Ogden E. Edwards was for several years at the head of one of the largest leather houses of New York City, eminently prosperous and of great service to the public.  Alfred Edwards was founder and senior partner in one of the largest wholesale dry goods houses of New York for fifty years, known as Alfred Edwards & Co.  Amory was for many years a member of the firm of Alfred Edwards & Co.  He was also United States Consul at Buenos Ayres, and traveled extensively in South America.  His nephew, Wm. H. Edwards, wrote of these travels.  This nephew, resident at Coalbough, West Virginia, is the author of a famous work on “The Butterflies of North America,” and also of an important work on “Shaksper nor Shakespeare.”  Richard C. Edwards was also a member of the firm of Alfred Edwards & Co. and shared the prosperity of the house with his brother.

Rebecca T. Edwards, the eldest daughter, married Benjamin Curtis, a wealthy merchant in business in New York and Paris.  She was married in Paris and General Lafayette gave her away in place of her father.  Sarah H. Edwards married Rev. John N. Lewis, a successful clergyman.  Elizabeth T. Edwards married Henry Rowland, an eminently successful and useful citizen of New York, whose children, like himself, have been honored in many ways.

Ann Maria Edwards married Professor Edwards A. Park, D.D., the president of Andover Theological Seminary and the most eminent theologian of the day.  Their son, Rev. William Edwards Park, of Gloversville, New York, is a preacher of rare ability.  Rev. W.E.  Park has two sons, graduates of Yale, young men of great promise.

The ten children of Colonel Edwards lived to great age, and each of the sons was eminently successful in business, and all were highly esteemed.  Each of the daughters married men eminent in commercial or professional life.  None of them were privileged to receive a liberal education because of the great financial reverses that came to the father in their youth, but every one of them was closely identified with educational institutions and all were rated as scholarly men and women.

CHAPTER XI

THE MARY EDWARDS DWIGHT 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 Yale 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 temptations 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 conscientiousness of Major Dwight is well illustrated by this incident.