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Page 20
Ogden E. Edwards was for several years at the head of one of the largest
leather houses of New 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, Wm.
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." Richard C. Edwards was also a member of the firm of Alfred
Edwards & 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 Rev. John N. Lewis, a successful clergyman. Elizabeth
T. Edwards married Henry Rowland, an eminently successful and useful
citizen of New York, whose children, 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. 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 DWIGHT 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 Yale
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 temptations 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 conscientiousness of Major Dwight is well
illustrated by this incident. There was a lottery in the interest of
Princeton 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 some 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 children $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 catechism by
heart. He graduated from Yale at seventeen; taught the Hopkins school
in New Haven at seventeen and eighteen; was tutor in Yale from nineteen
to twenty-five years of age; wrote the "Conquest of Canada," which was
reprinted in London, at nineteen. This work was dedicated to George
Washington 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 professorship
at Harvard and could have gone to Congress without opposition, but
he declined both, and at thirty-two accepted a country pastorate at
Greenfield 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 England. 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 fourteen 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. When he died, from
a cancer at sixty-five, the children 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.
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