards, Bristed, Wickerham,
Doubleday, Van Volkenberg, Robbing, Tyler, Mil-
ler, Lyman, Pierpont, and Churchill, the author of
"Richard Carvel," is a recent graduate. In Am-
herst at one time there were of this family Presi-
dent Gates and Professors Mather, Tyler, and
Todd. Wherever found they are leaders even in
college faculties. Those who know what Gates,
Mather, Tyler, and Todd have stood for as presi-
dent and professors of Amherst will appreciate
what Jonathan Edwards' blood has done for this
college.

Of the Jukes, 440 were more or less viciously
diseased. The Edwards family was healthy and
long lived. Of the eleven children of Mr. and
Mrs. Edwards, four lived to be more than seventy
years of age, — seventy-three, seventy-five, seventy-
seven and seventy-nine, — and three others were fifty,
fifty-six, and sixty-three. Only one died unmarried,
none died in childhood. The record for health and
longevity continues through every generation.
They have also done much to alleviate the sufferings
of mankind. There have been sixty physicians, all
marked men. Dr. Richard Smith Dewey was an
eminent surgeon in the Franco-Prussian war, having
charge of the Prussian hospital at Hesse Cassel.
Dr. Sereuo Edwards Dwight was a physician and
surgeon in the British regular army. The physi-

CONTRASTS 57

•ians of the family have had important connection
with insane asylums and hospitals. The legis-
lative action of New York, by which the first insane
asylum of the state was built, was largely the
result of a physician of this family. The medical
superintendent of the Illinois state insane asylum
was another of the family. Eminent names in the
medical annals of San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit,
New York, Boston, and other cities can be traced
to Jonathan Edwards.

The Jukes neglected all religious privileges,
defied and antagonized the church and all that it
stands for, while the Edwards family has more
than a 100 clergymen, missionaries, and theologi-
cal professors, many of the most eminent in the
country's history. America has had no more
brilliant preachers and theologians than some of
those that bear the names of Edwards, Dwight,
Woolsey, Park, Ingersoll. There have been no
more noted missionaries than this family has sent
for faithful and successful work in Asia Minor,
India, Africa, China, Hawaii, and the South Sea
islands. Dwight's famous five volumes on theology
are a product of a worthy descendant of Jonathan
Edwards. Edwards A. Park, the longtime head
of Andover theological seminary, whose vigor of
thought, keenness of logic, and pulpit power are
unsurpassed, was a descendant of Mr. Edwards.
The family has furnished several army chaplains
and one eminent chaplain of the United States
senate. They have made many churches prominent

58 JUKES-EDWARDS

for the vigor of their pulpit utterances. The
famous Second church, Portland, Park street
church of Boston, and many in New Haven and
other Connecticut cities and towns as well as
many churches in the Middle and Western States
owe much to the descendants of Mr. Edwards.

Not one of the Jukes was ever elected to a
public office, while more than eighty of the family
of Jonathan Edwards have been especially honored.
Legislatures in all sections of the country, gov-
ernor's councils, state treasuries, and other elective
offices have been filled by these men. They have
been mayors of New Haven, Cleveland, and Troy;
governors of Connecticut, Ohio, and South Caro-
lina; they have been prominent in the Continental
congress, in the constitutional conventions of Mas-
sachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Illinois,
and Wisconsin. They have represented the United
States at several foreign courts; several have been
members of congress; three have been United
States senators, and one vice-president of the
United States.

The Jukes lacked the physical and moral cour-
age, as well as the patriotic purpose, to enlist, but
there were seventy-five officers in the army and
navy from the family of Mr. Edwards. This family
has been prominent as officers, chaplains, or sur-
geons, in the army and navy in the three great
wars. In the Civil war they were at Shiloh, New
Orleans, and with the Bed river expedition, at Fort
Fisher and Newbern, at Big Bethel, Antietam, and

CONTRASTS 59

Gettysburg, on Lookout mountain with Hooker,
with Sheridan in the Shenandoah, and were on the
march to the sea with Sherman.

One spinster of the family residing in Detroit
expressed much regret that she had no husband.
The reason she gave, however, was highly compli-
mentary to the sterner sex, — because she had no
husband to send to the Civil war. Having none,
she paid the regulation bounty and had a man in
the service of her country for three years in lieu of
the husband she would have sent if she had had
one.

The Jukes were as far removed as possible from
literature. They not only never created any, but
they never read anything that could by any stretch
of the imagination be styled good reading. In the
Edwards family some sixty have attained promi-
nence in authorship or editorial life. "Kichard
Carvel," is by Mr. Winston Churchill, a descendant
of Mr. Edwards, and I have found 135 books of
merit written by the family. Eighteen consider-
able journals and periodicals have been edited and
several important ones founded by the Edwards
family.

The Jukes did not wander far from the haunts of
Max. They stagnated like the motionless pool,
while the Edwards family is a prominent factor in
the mercantile, industrial, and professional life of
thirty-three states of the union and in several for-
eign countries, in ninety-two American and many
foreign cities. They have been pre-eminently direc-

GO ./ UKE8— ED WA RDU

torn of men. The Pacific steamship lin« and fifteen
American railway systems have had as president,
superintendent, or otherwise active in the manage-
ment one of this family. Many large banks, banking
houses, and insurance companies have been directed
by them. They have been owners or superinten-
dents of large coal mines in Pennsylvania and West
Virginia, of large iron plants and vast oil interests
in Pennsylvania, and of silver mines in Nevada.
There is scarcely any great American industry that
has not had one of this family among its chief pro-
moters. Eli Whitney of cotton-gin fame married a
granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards.

