THE CHILDREN'S START IN LIFE 31 



In the years of aspiration these children were 

 away from all society life and educational institu- 

 tions, in the home of a poor missionary family 

 among Indians when Indian wars were a reality. 

 When Mr. Edwards accepted gratefully this mission 

 church his oldest child, a daughter, was twenty- 

 two, his youngest son was less than a year old. All 

 of the boys and three of the girls were under twelve 

 years of age when they went to the Indian village, 

 and all but one were under twenty. When their 

 missionary home was broken up five of them were 

 still under twenty, so that the children's inheritance 

 was not of wealth, of literary or scholastic envi- 

 ronment, or of cultured or advantageous society. 

 Everything tends to show how completely Mr. Ed- 

 wards' sons and daughters were left to develop 

 and improve their inheritance of intellectual, moral, 

 and religious aspiration. 



In these years Mr. Edwards was writing the 

 works which will make him famous for centuries. 

 One of the daughters married Rev. Aaron Burr, the 

 president of Princeton, then a very small institution. 

 Upon the death of this son-in-law, Mr. Edwards was 

 chosen to succeed him, but while at Princeton, 

 before he had fairly entered upon his duties at 

 the college, he died of smallpox. His widowed 

 daughter, who cared for him, died a few days later 

 leaving two children, and his widow, who came for 

 the grandchildren, soon followed the husband and 

 daughter to the better land. 



