Jukes-Edwards Part 4

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, governor'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 Carolina; they have been prominent in the Continental congress, in the const.i.tutional conventions of Ma.s.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 courage, 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 surgeons, in the army and navy in the three great wars. In the Civil war they were at s.h.i.+loh, New Orleans, and with the Red river expedition, at Fort Fisher and Newbern, at Big Bethel, Antietam, and 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 complimentary to the sterner s.e.x,--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 prominence in authors.h.i.+p or editorial life.

"Richard Carvel," is by Mr. Winston Churchill, a descendant of Mr.

Edwards, and I have found 135 books of merit written by the family.

Eighteen considerable 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 foreign countries, in ninety-two American and many foreign cities. They have been pre-eminently directors of men.

The Pacific steams.h.i.+p line and fifteen American railway systems have had as president, superintendent, or otherwise active in the management one of this family. Many large banks, banking houses, and insurance companies have been directed by them. They have been owners or superintendents 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 promoters. 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, establis.h.i.+ng and developing missions, projecting and energizing the best philanthropies.

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 eldest son, Timothy. He was a member of and leader in the famous Ma.s.sachusetts 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, Northampton, New Bedford, San Francisco, New York, New Haven, and many other cities and towns in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. From his descendants a Connecticut town, Chaplin, is named; Newark, Ohio, had a long-time princ.i.p.al, 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 Missionary a.s.sociation had as its great treasurer, W.E. Whiting; the famous young ladies' seminary of Lenox, Ma.s.s., had for thirty years its great princ.i.p.al, 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 steams.h.i.+p 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, Ma.s.s. Berks.h.i.+re county was still on the frontier and was spa.r.s.ely 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 commission 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 Ma.s.sachusetts; was elected to the Continental Congress with John Hanc.o.c.k and John Adams; was a colonel in the Ma.s.sachusetts militia and a judge of probate. When the war broke out Timothy Edwards was worth $20,000, which he had acc.u.mulated 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 flour to Springfield and let the government have 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, October 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 Stockbridge 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 and financial agent of Andover Theological Seminary. Her children were noted men and women, graduates of Yale and Dartmouth, clergymen, theological 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 Ma.s.sachusetts; 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 physician at New Bedford; supt. Pacific Mail Steams.h.i.+p Company; merchant in New York; insurance manager, 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 Dartmouth and Andover; a.s.sistant 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 auth.o.r.ess; a colonel in Civil war; treasurer American Missionary a.s.sociation; 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 Amherst, professor of Greek at Knox College, pastor at Galesburg, Fitchburg and Worcester, and professor of Greek at Smith College; John Mason Tyler, graduate of Amherst and Union Theological Seminary, studied at Gothenburg and Leipsic, professor 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 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 ill.u.s.tration 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, Ma.s.s., 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 a.s.sistant, 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 arrangements to have the horse taken back, and take pa.s.sage 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 "improvement" 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 diameter, 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 knowledge 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 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 children. 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 indebtedness 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 years of their reverses two others were born, so 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. Edwards, 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 engaged 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 cas.h.i.+er. 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 several 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 prominent 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 b.u.t.tons 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 of an education he made up for it by studying evenings. 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 language. 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 Ma.s.sachusetts legislature and received several important appointments 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 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 b.u.t.terflies 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 inst.i.tutions and all were rated as scholarly men and women.

CHAPTER XI

THE MARY EDWARDS DWIGHT FAMILY