Prison reform has found its leading advocates in
this family. Wilberforce's best American friend
was of this fold, and Garibaldi valued one of the
family above all other American supporters.

Whatever the Jukes stand for, the Edwards
family does not. Whatever weakness the Jukes
represent finds its antidote in the Edwards family,
which has cost the country nothing in pauperism,
in crime, in hospital or asylum service. On the
contrary, it represents the highest usefulness in
invention, manufacture, commerce, founding of
asylums and hospitals, establishing and developing
missions, projecting and energizing the best phil-
anthropies.

CHAPTER IX

TIMOTHY EDWARDS

To make more clear, if possible, the persistence
of intellectual activity and moral virtue, let us study
samples of the family, Take for instance the eld-
est son, Timothy. He was a member of and leader
in the famous Massachusetts council of war in the
Revolution, a colonel in the militia, and a judge.
His descendants have been leaders in Binghamton,
Pittsburg, Indianapolis, Bangor, St. Louis, North-
ampton, New Bedford, San Francisco, New York
New Haven, and many other cities and towns in
New England, New York, Pennsylvania, West Vir-
ginia, and Ohio. From his descendants a Con-
necticut town, Chaplin, is named; Newark, Ohio,
had a long-time principal, Jonathan E. Chaplin ;
Andover Theological Seminary had one of its most
famous treasurers, Samuel Farrar; the American
board of missions had one of its grandest leaders
and secretaries, Dr. Elias Cornelius ; the American
Baptist Missionary Union had one of its eminent
secretaries, Dr. Solomon Peck; the American Mis-
sionary Association had as its great treasurer, W.
E. Whiting ; the famous young ladies' seminary of
Lenox, Mass., had for thirty years its great prin-

(61)

62 JUKES— ED WA XDS

cipal, Elizabeth Sedgwick ; Boston had a promi-
nent lawyer, a graduate of Harvard, William Minot ;
St. Louis had a leading lawyer, William D. Sedg-
wick ; Antietam had in the list of killed the gallant
Major Sedgwick; San Francisco recorded among
her distinguished sons the long-time superintendent
of the Pacific mail steamship company ; the United
States navy counted as one of her able officers a sur-
geon, Dr. George Hopkins; Amherst had as her
most famous instructor Professor W. S. Tyler, D. D.,
LL. D., at the head of the Greek department for
half a century; she also has the present brilliant
professor of biology, John M. Tyler ; Sheridan had
as a brilliant colonel in the grand ride of the Shen-
andoah Colonel M. W. Tyler; invention claims the
discoverer of the Turbine wheel, W. W. Tyler ;
Knox College has claimed as a leader at one time,
as has Smith at another, Professor Henry H. Tyler.
A detailed study of the family of the eldest eon is
suggestive. He was the sixth child, born in North-
ampton, 1738, when the father was thirty-five and
the mother twenty-eight. He was but twenty years
old when the father and mother died and the care
of the family devolved upon him. He had gradu-
ated from Princeton the previous year but the
responsibility of a large family prevented his enter-
ing upon professional life. Two years after the
death of his father he married and removed to
Elizabethtown, N. J., where he resided for ten years.
In 1770 he returned to Stockbridge, Mass. Berk-
shire county was still on the frontier and was

TIMOTHY EDWARDS 63

sparsely settled. The store which Mr. Edwards
opened in 1770 was the first in the county. The
settlers raised wheat on the newly cleared land.
This Mr. Edwards bought and sent to New York,
bringing back goods in return. In five years he
became the most prosperous man in the county,
buying and clearing a very large farm on which he
employed as many as fifty men in the busy season.
The outbreak of the Revolutionary struggle was a
most inopportune time for Timothy Edwards; but
for that he would have become one of the wealthiest
men of his day. All business was suspended and
he gave himself to his country's cause with intense
devotion. He was at once appointed on a commis-
sion with General Schuyler to treat with the
Indians; was appointed commissary to look after
the supply of the army with provisions. From
1777 to 1780 he was a leader in the Legislature of
Massachusetts ; was elected to the Continental Con-
gress with John Hancock and John Adams ; was a
colonel in the Massachusetts militia and a judge of
probate. When the war broke out Timothy Ed-
wards was worth $20,000, which he had accumu-
lated in addition to all his other burdens. When
the war closed he had nothing, and was $3,000 in
debt to New York merchants. To understand what
sacrifices he made it must be understood that when
the government was in great straits he took $5,000
of money that was as good as gold and let the
government have it, taking in return money that
was of slight value. He also took fifty tons of

64 JUKES- ED WARDS

floor to Springfield and let the government hav«
it for paper money at par. There were no greater
heroes in the Revolutionary war than such men as
Timothy Edwards. He was nearly fifty years old
when the war closed and he found himself the
father of thirteen children and without property
or business. Full of courage and enterprise he
succeeded in supporting his family in comfort and
in regaining a substantial property before his death,
which occurred in the midst of the next war, Octo-
ber 27, 1813.

