At the head of Stockbridge affairs during these troublous times, Jonathan Edwards showed judgment in things martial as well as spiritual, for his mother, the wise Esther Stoddard of Northampton, left a broad and splendid inheritance to her eleven children.

Dr Edwards letters to the Rev. John Erskine of Culross are filled with our political problems. After General Braddock's defeat he writes:

"it is apparent that the ministry at home miss it very much, in sending over British officers to have the command of our British forces. Let them send us arms, ammunition, money, and shipping: and let New England men manage the business in their own way, Who alone understand it. . . . All the Provinces in America seem to be fully sensible that New England men are the only men to be employed against Canada. . . . However, we ought to remember that neither New England men nor any other are anything unless God be with us."

Jonathan Edwards, in the frontier parsonage built by Sergeant on The Plain, doubtless found sermonizing to the Indians an awkward task, and spent far more congenial hours on Original Sin than expostulating through his interpreter, John Wouwanonpequunount, to a people of "barbarous and barren tongue." Edwards's heart was bound up in marvellous metaphysics which he squared and multiplied in Stockbridge's laurel-lined forest lanes, subsequently pouring out his soul on paper in his famous little room, measuring scarcely a man's length, but broad enough to hold Freedom of the Will. The Doctor's study, [1] is marked by a sun-dial on the present Caldwell [2] estate on Stockbridge Street.

The Edwardses rejoiced in living " in peace," after unhappy controversies which had driven them from Northampton, and Dr. Edwards writes to his father at Fast Windsor, " The Indians are very much, pleased with my family, especially with my wife" (the beautiful Sarah Pierpont of New Haven, great-great-granddaughter of Thomas Hooker).

The daughters eked out the pastor's salary (6,3s. 4d. "lawful money, " and twenty-five loads of wood from his white congregation, also eighty sleigh-loads of wood from the Indians) by embroidering and painting fans for Boston domes thus Esther Edwards earned her wedding outfit, and the village was in a buzz of excitement when the rather elderly Rev. Aaron Burr arrived to carry away his youthful and lovely bride. On the Thanksgiving Day when the first grandchild, Aaron, was brought home there was unusual festivity at the Edwards house. As a lad, Aaron often tarried in Stockbridge at the home of his uncle, Deacon Timothy Edwards.

The fascinating and wayward blade Colonel Aaron Burr, who would fain conquer every feminine heart, even daring to coquette with Dorothy Q., after she was promised to John Hancock, was of a fibre unlike his grandfather's household. Our well-beloved Donald Mitchell has flung the high lights of a sweet humor across that gray homespun age when the rod was not spared, and domestic life ran by rule at the homestead on Stockbridge Street. Jonathan Edwards was "rigid with the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism on every Saturday evening, never al lowing his boys out of doors after nine o'clock at night: and if any suitor of his daughters tarried beyond that hour he was mildly but peremptorily informed that it was time to lock up the house. Among those suitors . . . was a Mr. Burr, who came to be President of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, and whose son, Aaron Burr--grandson of the Doctor-had, in later days, a way of staying out- after nine". [3]

Dr. Stephen West, the patriot parson, was held in great reverence. One of the good dames of his parish, being much frightened at passing alone at dusk the huts of Great Moon and Half Moon, murmured very fast under her breath as a talisman to protect herself from harm, " Stephen West-Stephen West-West-West! " (These Indian huts stood on the site purchased by Nathan Appleton," Oak Grove, " presented to Longfellow, but never occupied by him. Afterwards it became the, estate of Charles F. South- mayd, Esq.] The Rev. Dr. Kirkland, who succeeded Dr. West. lived on the Tuckerman estate, " Ingleside Hall." It is said that he had a passion for the "cup that cheers, " and was partaking out of the forbidden Revolutionary tea-chest, with curtains drawn, when startled by a knock. He sprang to hide the urn in anything but a clerical manner, and opened the door, only to find one of his Indians wondering over his prolonged wait.

Next to the minister, Deacon Timothy Edwards and Squire Jahleel Woodbridge were the " great men" of the town. At the funeral of Madame Woodbridge, Bellamy says in his Duke of Stockbridge, there was a notable gathering of the gentry: the Stoddards, Littles, and Wendells of Pittsfield, Colonel Ashley was there from Sheffield, justices Dwight and Whiting from Great Barrington, and Barker from Lanesboro. The carriages, some of them bearing coats of arms upon their panels, made a fine array; the six pall-bearers were Chief-justice Dwight, Colonel Elijah Williams, the founder of the iron-works on old Saw Mill Brook or Williams. River at West Stockbridge (Queens- borough 1767), Captain Solomon Stoddard, commander of the Stockbridge militia,, Oliver Wendell, and Henry W. Dwight, the county treasurer.

In the days of Shays's Rebellion the dreaded hemlock bough of the insurgents. waved above the heads of innocent citizens, who had not rebelled openly against grinding taxes; even magistrates were not respected, and the mal contents gave judge Sedgwick little quarter, pillaging his house. As a member of the old Continental Congress and a leader in politics his correspondence with the brothers Van Schaick, Ames, King, Pinckney, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and others, is a replica of the times. The last letter written by Alexander Hamilton was to him.

The Hon. Theodore Sedgwick, Federalist, was much of an autocrat, yet most benevolent, possessing a tender heart, which he bequeathed to his daughter Catherine, the champion of the cause of letters in early Berkshire.

To visit the author of Hope Leslie, and the glorious country pictured therein, literati of the Old World crossed the Atlantic, and the home of Miss Sedgwick [4] on the Housatonic became to the Massachusetts border that which Con- cord on the Musketaquid is to the Eastern coast.

In her garden by the river flowing behind the homestead, Miss Sedgwick, the priestess of good things for all people, encouraged flowers and shrubs new to Berkshire, much as we have seen the stately Susan Coolidge bending over her Spring blossoms at Newport: "all these are early blooms of June," said Miss Woolsey, " for we like to see the shrubs in flower before we flit to Onteora at midsummer. "

A characteristic little note of our early novelist is written to her friend Mrs. Richard Goodman at Lenox (hitherto unpublished):

MY DEAR MRS. GOODMAN,
" I have to-day-according to my promise to you- potted three or four plants for your daughter-the pots are too large to be either convenient or seemly, but the roots had so spread in the ground that I feared to contract them into a smaller space. I have trimmed them into rather a forlorn condition-they may lose the few leaves they have, but I hope they will survive and look better. Would that we could see with the clear eye of perfect faith the unfolding of those clip'd lives removed beyond our sight!    Yours aff'n'y,
"C. M. SEDGWICK."