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 Missionary Association had
as its great treasurer, W.E. Whiting; the famous young ladies' seminary
of Lenox, Mass., had for thirty years its great principal, Elizabeth
Sedgwick; Boston had a prominent lawyer, a graduate of Harvard, William
Minot; St. Louis had a leading lawyer, William D. Sedgwick; 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 surgeon, 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 Shenandoah 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 son is suggestive.
He was the sixth child, born in Northampton, 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 graduated from Princeton the previous year but the
responsibility of a large family prevented his entering 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. Berkshire county was still on the
frontier and was sparsely settled. The store which Mr. Edwards opened
in 1770 was the first in the county. The settlers raised wheat on the