It was not an easy thing to educate children in
those times. When the Revolutionary war broke
out his oldest child was but thirteen, and when it
ended he had ten children under twenty-one.
There were only three books in the schools at Stock-
bridge during the war, Dilworth's Spelling Book
and Arithmetic and the Book of Psalms. From
these the children of Timothy Edwards received
their education and that it was a good training
subsequent events show.

The first born, a daughter, married Benjamin
Chaplin, Jr., a graduate of Yale (1778), and for her
second husband Capt. Dan Tyler, of Brookline, Ct.,
a graduate of Harvard. Her second child, Edward,
became Register of Probate. Jonathan, the second
born, had several children who became prominent
in professional and business life. Phoebe married
Rev. Asahel Hooker, an eminent graduate of Yale,
and for her second husband Rev. Samuel Farrer, a
graduate of Harvard, and for many years treasurer

TIMOTHY EDWARDS 65

and financial agent of Andover Theological Semi-
nary. Her children were noted men and women,
graduates of Yale and Dartmouth, clergymen, theo-
logical professors, secretary of the American Board
of Foreign Missions, and secretary American Baptist
Missionary Union, prominent teachers and authors.
Rhoda Edwards, another of Timothy's daughters,
married Col. Josiah Dwight, of Springfield. Among
their fifteen children and their descendants are the
founder of a famous young ladies' school at Lenox ;
an author of " Spanish Conquest of America," and
five other considerable works; clerk of supreme
court of Massachusetts; a Boston lawyer, graduate
of Harvard; an eminent linguist and graduate of
Harvard ; music teacher in New York City, educated
in Germany ; St. Louis lawyer, graduate of Harvard
college and law school, who studied in Germany;
major in Civil war, wounded at Antietam; hospital
nurse in Civil war; graduate of Yale; graduate of
Cambridge, Eng., and author of "Five Years in an
English University;" a graduate of Amherst and
Andover, and missionary in Southern India; lawyer
in Springfield; eminent teacher at Northampton;
leading physician at Northampton ; leading physi-
cian at New Bedford; supt. Pacific Mail Steamship
Company ; merchant in New York ; insurance mana-
ger, New York; author of "Greece and Roman
Mythology," and five other important works; supt.
Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton R. R.; a New York
lawyer and graduate of Yale ; author of " History of
Virginia," and two other works; graduate Dart-

06 •/ UK El 8— KD WA RDS

mouth and Andover; assistant surgeon U. S. Navy;
and an officer in Civil war, who fought in thirty
battles.

Mary Edwards, another daughter of Timothy,
married Mason Whiting, District Attorney of New
York, and member of New York Legislature. In
this family of eight children and their descendants
are an authoress ; a colonel in Civil war ; treasurer
American Missionary Association ; Rev. W. S. Tyler,
D. D., LL. D., a graduate of Amherst and Andover,
professor of Greek for fifty years at Amherst ; Col.
Mason Whiting Tyler, graduate of Amherst, gallant
soldier in Civil war; Wm. W. Tyler, graduate of
Amherst, manufacturer of famous Turbine Water
Wheels ; Henry Mather Tyler, graduate of Am-
herst, professor of Greek at Knox College, pastor
at Galesburg, Fitchburg and Worcester, and pro-
fessor of Greek at Smith College ; John Mason
Tyler, graduate of Amherst and Union Theological
Seminary, studied at Gothenburg and Leipsic, pro-
fessor of Biology at Amherst and eminent lecturer.

To William Edwards, another son of Timothy,
oldest son of Jonathan Edwards, an entire chapter
will be given.

CHAPTER X

COLONEL WILLIAM EDWARDS

Fascinating is the story of Colonel William Ed-
wards, grandson of Jonathan Edwards, the inventor
of the process of tanning by which the leather
industry of the world was revolutionized. In no
respect did the intellectual and moral inheritance
show itself more clearly than in the recuperative
force of the family of Colonel Edwards.

Attention has already been called to the remark-
able way in which the father, Timothy Edwards,
re-established himself and educated his large family
after his great financial reverses in the period of the
Revolutionary war, but the story of Colonel Wil-
liam Edwards is even a more striking illustration
of this same power. He was born at Elizabeth,
New Jersey, November 11, 1770. He was a mere
child during the Revolutionary struggle. Before
he was two years old the father removed to Stock-
bridge, Mass., and the boy grew up in as thoroughly
a rural community as could be found. The school
privileges were very meagre. No books were
printed in the American colonies because of British
prohibition. From early childhood he had to work,
first as hit mother's assistant, tending the children

68 JUKES— EDWARDS

and doing all kinds of household work such at* a
handy boy can do. As soon as he could sit on a
horse he rode for light ploughing and by the
time he was ten was driving oxen for heavy plough-
ing and teaming.

William Edwards was only thirteen when he was
put out as an apprentice to a tanner in Elizabeth-
town, N. J. To reach this place the lad had to
ride horseback to the Hudson river, about thirty
miles, make arrangements to have the horse taken
back, and take passage on a West Indies cattle brig
to New York. It took him a week to get to New
York. He then took the ferry for Elizabethtown.

