About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
It was a Berkshire neighborhood: Stockbridge between 1749 and 1792.
The Ephraim Williams family lived on the hill. The hill had a startlingly beautiful prospect and formed a curve over the entire plain like sheltering arms. It would be renamed Prospect Hill Road.
The “English” believed a hill had better air, and those who had enough money built on it. Williams’ house was in the Connecticut River Valley style with the distinctive front door. It was the height of fashion, the epitome of social standing and wealth.
In 1749, Ephraim’s youngest son, Elijah, was a student at the College of New Jersey (renamed Princeton in 1756). Elijah was living with Aaron Burr Sr., the president of the college.
Ephraim was an ambitious man; he wrote his son: “I am glad to hear of you having got so into favor with the President. Pray don’t do anything to forfeit it but use all possible endeavors to increase it.”
Williams was not a witty man, but he was, at times, very funny. He wrote his son: “I intreet you to mend your speling … it will much Grace your wrighting.”
In July 1751, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards became the second minister of the Congregational Church. The Edwards family settled in a house on the Plain (Main Street today).
Edwards was Burr’s mentor and, in 1752, Burr traveled from New Jersey to Stockbridge to woo and win his wife, Edwards’ daughter, Esther.
The French and Indian War broke out in 1754. War in the 18th century was not in foreign lands, but on the settlers’ doorsteps. It brought death, and Stockbridge had little with which to fight affliction except prayer.
In 1756, Ephraim wrote his son: “We are every moment liable to death in un-thought-of ways … be sure to pray daily for his Spirritt to sanctifie all meens for your everlasting good.”
Down on Plain Street, Esther, now a wife and mother, was visiting her father. Like Ephraim, Esther was frightened. She wrote: “Oh how distressing to live in fear every moment. I hant [haven’t] had a night’s sleep. Since I been here, I may say I have had none.”
Back on the Hill, Ephraim fortified his house. He fenced in his property, built a cistern in the basement, and stored food and ammunition. He was a wealthy man protecting against attack and starvation in the face of siege.
Esther wrote that her father seemed “serene in the face of danger.” Esther was not. She wanted to go home: “but he [her father] is not willing to hear one word about it so I must tarry … and if the Indians get me, they get me …‘tis my duty to stay.”
A woman could not travel without permission from her father, husband or guardian, nor could she travel alone. Esther was a clever strategist and determined. Hearing that Mr. Woodbridge was traveling to New Jersey, she wrote her husband, asking that he request her father to send her home. There was no way to deny a husband’s request, and Esther was on her way home.
“We go first by wagon [to Hudson, New York] and then by boat [sloop to New York City].” Finally, they traveled by an unspecified conveyance overland to Princeton. Whatever the means, the travel promised to be uncomfortable and slow.
Soon she would see her son Aaron Burr Jr. whom she called “dirty and noisy.” She would not allow herself to brag, but even over 262 years, you can see her smile and hear the affection in the mother’s voice.
Esther’s fears of impending doom were correct, but the source of the danger was not. It was not war that visited death on her and her family, but disease. A year after she returned from Stockbridge, her husband died from a “putrid fever.” The following year, Jonathan and Esther both died from smallpox. Mrs. Jonathan Edwards traveled to Princeton to collect her grandchildren and she died. It was Jonathan’s son and Esther’s brother, Timothy Edwards, who, at the age of 21, became guardian to eight children under the age of 15. Among the eight was 2-year-old Aaron Burr Jr.
Timothy studied law but found the mercantile trade more remunerative and better suited to supporting a large family. He lived in New Jersey until 1771 when he moved to Stockbridge and built a house. Timothy’s large house was on the corner of Plain Street and “the three-rod road,” diagonally across from Bingham Tavern (the Red Lion Inn). Timothy’s house served as both his home and store.
“It was a fine structure with a porch running along the front … quite fancy … By merely stepping from one room to the other, Timothy Edwards could change from village potentate to shopkeeper.”
In 1872 they called Timothy “the first merchant of Stockbridge.” By “first,” they meant foremost since Mr. Woodbridge, among others, was a Stockbridge merchant long before Timothy. At 36, Timothy was a licensed retailer responsible for a wife and 15 children.
In 1792 Barnabas Bidwell bought Timothy’s house in anticipation of his marriage to Mary Gray. A long block down Plain Street was the church and the coral house of Theodore Sedgwick. When it rained, Plain Street, 132 feet wide, was too dirty to cross. Living in constant fear of disease, ladies did not venture out in the rain.
Who were these people?
In 1793 Ephraim Williams bequeathed the money to found Williams College.
Jonathan Edwards was the most influential clergyman of his day at a time when the clergy mattered.
Timothy Edwards provided shelter and affection to the orphaned child who would be the second vice president of the United States: Aaron Burr Jr.
Stockbridge attorney Bidwell was elected to the United States Congress 1805–1807. He became the “sworn interpreter of the executive messages” of President Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson accused Burr, his own vice president, of treason, Bidwell echoed party line. While living in a house he bought from his guardian, Bidwell condemned Burr.
Theodore Sedgwick was a representative to the Continental Congress and liberator of MumBet.
Is it as hard for us to understand them as it would be for them to understand us?
Over a fire, it took all day to prepare a meal. Today we stand in front of a microwave, tapping a foot, saying, “Hurry up.”
In 1749 Berkshire County was described as “A wilderness of forty miles on the east, a wood of twenty miles on the west, and a great and terrible wilderness on the north which reaches Canada.” We “paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
Via email and text, we communicate in seconds. Those letters from Ephraim to his son or Esther to her husband took a month to deliver.
Ephraim explained the process: “Will the reader please go with this letter from our frontier home [Stockbridge] to the Hudson River through the forest — two days travel to Claverack [New York]. Then see Captain Fonda and ask him to take it along next time he sails and leave it at Buckee’s House of Call [a tavern]. There it will be stuck up over the mantel piece until someone happens to be going over to the Jerseys. Prithee give it to the young Englishman Williams staying with the scholar Burr at the college at Newark.”
They trusted someone to pick up letters at Buckee’s and deliver them. We spend good money to protect our communications from hackers and identity thieves.
Skipping around the neighborhood, reading their letters, we get a glimpse and an inkling. We should endeavor to understand because these were the founders of our country; this was the world in which it was founded.
