CHAPTER XI 



THE MARY EDWARDS D WIGHT FAMILY 



After studying at some length the family of the 

 eldest son of Jonathan Edwards, it is worth while to 

 study the family of one of the daughters. Mary, 

 the fourth child born at Northampton (1734), was 

 married at the age of 16 to Timothy Dwight, born 

 in Vermont (1726) and graduated from Yale in 1744. 



It is interesting to find a daughter of Jonathan 

 Edwards marrying a Tale graduate, who "had such 

 extreme sensibility to the beauty and sweetness of 

 always doing right, and such a love of peace, and 

 regarded the legal profession as so full of tempta- 

 tions to do wrong, in great degree and small " that 

 he persistently refused to study law, though it had 

 been his father's great desire. The conscientious- 

 ness of Major Dwight is well illustrated by this in- 

 cident. There was a lottery in the interest of Prince- 

 ton college, authorized by the legislature of New 

 Jersey, and Dwight was sent twenty tickets for sale. 

 He returned them, but the time required for the 

 mail in those days was so long that they did not 

 reach the destination until after the drawing. Major 

 Dwight was notified that one of his twenty tickets 

 had drawn $20,000 and all but one ticket had drawn 



74) 



