CHAPTER X

COLONEL WILLIAM EDWARDS


Fascinating is the story of Colonel William Edwards, 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 remarkable 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 William 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 Stockbridge, 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 his mother's
assistant, tending the children and doing all kinds of household work
such as 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 ploughing and teaming.

William Edwards was only thirteen when he was put out as an
apprentice to a tanner in Elizabethtown, N.J. To reach this place the
lad had to ride horseback to the Hudson river, about thirty miles, make