When young Edwards began life as a tanner it
took twelve months for the tanning of hides. This
was by far the most extensive tannery in America.
It had a capacity of 1,500 sides. The only "improve-
ment" then known — 1784 — was the use of a wooden
plug in the lime vats and water pools to let off the
contents into the brook. The bark was ground by
horse power. There was a curb fifteen feet in diam-
eter, made of three-inch plank, with a rim fifteen
inches high. Within this was a stone wheel with
many hollows and the wooden wheel with long pegs.
Two horses turned these wheels which would grind
half a cord of bark in a day of twelve hours. The
first year William was at work grinding bark. All
the pay received for the year's work was the knowl-
edge gained of the art of grinding bark, very poor
board (no clothing, no money), and the privilege
of tanning for himself three sheep skins. The

COLON 'KL WILLIAM EDWARDS 69

fourth half year he received his first money, $2.50 a
month, which was paid out of friendliness for the
Edwards family.

Before he was twenty he set up in business for
himself. He had saved $100; his father, still poor,
gave him $300; he bought land for his plant for
$700 on long credit. After years of great struggle
he succeeded in business and developed the process
by which instead of employing one hand for every
one hundred sides he could tan 40,000 with twenty
lads and the cost was reduced from twelve cents a
pound to four cents. The quality was improved
even more than the cost was reduced. When the
war of 1812 broke out he had practically the only
important tannery in the United States, but the war
scare and attendant evils led to his failure in 1815.
He was now 45 years old with a wife and nine chil-
dren. He went to work in a factory for day wages
to keep his family supplied with the necessities of
life. By some misunderstanding and a combination
of law suits his patents were lost to him.

When Colonel Edwards failed in 1815 he owed
considerable sums of money and nine years later the
courts released him from all obligations, yet between
the age of 69 and 75 he paid every cent of this in-
debtedness amounting to $25,924.

The chief interest in Colonel Edwards centers in
his children. When his failure came there were nine
children, five boys and four girls. The youngest
was a few months old and the eldest 19. Seven of
them were under 12 years of age. In the first four

70 JUKES— EDWARDS

of their reverses two others were born, BO that
his large family had their preparation and start in
life in the years of struggle. Nevertheless they took
their places among the prosperous members of the
Edwards family. The eldest son, William W. Ed-
wards, was one of the eminently successful men of
New York. He lived to be 80 years old and his life
was fully occupied with good work. He was en-
gaged in the straw goods business in New York;
helped to develop the insurance business to large
proportions; organized the Dime Savings Bank of
Brooklyn, of which he was treasurer and cashier.
He was one of the founders of the American Tract
Society and of the New York Mercantile Library.
He was a member of the State legislature for sev-
eral terms.

Henry Edwards was one of Boston's most eminent
merchants and a most useful man. He had the only
strictly wholesale silk house in Boston for nearly half
a century. He was born in Northampton, 1798. At
the age of fifteen he entered the employ of a promi-
nent Boston importing house and began by opening
the store, building the fires, and carrying out goods.
By the time he was twenty he was the most trusted
employee. He was a born trader. His brother in
New York knowing that twist buttons were scarce in
that city suggested that Henry buy up all there were
in Boston before the dealers discovered the fact that
they were scarce in New York and send them on to
him. They cleared $500 in a few weeks. He was
an earnest student. Not having had the advantages

COLONEL WILLIAM EDWARDS 71

•f an education he made up for it by studying even-
ings. They imported their silks from France which
led him to study French until he was accomplished
in the art of reading and speaking the French lan-
guage. It is rather remarkable that learning the
language in this way, he was able to go to France
and out-rank most foreigners in Parisian society.
An Edwards did not absolutely need the college and
the university in order to be eminently scholarly in
any special line.

At the age of twenty-five he went into business
as the senior partner of the house of Edwards &
Stoddard on State street, Boston. It was the only
house that made its whole business the importing of
silks. At the age of twenty-eight he went to Paris
to purchase silks and remained there many years.
They did a highly profitable business for nearly fifty
years. He received much social attention while in
Paris. General Lafayette was specially friendly,
and the families visited frequently. He was also
highly honored in Boston, where he was a member
of the city government — it was an honor in those
days — for nine years, one of the trustees of Amherst
College for forty years, a member of the Massachu-
setts legislature and received several important ap-
pointments of trust and honor from Governor John
A. Andrew and President Lincoln. Boston had few
men in his day who were more prosperous or more
highly honored.

Ogden E. Edwards was for several years at the
head of one of the largest leather houses of New

72 JUKES— ED WARDS

York City, eminently prosperous and of great service
to the public. Alfred Edwards was founder and
senior partner in one of the largest wholesale dry
goods houses of New York for fifty years, known as
Alfred Edwards & Co. Amory was for many years a
member of the firm of Alfred Edwards & Co. He
was also United States Consul at Buenos Ayres,
and traveled extensively in South America. His
nephew, Win. H. Edwards, wrote of these travels.
This nephew, resident at Coalbough, West Virginia,
is the author of a famous work on " The Butterflies
of North America," and also of an important work
on "Shaksper nor Shakespeare." Kichard C. Ed-
wards was also a member of the firm of Alfred Ed-
wards & Co. and shared the prosperity of the house
with his brother.

