GENERATION 10

Biography

RICHARD EDWARDS, born May 16, 1647, died at Hartford Apr. 20, 1718. He was a well-to-do merchant, later became an attorney-at-law, and practiced his profession as early as 1684; in 1702-03 he argued a fugitive slave case against Saltonstall.

He was probably the first Queen's Attorney, appointed as such in April, 1705, the office having been created in May, 1704. His eldest son, Timothy, wrote as follows concerning him:

"He was a noble stature of a straight, well formed body and of a comely countenance. His smile had a pleasantcy beyond which I have seen in many, yea, in most others. He was quick and nimble in his movements even to old age and was of a strong and healthy constitution. He had a strong clear mind, and had a very good utterance. He had a quick fancy; a pleasant, ready wit, with a very good judgment. He could argue in a matter and reason in a case very well. He was a man of considerable reading; both in Law History, and Divinity; was well furnished for society and very pleasant in consultation. Thus it pleased the Most High to endow and adorn my dear departed father with many virtues which rendered him very lovely and desirable in his life and much lamented in his death."

He married, Nov. 19, 1667, ELIZABETH, daughter of WILLIAM TUTTLE and ELIZABETH MATHEWS, of New Haven, who came from Northampton, England, in 1635. RICHARD and ELIZABETH were divorced in 1691 and RICHARD married second Mary Talcott in 1692. Insanity was one of the grounds for the divorce. RICHARD had six children by his first wife and six by the second, but the former had one other child not recognized by him.

WILLIAM was made freeman, May 13, 1669. He seems to have carried on his father's business for a time, and without college education was evidently well tutored in school and at home. He inherited a comfortable estate, being the heir of his grandmother and a chief heir of his mother. He often acted as attorney for others, drawing documents and pleading cases. On Oct. 6, 1708, the Court of Assistants admitted him to the bar. Before 1708, it had been largely an informal matter for one man to act as an attorney for another, but an Act of that year prescribed certain formalities. WILLIAM was one of nine men admitted as attorneys at the Connecticut bar in 1708, the year the Act was passed, and was thus one of the first lawyers in the state. In 1713, he was referred to as Queen's Attorney.

He was held in high regard as a man of ability and Probity. His private life in his earlier years was embittered by an unhappy marriage. While still under age he married a young woman a year and a half older than himself, and found that she was already pregnant. He never acknowledged the first child she bore, and in a codical to his will wrote: "Mary the eldest child of my first wife shall have two schillings out of my estate ... upon her demand." Even the Tuttle family acknowledged she was not his child when they made a special provision for her in the division of their estate.

In addition to ELIZABETH's instability, there were other examples of mental problems in her family. A brother, David, was incompetent, and never married. Another brother, Benjamin, in a violent fit of temper amounting to insanity, killed his married sister, Sarah. And a sister, Mercy, in a fit of dementia, killed her youngest child.

The high character of her son and grandson, and especially the eminence of the latter, Jonathan Edwards, the noted theologian, made conspicuous by contrast the sins of ELIZABETH TUTTLE. It has been a fruitful subject of discussion with many writers and widely different opinions have been expressed.

"A remarkable feature in our family history, as it would be in any other, is the branch of Elizabeth. It is an interesting genealogical study. Both the parents were of the same Welsh race. There is evidence that the mother had the sensitive and excitable temperament of genius. Richard Edwards, being an only child, inherited ample means and gave his children the best education the country afforded. To educate is to bring out, and to train, it cannot create talents or character. The ministerial profession was then almost the only field for the employment of able and educated men. So all things conspired to favor the natural bent for their son Timothy. The process was continued and in the next generation reached its highest development in his son Jonathan. From the very beginning this branch has been noted for its high regard for education, its scholarly culture, and its religious disposition. It is said to include a larger number of eminent persons than have sprung from any other one of the New England founders. It is wonderful, says a late writer, how much of the grace and culture of American society has sprung from this root. The same pursuits continued generation after generation in the same families, or originally set apart by nature for a chosen work, has resulted in a heritage of confirmed aptitudes, enlarged natural capacities, delicacy and refinement of physical organization, manners, sentiments and tastes; a sort of 'Brahmin Caste in New England,' as Dr. Holmes put it, of which the Edwards family form a considerable proportion, and in which it holds a high rank."

"The branch of the Tuttle family from which Elizabeth Tuttle came, was erratic to the degree of insanity, and is so to a certain extent to the present day. This family trait was restrained by the strong will and great spirituality and intellectual vigor of Rev. Timothy and Rev. Jonathan, only to crop out again in renewed activity in the son (Pierpont Edwards) and the grandson (Aaron Burr), of the 'divine Jonathan,' both of whom were profligate, vicious and licentious. Mrs. Richard Edwards' brother was found guilty of slaying his sister, by the Colonial Court, and executed; and another sister was found guilty of killing her own son, but through the confusion existing at that time, she esca of the law." "In heredity and environment, Darwin finds the evolution of man. The influence of environment works slowly and with continually diminishing force, while heredity, belay the sum of the accretions of uncounted centuries and tending constantly to greater fixity in its forms, is well nigh omnipotent in the determination of individual character. "Rev. A. J. Gorden, in a sermon at Princeton College, the alma mater of Aaron Burr, said: "When I was here before, I went into the graveyard and saw close together, the tombs of and Aaron Burr and it set me thinking of the vast gulf between those two careers; one the seraphic life of a soul whose intellect and affections were aflame with divine love and holiness; the other estranged from God, going on from sin to sin till his hands were imbrued in the blood of murder."