CONTRASTS
It has already been emphasized that the Jukes always mingled blood of
their own quality in their descendants, and that the Edwards family has
invariably chosen blood of the same general tone and force. Who can
think for a moment that the Jukes would have remained on so low a level
if the Edwards blood had been mixed with theirs, or that the Edwards
would have retained their intellectual supremacy if they had married
into the Jukes. The fact is that in 150 years the Jukes never did mingle
first-class blood with their own, and the Edwards family has not in 150
years degenerated through marriage.
It is pre-eminently true that a mighty intellectual and moral force
does plough the channel of its thought and character through many
generations. It would be well for any doubter to study the records of
thoroughbreds in the animal world. The highest record ever made for milk
and butter was by an animal of no family, and she was valuable only for
what she could earn. None of her power went to her offspring. She was
simply a high-toned freak, but an animal with a clean pedigree back to
some great progenitor is valuable independently of individual earning
qualities.
No more would any one claim that the Jukes would not have been immensely
improved by education and environment, or that the Edwards family could
have maintained its record without education, training, and environment.
The facts show that the Jukes first, last, and all the time neglected
these advantages, and that the Edwards family, with all its
intermarrying, has never neglected them.
The Jukes were notorious law breakers, while the Edwards family has
furnished practically no lawbreakers, and a great array of more than 100
lawyers, thirty judges, and the most eminent law professor probably in
the country. James Bryce in his comments upon America places one of this
family at the head of legal learning on this continent. This was
Theodore William Dwight, LL.D., born in New Haven, July 18, 1822;
graduated from Hamilton College, 1840; professor there 1842-58. In 1858
he went to Columbia College, organized the law school and was its
president for thirty-three years.
Some of the most eminent official city attorneys of Philadelphia, New
York and Chicago have been found in this family. Ex-Governor Hoadley, of
Ohio, a descendant of Jonathan Edwards, is now the head of perhaps the
leading law firm of New York City or of the country. When one studies
the legal side of the family it seems as though they were instinctively
and chiefly lawyers and judges. It simply means that whatever the
Edwards family has done it has done ably and nobly. There is no greater
test of intellectual majesty than that which the practice of law puts
upon a man. When James Bryce pays his grand tribute to Dr. Theodore W.
Dwight, president of Columbia College law school, it signifies more
intellectually than to have said that he was president of the United
States.
None of the Jukes had the equivalent of a common school education, while
there are few of the Edwards family that have not had more than that.
Few were satisfied with less than academy or seminary if they did not
go to college. There is not a leading college in the country in which
their names are not to be found recorded. They have not only furnished
thirteen college presidents and a hundred and more professors, but they
have founded many important academies and seminaries in New Haven and
Brooklyn, all through the New England states, and in the Middle,
Western, and Southern states. They have contributed liberally to college
endowments. One gave a quarter of a million as an endowment for Yale.
In Yale alone have been more than 120 graduates. Among these are nearly
twenty Dwights, nearly as many Edwards, seven Woolseys, eight Porters,
five Johnsons, four Ingersolls, and several of most of the following
names: Chapin, Winthrop, Shoemaker, Hoadley, Lewis, Mathers, Reeve,
Rowland, Carmalt, Devereaux, Weston, Heermance, Whitney, Blake,
Collier, Scarborough, Yardley, Gilman, Raymond, Wood, Morgan, Bacon,
Ward, Foote, Cornelius, Shepards, Bristed, Wickerham, Doubleday, Van
Volkenberg, Robbins, Tyler, Miller, Lyman, Pierpont, and Churchill, the
author of "Richard Carvel," is a recent graduate. In Amherst at one time
there were of this family President Gates and Professors Mather, Tyler,
and Todd. Wherever found they are leaders even in college faculties.
Those who know what Gates, Mather, Tyler, and Todd have stood for as
president and professors of Amherst will appreciate what Jonathan
Edwards' blood has done for this college.
Of the Jukes, 440 were more or less viciously diseased. The Edwards
family was healthy and long lived. Of the eleven children of Mr. and
Mrs. Edwards, four lived to be more than seventy years of
age,--seventy-three, seventy-five, seventy-seven and seventy-nine,--and
three others were fifty, fifty-six, and sixty-three. Only one died
unmarried, none died in childhood. The record for health and longevity
continues through every generation. They have also done much to
alleviate the sufferings of mankind. There have been sixty physicians,
all marked men. Dr. Richard Smith Dewey was an eminent surgeon in the
Franco-Prussian war, having charge of the Prussian hospital at Hesse
Cassel. Dr. Sereno Edwards Dwight was a physician and surgeon in the
British regular army. The physicians of the family have had important
connection with insane asylums and hospitals. The legislative action
of New York, by which the first insane asylum of the state was built,
was largely the result of a physician of this family. The medical
superintendent of the Illinois state insane asylum was another of the
family. Eminent names in the medical annals of San Francisco, Chicago,
Detroit, New York, Boston, and other cities can be traced to Jonathan
Edwards.
The Jukes neglected all religious privileges, defied and antagonized the
church and all that it stands for, while the Edwards family has more
than a 100 clergymen, missionaries, and theological professors, many
of the most eminent in the country's history. America has had no more
brilliant preachers and theologians than some of those that bear the
names of Edwards, Dwight, Woolsey, Park, Ingersoll. There have been
no more noted missionaries than this family has sent for faithful and
successful work in Asia Minor, India, Africa, China, Hawaii, and the
South Sea islands. Dwight's famous five volumes on theology are a
product of a worthy descendant of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards A. Park, the
longtime head of Andover theological seminary, whose vigor of thought,
keenness of logic, and pulpit power are unsurpassed, was a descendant
of Mr. Edwards. The family has furnished several army chaplains and one
eminent chaplain of the United States senate. They have made many
churches prominent for the vigor of their pulpit utterances. The famous
Second church, Portland, Park street church of Boston, and many in New
Haven and other Connecticut cities and towns as well as many churches in
the Middle and Western States owe much to the descendants of Mr. Edwards.
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 constitutional conventions
of Massachusetts, 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 Shiloh, 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 sex,--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 authorship 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 steamship 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,
establishing and developing missions, projecting and energizing the best
philanthropies.