Rebecca T. Edwards, the eldest daughter, married
Benjamin Curtis, a wealthy merchant in business in
New York and Paris. She was married in Paris and
General Lafayette gave her away in place of her
father. Sarah H. Edwards married Bev. John N.
Lewis, a successful clergyman. Elizabeth T. Ed-
wards married Henry Rowland, an eminently suc-
cessful and useful citizen of New York, whose chil-
dren, like himself, have been honored in many ways.

Ann Maria Edwards married Professor Edwards
A. Park, D. D., the president of Andover Theological
Seminary and the most eminent theologian of the
day. Their son, Rev. William Edwards Park, of
Gloversville, New York, is a preacher of rare ability.

COLONEL WTLLIAM EDWARDS 73

Rev. W. E. Park has two sons, graduates of Yale,
young men of great promise.

The ten children of Colonel Edwards lived to great
age, and each of the sons was eminently successful
in business, and all were highly esteemed. Each of
the daughters married men eminent in commercial
or professional life. None of them were privileged
to receive a liberal education because of the great
financial reverses that came to the father in their
youth, but every one of them was closely identified
with educational institutions and all were rated as
scholarly men and women.

CHAPTER XI

THE MARY EDWARDS D WIGHT FAMILY

After studying at some length the family of the
eldest son of Jonathan Edwards, it is worth while to
study the family of one of the daughters. Mary,
the fourth child born at Northampton (1734), was
married at the age of 16 to Timothy Dwight, born
in Vermont (1726) and graduated from Yale in 1744.

It is interesting to find a daughter of Jonathan
Edwards marrying a Tale graduate, who "had such
extreme sensibility to the beauty and sweetness of
always doing right, and such a love of peace, and
regarded the legal profession as so full of tempta-
tions to do wrong, in great degree and small " that
he persistently refused to study law, though it had
been his father's great desire. The conscientious-
ness of Major Dwight is well illustrated by this in-
cident. There was a lottery in the interest of Prince-
ton college, authorized by the legislature of New
Jersey, and Dwight was sent twenty tickets for sale.
He returned them, but the time required for the
mail in those days was so long that they did not
reach the destination until after the drawing. Major
Dwight was notified that one of his twenty tickets
had drawn $20,000 and all but one ticket had drawn

74)

MARY EDWARDS DWIQHT FAMILY 75

•om« prize. Major Dwight paid for the one blank
ticket and would not take a cent of the large prize
money. This was worthy a son-in-law of Mr.
Edwards, the progenitor of a family of mighty men.

Major Dwight was a merchant in Northampton, a
selectman, judge of probate for sixteen years and
was for several years a member of the legislature.
At the time of his death, 1778, he was possessed of
3,000 acres of valuable land in Northampton, and he
willed his wife $7,050, and each of his thirteen chil-
dren $1,165. At that time there were but five
painted houses in Northampton and but two were
carpeted. Of the fourteen children, thirteen grew
up, and twelve were married ; and their entire family
adds greatly to the glory of the family of Jonathan
Edwards. The oldest son, Dr. Timothy Dwight,
president of Yale, said with much tenderness and
force, "All that I am and all that I shall be, I owe
to my mother." She was a woman of remarkable
will power and intellectual vigor. She was but
seventeen when her first child was born and was the
mother of fourteen children at forty-two.

The first-born, President Timothy Dwight, S.T.
D., LL.D., born 1752, was one of the most eminent
of Americans. He learned his alphabet at a single
sitting while a mere child, and at four knew the cate-
chism by heart. He graduated from Yale at seven-
teen ; taught the Hopkins school in New Haven at
seventeen and eighteen ; was tutor in Yale from nine-
teen to twenty-five years of age; wrote the "Con-
quest of Canada," which was reprinted in London, at

7(j .UTKKR-KDWARD8

nineteen. This work was dedicated to George Wash-
ington by permission. At twenty-three, he was in
the fore front of the advocates of independence. At
twenty-two, General Washington appointed him a
chaplain in the army, and personally requested that
he accept. His widow received $350 a year pension
because of this service. He was a member of the
Massachusetts legislature and secured an important
grant to Harvard university. He was offered a pro-
fessorship at Harvard and could have gone to Con-
gress without opposition, but he declined both, and
at thirty-two accepted a country pastorate at Green-
field Hill, Connecticut. He remained there twenty-
two years. His salary was $750. He also had a gift
of $1,500 for accepting the call, a parish lot of six
acres, and twenty cords of wood annually. This was
said to be the largest ministerial salary in New Eng-
land. At forty-three he was called from the country
parish to the presidency of Yale. His salary as
president was $334. Later he had $500, from which
he paid $150 for two amanuenses which he required
because his sight had failed him. He published four-
teen important works. He was largely instrumental
in organizing the American Board of Commissioners
of Foreign Missions ; the American Missionary Society
and the American Bible Society. To him is largely
due the establishment of theological seminaries in
the country. For forty-six years he taught every
year either in a public or private school or college,
and all but one year of that time he preached every
week and almost invariably he prepared a new sermon.

MARY EDWARDS DWIGHT FAMILY 77

When he died, from a cancer at sixty-five, the chil-
dren insisted that the estate should be for the mother
during her lifetime, and when she died there was
found to be $26,000 although his salary had always
been ridiculously small.

