Missionary Kids in Stockbridge

What was it like to grow up in a missionary home on the edge of the American frontier? Today, Stephen Nichols tells the story of Esther and Jonathan Edwards Jr., two of Jonathan Edwards’ children, and their unforgettable years in Stockbridge.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, we are talking about two missionary kids in Stockbridge, and these two kids are Esther and Jonathan, a daughter and a son of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards. Now Esther wasn't really a kid. She was a young woman when the Edwards family moved from North Hampton to Stockbridge. She was 19 going on 20. She would only be there for about a year or so, and then she would marry Aaron Burr, and she would move off to New Jersey. But while she was in Stockbridge, she kept a diary, and she gives us some insight into what life was like for the Edwards family.

First, she describes this about Stockbridge in the winter. She says, “This town is delightfully located for winter sports. The river has a very quiet flow so that we have skating parties and the hills all around furnish suitable declivities for coasting.” Now, I had to look the word up. A declivity is a downward slope and coasting, of course, is sledding. She would talk about how they would get on their sleds and they would slide over the crust of the snow, and then they would hit one of those declivities and they would have this “rapid,” she says, “like-lightning-flashing-downward descent, until they finally made it to the safety of the town below.” She also describes a very interesting way that they had to get the Mohicans and the Mohawks that were there living in Stockbridge to come to church. She says, “A new sound echoes through our hills every Sabbath day and every lecture day, one of the praying Indians blows a conch shell to call the people to worship. At first it seemed wanting in solemnity, but now we are used to it. The shell begins to have a sacred sound, and the summons is speedily heated. I am fond of watching the people as they congregate. The Indians gliding up the river bank and their noiseless canoes. The farmers and wives on horseback with children in arms are tucked in here and there, and the pedestrians rich and poor meeting together before the Lord who is the maker of us all.”

Well, she also describes that these were some hard times for the Edwards’ family. They had a quite comfortable life in Northampton, and they were established in Northampton, but didn't have quite the financial picture in Stockbridge that they did have in Northampton. And so all of the children of the Edwards family were very busy at a cottage industry. They were making lace and embroidery. They were making paper fans. They would get these patterns that were sort of flat. You'd have to cut out and make the fan, and then you'd put these back in boxes, and you'd ship them off to Boston, and the fine people of Boston then would pay to have these paper fans. At one point in her journal, Esther says, “Among the bitterest of our experiences, therefore, was to be sent ruthless and homeless to a wilderness.” Well, that's Esther.

Now we have Jonathan, the younger. He was child number nine of eleven children born to Jonathan and Sarah Edwards. He was born in 1745, and he was six years old when they moved to Stockbridge. He said the Mohican boys there were his schoolmates and play fellows. His father, I think, was rather jealous of how quickly Jonathan, the younger, picked up Mohican. Jonathan, the younger would later say that, “Mohican became more familiar to me than English.” Well, when he was 10 years old, Jonathan and Sarah sent him with a missionary, Gideon Hawley, about 150 miles away to Onaquaga, an Iroquois village on the Susquehanna River in New York. They saw his future as a missionary, and they thought this would be great training for him.

Well, he was there for about six months, and then the beginnings of the Seven Years' War came straight to that village. And so Jonathan, accompanied by Gideon Hawley made their way back to Stockbridge, and Jonathan spent those next few years there at Stockbridge. So we often hear about Jonathan Edwards and we hear about his family of 11 children, but this was quite an adventure for this family, used to the idyllic town of New England there in the wilderness of Stockbridge, and there, as Jonathan and Sarah were missionaries, they were missionary kids.

Well, that's two missionary kids in Stockbridge. And I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.