The following interesting particulars of the ancestors of Jonathan Edwards will be acceptable to the reader. They are introduced in this separate form that the thread of the narration may not be interrupted; and this plan will be adopted for a similar reason in other instances.
The family of Edwards is of Welch origin. The Rev. Richard Edwards, the great-great-grandfather, and earliest known ancestor of President Edwards, was a clergyman in London, in the time of Queen Elizabeth. He came, according to the family tradition, from Wales to the metropolis, but in what county his family lived, or of what church in London he was minister, is not know. His wife, Mrs. Ann Edwards, after the death of her husband, married Mr. James Coles; who with her son, William Edwards, then young and unmarried, accompanied her to Hartford in Connecticut about the year 1640, where they both died.
William Edwards, Esquire, the great-grandfather, resided in Hartford, and is supposed to have been by profession a merchant. His wife, whose christian name was Agnes, and who came when a young lady with her parents to America, had two brothers in England(one the mayor of Exeter, the other the mayor of Barnstable. Their marriage occurred probably about the year 1645. It is not known whether they had more than one child.
Richard Edwards, Esquire, the grandfather, and so far as can now be ascertained, the only child of William and Agnes Edwards, was born at Hartford in May, 1647, and resided in that town during his life. 1 He also was a merchant, and a man of wealth and respectability. At an early age he became a communicant in the presbyterian church in Hartford, and adorned his profession by a long life of conscientious integrity, and unusual devotedness to the prosperity of religion. He married Elizabeth Tuthill, the daughter of William and Elizabeth Tuthill, who came from Northamptonshire in England. Mr. Tuthill was a merchant of New-Haven, and one of the proprietors of the colony attempted on Delaware Bay. By this connecxion Mr. Edwards had seven children, the eldest of whom was the Rev. Timothy Edwards. After her decease, he married a Miss Talcot, of Hartford, sister of the Hon. John Talcot, by whom he had six children. He died April 20, 1718, in the 71 year of his age; exhibiting, resignation and triumphant faith.
The family of Stoddard is of English descent. Anthony Stoddard, Esquire, the maternal great-grandfather of President Edwards, and the first of the family in America, emigrated from the west of England to Boston. He had five wives; the first of whom, Mary Downing, the sister of Sir George Downing, was the mother of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton. His other children were Anthony, Simeon, Samson, and Israel.
The Rev. Solomon Stoddard, his eldest child, and the maternal grandfather of President Edwards, was born in 1643, and received the degree of A. B. at Harvard college in 1662. Soon after his licensure, the first minister of Northampton, the Rev. Eleazar Mather, then a young man, died, 2 and the parish applied to one of the ministers of Boston to designate a successor. He advised them at all hazards to secure Mr. Stoddard. When the parish committee applied to him, he had already taken his passage for London, and put his effects on board the ship with the expectation of sailing the next day; but through the earnest solicitation of the gentlemen who had recommended him, he was induced to relinquish the voyage and go to Northampton. He began to preach there in 1669, soon after the death of Mr. Mather, and on the 4th of March, 1670, received a unanimous call from the church and people of that village to become their minister; but was not ordained until September 11, 1672. On the 8th of March, 1670, he married Mrs. Esther Mather, originally Miss Warham, the youngest child of Rev. John Warham, of Windsor in Connecticut, 3 and widow of his predecessor, who had left three children. Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard had twelve children; six sons and six daughters. He was a man celebrated throughout the colonies for his capacity, his knowledge of men, his influence in the churches, and his zeal for vital religion; and will long be remembered for his valuable writings, which have often been published on both sides of the Atlantic. 4 He was the minister of Northampton from 1672 until his death in 1729, and left impressions of a character strongly marked for originality, for talents, for energy, and for piety, on the minds of its inhabitants, which the lapse of a century has scarcely begun to diminish.