The eight children were all boys, and all but one
grew to manhood. Timothy was a hardware mer-
chant in New Haven and New York for more than
forty years. He endowed the "Dwight Professor-
ship of Didactic Theology in Yale," which was named
for him. There were nine children, grandchildren
of President Dwight by his eldest son. Of these the
eldest, also Timothy, was the leading paper manufact-
urer in the trust mill headquarters at Chicago, and
his six children were enterprising and successful
business men in Illinois and Wisconsin. John Wil-
liam Dwight was one of the leading manufacturers
of chemicals in Connecticut. Edward Strong
Dwight, of Yale, 1838, and of Theological Seminary,
Yale, was for many years a trustee of Amherst and
a prominent clergyman. J. H. Lyman, M. D., and
Edward Huntington Lyman, M. D., were names that
added luster to the family of President Dwight.
Benjamin Woolsey Dwight, M. D., another son of
the President of Yale, was a graduate of Yale and
treasurer of Hamilton college for nineteen years.
Among his descendants are Richard Smith Dewey,
M. D., of Ann Arbor, in charge of Brooklyn City
Hospital ; charge of military hospital at Hesse Cas-
sel in Franco-Prussian war ; assistant superintendent
Illinois State Insane hospital at Elgin. Also Elliott

78 JUKES— ED WA RD8

Anthony, of Hamilton, 1850; Chicago lawyer; city
attorney; a member of the Illinois Constitutional
Convention in 1862 and again in 1870; founder of
the Law Institute, Chicago, and for several years
the president. Also Edward Woolsey Dwight, who
was a leading citizen and legislator of Wisconsin.

It is impracticable to give the record of many of
the distinguished members of such a family, but a
brief notice of a few will give some idea of the
standard of the family.

Benj. Woodbridge Dwight, Ph.D., b. 1816, g.
Hamilton 1835, Yale Theological Seminary, professor
in Hamilton ; founded Central Presbyterian church,
Joliet, 111.; established "Dwight's High School,"
Brooklyn; editor-in-chief of "The Interior" of Chi-
cago, which he owned and edited; contributor to
many magazines ; author of several scholarly works ;
had the first preparatory school which placed Ger-
man on a level with Greek in importance, and
founded a large preparatory boarding school at
Clinton, N. Y. He was a man of rare ability, char-
acter and success.

Prof. Theodore William Dwight, LL.D., b. 1822,
g. Hamilton 1840, g. Yale Law S. ; professor Hamil-
ton College sixteen years; dean of Columbia Col-
lege Law S. from 1858 to 1892. James Brice of
England placed him at the head of legal learning
in the United States and said: "It would be worth
an English student's while to cross the Atlantic to
attend his course." Another eminent English law-
yer, A. V. Dicey, in "Legal Education" wrote of

MART EDWARDS D WIGHT FAMILY 79

him as "the greatest living American teacher of
law." He gave a course of lectures each year at
Cornell; was a member of the N. Y. Constitutional
Convention in 1867; was a member of the famous
committee of seventy in N. Y. City that exposed the
Tweed ring ; was president of the New York Prison
Association and presided when Mr. Dugdale was
employed to study the Jukes ; associate editor
"American Law Register;" was legal editor of
"Johnson's Encyclopaedia," and made many impor-
tant contributions to the legal literature of the
country. There have been few men of equal emi-
nence in our country's history.

President Theodore Dwight Woolsey, D.D., LL.D.,
b. New York City, October 31, 1801, was the grand-
son of Mary Edwards Dwight and great grandson
of Jonathan Edwards; g. Yale 1820; studied at
Princeton Theological Seminary and g. at Yale L.
S. ; studied in German universities ; professor in Yale
twenty-two years; president of Yale 1846-1871.
Wesley an conferred degree of LL.D. and Harvard
that of LL.D. and S.T.D. all before he was fifty
years of age. President of the Evangelical Alliance
held in N. Y. City 1873, the leading American on
the Committee for the Revision of the Bible. After
resigning the presidency he continued to lecture at
Yale until his death, 1889. There was no more
eminent American in unofficial life from 1840 to
1890 than he. President Hayes once said that he
was greatly perplexed at one time as to the line of
public policy which he should pursue until it

80 JUKES-EDWARDS

occured to him that President Woolsey was the
one American on whose judgment he could rely, and
after consulting him his course was entirely clear
and his action wise. He was the author of several
valuable and standard works. Yale's first great
advance was in the time of President Timothy
D wight, its second was in the administration of
President Theodore Dwight Woolsey. When he
became president the classes about doubled in size.
He introduced new departments at once and en-
dowments came in, such as had never been con-
sidered possible. The tuition was raised from $33
to $90 ; the salaries were greatly increased, gradu-
ate courses were introduced; many new build-
ings were erected and everything went forward
at a radically different pace. Yale and American
thought owe much to President Woolsey. He
wrote many scholarly works.

There were thirteen children born to President
Woolsey. Of these, one daughter married Rev.
Edgar Laing Heermance, a graduate of Yale and a
useful and talented man; one of the sons, Theo-
dore Salisbury, was a graduate of Yale, and pro-
fessor of International Law at Yale.

