The Tuttle family is simply too fascinating to at least do a general run-through of, without interruptions.
With a bit of help from the Family Tree program, I've found out that Jonathan Edwards is my 2nd cousin 8 x removed. That's him in the above picture. His father, Timothy Edwards, is the nephew of my 8th great grandfather, John Tuttle. Lucius Carrington is the 5th great grandson of John.
Jonathan Edwards was born 1703 and died March 28, 1758. He married Sarah Pierpont. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes him as "the most distinguished metaphysician and divine of America." John Fisk says; "Jonathan Edwards was one of the wonders of the world, probably the greatest intelligence that the Western Hemisphere had yet seen." He was capable in his sermons of producing "so great pain to the quick sensibilities of his hearers that during his discourses the house would be filled with weeping and wailing auditors; on one occasion another minister present is said to have cried out in his agony, 'Oh! Mr. Edwards! Is God not a God of mercy?'
This celebrated preacher succeeded his son-in-law, the elder Aaron Burr, as President of Princeton College. Mr. Edwards held the position scarcely a month, dying while undergoing innoculation for the smallpox. His descendents went on to become influential ministers, college presidents, financiers, surgeons and judges. Jonathan's grandson was Aaron Burr, the Vice President under Jefferson.
It was Jonathan's daughter Esther that married Rev. Aaron Burr, Sr. "She exceeded most of her sex," writers of the period testify, "in beauty of her person as well as her behaviour and conversation...Her genius was more than common...She possessed an uncommon degree of wit and vivacity, which yet was consistent with pleasanness and good nature...In short, she seemed to please one of Dr. Burr's tastes in character, in whom she was exceedingly happy. Her religion did not cast a loom over her mind and made her cheerful and happy, and rendered the thought of death transporting." She died of smallpox (1758) soon after her husband's death, leaving two young orphans, Aaron and Sally Burr...my 4th cousins 6x removed.
Esther's brother Timothy was only twenty years old when their parents both died, and he became, as the eldest son, the guardian and head of a family of eight, half of them under sixteen, among them Pierpont Edwards, aged five, and Aaron Burr, his nephew, aged two. He married within two years and began to have a family of his own. Timothy became a judege and one of the conspicuous figures in Edward Bellamy's Novel The Duke of Stockbridge. Fascinating!
I need to end with a quote concerning the youngest child of Rev. Jonathan Edwards, Pierpont. "Pierpont Edwards became a brilliant, eccentric, and licentious Connecticut lawyer and jurist, a rank prototype of talented immorality which was only too closely imitated by his nephew, Aaron Burr, with whom he was at one time quite intimate."
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