MARY EDWARDS DWIQHT FAMILY 75 



om prize. Major Dwight paid for the one blank 

 ticket and would not take a cent of the large prize 

 money. This was worthy a son-in-law of Mr. 

 Edwards, the progenitor of a family of mighty men. 



Major Dwight was a merchant in Northampton, a 

 selectman, judge of probate for sixteen years and 

 was for several years a member of the legislature. 

 At the time of his death, 1778, he was possessed of 

 3,000 acres of valuable land in Northampton, and he 

 willed his wife $7,050, and each of his thirteen chil- 

 dren $1,165. At that time there were but five 

 painted houses in Northampton and but two were 

 carpeted. Of the fourteen children, thirteen grew 

 up, and twelve were married ; and their entire family 

 adds greatly to the glory of the family of Jonathan 

 Edwards. The oldest son, Dr. Timothy Dwight, 

 president of Yale, said with much tenderness and 

 force, "All that I am and all that I shall be, I owe 

 to my mother." She was a woman of remarkable 

 will power and intellectual vigor. She was but 

 seventeen when her first child was born and was the 

 mother of fourteen children at forty-two. 



The first-born, President Timothy Dwight, S.T. 

 D., LL.D., born 1752, was one of the most eminent 

 of Americans. He learned his alphabet at a single 

 sitting while a mere child, and at four knew the cate- 

 chism by heart. He graduated from Yale at seven- 

 teen ; taught the Hopkins school in New Haven at 

 seventeen and eighteen ; was tutor in Yale from nine- 

 teen to twenty-five years of age; wrote the "Con- 

 quest of Canada," which was reprinted in London, at 