President Timothy Dwight, D.D., LL.D., b. 1828,
g. Yale 1849, g. Yale Theological School, studied at
Bonn and Berlin in Germany ; was professor at Yale
and president from 1886 to 1897. He has been an
eminent American scholar for half a century. If
there were but two or three such men in a family
it would make it memorable. Yale gave him the

MARY EDWARDS D WIGHT FAMILY 81

degree of D.D., and both Harvard and Princeton
that of LL.D. He was editor of "The New Eng-
lander." It is a singular fact that the three great
advances which Yale has made have been in the
times of the two Dwights and of Woolsey, all
descendants of Jonathan Edwards. By the end of
his third year the number of students had risen to
1365 and the sixth year to 1784. The gifts to
Yale in each of the fifteen years of his administra-
tion were fabulous as compared with any past
experiences, often above $350,000.

President Sereno Edwards Dwight, D.D., g. Yale
1803, practiced law in New Haven; author of
important books which were republished in Eng-
land; became a clergyman at the age of twenty-
nine ; pastor of Park St. Church, Boston ; was chap-
lain of the U. S. Senate; established successful
boarding school in New Haven. Among his stu-
dents were the two boys who afterwards made the
famous Andrews & Stoddard's Latin Grammar.
His literary work was extensive and valuable.
Standing by himself he would shed lustre upon the
names he bore, Edwards and Dwight. He was a
tutor in Yale and was third president of Hamilton
College.

William Theodore Dwight, D.D., b. 1795, g. Yale
1813, tutor at Yale, practiced law in Philadelphia ;
became a clergyman; pastor in Portland; overseer
of Bowdoin College. He was offered three profes-
sorships, which he declined. He was one of the
religious leaders of America for many y«ani.
8

82 JUKES— SD WARDS

Hon. Theodore Dwight, b. 1764, lawyer. Editor
"The Connecticut Mirror" and "The Hartford
Courant;" member of Congress, where he won
honors by successfully combating the famous John
Randolph ; secretary of the famous Hartford Conven-
tion; established and edited 1815-17 the "Albany
Daily Advertiser;" established and edited the "New
York Daily Advertiser" 1817-36; wrote "Life of
Thomas Jefferson," and many other works of im-
portance. There were few men in his day who oc-
cupied a position of such influence.

Theodore Dwight, 2d, b. 1796, g. Yale 1814, emi-
nent scholar, imprisoned in Paris for distributing
the New Testament gratis in the streets; spoke
seven languages; was the warmest American friend
of Garibaldi and was authorized by him to edit his
works in this country; was director N. Y. Asylum
for the Blind, and of the N. Y. Public School
Assn. ; was instrumental in having music introduced
into the schools of N. Y. City; was prominent in
religious and philanthropic as well as educational
work. In the Kansas crisis he induced 3,000 set-
tlers to go to Kansas, and indirectly caused nearly
10,000 to go at that critical time. He edited at
various times "The N. Y. Daily Advertiser," "The
Youths Penny Paper," "The American Magazine,"
"The Family Visitor," "The N. Y. Presbyterian,"
"The Christian Alliance," and wrote several suc-
cessful text-books and many literary and historical
works. He was a leader in the noblest sense of
the 'term.

MAR Y ED WARDS D WIGHT FA MTL T 83

Nathaniel D wight, M.D., b. 1770, surgeon in
United States Army, practiced medicine in Provi-
dence ; prepared the first school geography ever pub-
lished in the United States; wrote many historical
works ; original advocate of special institutional care
for the insane. After eleven years of ardent cham-
pionship he saw the first insane retreat established.

Henry E. Dwight, M.D., b. 1832, g. Tale 1852,
g. Andover Theological Seminary 1857, studied in
Germany and France and was an eminent physician
in Philadelphia. Rev. S. G. Dwight, g. Union
Theological Seminary, and was a missionary in the
Sandwich Islands.

Here are a few who can only be named : John W.
Dwight, b. 1820, g. Yale, eminent divine and trustee
of Amherst College for many years.

Mrs. Rensselaer Nicol, of New Haven, a leader in
prison reform and other philanthropic movements.

Thomas B. Dwight, b. 1857, g. Yale, district
attorney of Philadelphia and eminent lawyer.

Sereno E. Dwight, surgeon in British army.

James A. Dwight, b. 1855, in United States navy.

Samuel H. Sumner was with Sherman in his
march to the sea.

Mrs. B. H. Perkins, b. 1819, eminent teacher,
principal Duffield school, Detroit.

William H. Sumner, officer in U. S. regular army.

Thomas Berry, banker in Cleveland.

General Robert Montgomery, of Pennsylvania.

O. H. Kennedy, officer in U. S. navy.

Fenton Rockwell, judge advocate and provost

84 JUKES— ED WA RDR

judge in New Orleans; officer in Civil war, and in
many important battles.

William R. Dwight, New York banker.

George S. Dwight, large railroad contractor.

William Allerton, leather merchant in Boston.

Mrs. Egbert C. Smyth, wife of the dean of Ando-
ver Theological Seminary.

Bossiter W. Raymond, eminent specialist, author,
and lecturer.

W. M. Bell, manufacturer, Allegheny.

Colonel A. S. M. Morgan, U. S. A.

