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
contemporaries at home and abroad, and by close students 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 remains to be seen what
kind of men and women these children became with childhood disadvantages,
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
consider the fact that the three sons graduated from Princeton, and five
of the daughters married college 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 Continental Congress,
one was a member of the governor's council in Massachusetts, one was a
member of the Massachusetts war commission in the Revolutionary war,
one was a state senator, one was president of the Connecticut house of
representatives, three were officers in the Revolutionary war, one was a
member of the famous constitutional convention out of which the United
States was born, one was an eminent divine and pastor of the historic
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