The Coquette, or, The History of Eliza Wharton: A Novel: Founded on FactFoster, Hannah Webster
General
The Coquette, or, The History of Eliza Wharton: A Novel: Founded on Fact
Foster, Hannah Webster
Whitman, Elizabeth, 1752-1788 -- Fiction
In conflicting statements, it is difficult to determine the precise year
of the marriage of Mr. Edwards, whether before or after the death of
"Eliza Wharton," although it may have been long before, even as one of
his biographers has it, and that recklessness and extravagance may have
lifted him to a too fearful height from the calm Eden of love and
honor, till he at length compromised the influence of both to baser
avarice.
That he married Frances Ogden, of Elizabeth-town, New Jersey, for his
first wife, is the fact, and the date given is 1769. Yet the ciphers may
be questioned, I think, as it would make him but nineteen years of age
at the time of the event, besides other considerations which make it
appear more doubtful still.
He was, however, as has been already stated, the eleventh and youngest
child of Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and was born in Northampton,
Massachusetts, _Sabbath_. His biographer has been particularly faithful
in thus recording it, as if the hallowed influences of the Sabbath upon
birth have a bearing on subsequent life, and were in his case either
strikingly marked or missed. He was born, then, Sabbath, April 8, 1750,
and was cousin, in good or evil, to the notorious Aaron Burr. He was
also brother to Rev. Jonathan Edwards, president of Union College.
His mother, Sarah Pierrepont, was of aristocratic origin, and the
daughter of Rev. James Pierrepont, and granddaughter of John Pierrepont,
of Roxbury, from whom descended Rev. John Pierpont, the celebrated poet
and divine of our own time. The Pierrepont family was a branch of the
family of the Duke of Kingston, (Pierrepont being the family name;) and
the mother of Mr. Edwards was thus cousin-german to Mary Pierrepont,
(Lady Mary Wortley Montague.)
Through his whole ancestral line we trace the "laying on of hands" in
the most conspicuous as in the divinest order; and thus might he be
truly called a child of prayer and consecration. What pity that his
biographer should have been compelled to record, "The most remarkable
feature of his character was his unbridled licentiousness"! But we
cannot drop the curtain here. We would relieve the picture by this
somewhat lighter shade. "His intellectual energies were gigantic. As a
pleader and a determined and artful advocate, he had few equals. Hence,
as a lawyer, he scarcely ever lost a case in his whole practice." An
amusing anecdote is related of him in his professional career.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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