J. E. Jacobs, insurance manager, Chicago.

E. S. Churchill, Portland, Me., merchant.

W. D. Bell, manufacturer, Philadelphia.

George Collier, rich St. Louis banker.

E. A. Hitchcock, tea merchant, Hong Kong.

M. D. Collier, graduated from Yale : St. Louis
lawyer.

H. R. Bell, Chicago physician.

D. W. Bell, Pittsburg lawyer.

A. S. Bell, Pittsburg lawyer.

George Hoadley, born in 1781 ; graduated from
Yale; mayor New Haven; eight times mayor of
Cleveland.

W. W. Hoadley, born in 1814 ; Cincinnati banker.

Dr. T. F. Pomeroy, Detroit.

General J. H. Bates, U. S. A.; Ohio state senate.

Governor George Hoadley, born in 1826; gradu-
ated from Western Reserve College ; supreme court
judge ; president Democratic convention that nomi-
nated General Hancock for the presidency.

MAR Y ED WARDS D WIGHT FAMIL Y 85

Major W. W. Winthrop of the Civil war; gradu-
ated from Yale.

Major W. T. Johnson, graduated from Yale;
killed at battle of Big Bethel.

Theodore Weston, graduated from Yale; civil
engineer of Croton water works.

J. M. Woolsey, born in 1796; graduated from
Yale; capitalist, Cleveland.

Sarah C. Woolsey is "Susan Coolidge."

Mrs. Daniel C. Gilman, wife of the president of
Johns Hopkins University, and formerly president
of University of California.

Samuel Carmalt, wealthy land owner in Pennsyl-
vania.

Dr. W. W. Woolsey, born in 1831 ; graduated from
Yale; physician, Dubuque, la.

T. B. Woolsey, flour merchant, New York.

Samuel W. Johnson, graduated from Princeton
and Harvard law school; New York lawyer.

Woolsey Johnson, M.D., graduated from Prince-
ton and New York Medical College ; physician, New
York.

Theodore S. Woolsey, graduated from Yale ; pro-
fessor in Yale.

Charles F. Johnson, graduated from Yale ; profes-
sor United States Naval Academy, Annapolis.

W. W. Johnson, graduated from Yale; professor
Kenyon College.

J. H. Rathburn, lawyer, Utica.

J. O. Pease, merchant, Philadelphia.

86 JUKES— ED WA RD8

A. S. D wight, lieutenant U. 8. A.; killed at Peters-
burg.

George P. B. Dwight, New York custom house.

Henry E. Dwight, born in 1813 ; Southern planter.

Theodore Woolsey Porter, b. 1799, g. Yale 1819,
eminent teacher; principal of Washington Institute,
New York City.

Timothy Dwight Porter, M.D., b. 1797, g. Yale
1816, was in the New York senate and a successful
practitioner.

Imperfectly as these names represent the achieve-
ments of the descendants of Mary Edwards Dwight
they do hint strongly at the vigor, character and
scholarship for which the family of Jonathan Ed-
wards stands in American life.

There is another large family of Dwights, direct
descendants of Jonathan Edwards, through his
granddaughter, Bhoda Edwards, but these are not,
of course, included in this list of Mary's descendants.
Many of these are eminent men, and reference is
here made to their omission, lest some one should
think the facts regarding them were not gathered.

A MODERN INSTANCE

It was known that John Eliot Woodbridge re-
moved to Youngstown, O., about one hundred years
ago, but no trace of him was found until these
chapters were in type when it appeared that this
undiscovered remainder was a most important
branch of the family.

A MODERN INSTANCE! 87

Congressman R. W. Taylor, of Ohio, chairman of
the committee to pass upon the case of Mr. Roberts
of Utah, is a descendant of Jonathan Edwards
through John Eliot Woodbridge. His masterly
treatment of the case is recognized throughout the
country. Here is what the "Detroit Free Press"
said of him at the time of the investigation:

"In appearance he is not of the robust order of
statesmen. With fair face, shoulders that he has
always permitted to droop, indispensable eyeglasses,
and hands that nine women out of ten would envy,
modest demeanor, and kindly instincts, he is among
the last of men that a casual observer would pick as
fitting leaders where nerve, aggressiveness, and fear-
less determination nmst be joined with an ability
to give and take in legal controversy.

"But this passing judgment would be at widest
variance with the truth. College mates of Taylor
will recall the deceptiveness of this outward appear-
ance. It concealed muscles of steel and a will that
had only to be right in order to be invincible. He
was the peer of any amateur baseball catcher in his
day, and held the same enviable place as a student
of the classics. He was the strong man for the
D. K. E. initiations, and took the same rank in all
scholastic competitions."

Dr. Timothy "Woodbridge, of Youngstown, was a
graduate of the medical college of Philadelphia,
and was one of the eminent physicians of Eastern
Ohio. His grandson, Benjamin Warner Wells, of
Chicago, was a graduate of Annapolis naval acad-

S8 J UKES— ED WA RDS

emy. He was Admiral Schley's flag secretary in
the engagement at Santiago. Dr. John Eliot Wood-
bridge, Cleveland, is an eminent specialist in
typhoid fever cases. Robert Walker Taylor was
comptroller of the United States treasury for fifteen
years.

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