upon the history, and even less upon the
character, or in extenuation of the follies or the frailties of the
unfortunate subject of the following pages, and upon which public
opinion had long ago rendered its verdict and sealed it for a higher
tribunal. Yet I am happy in assuring any who may pause over these
prefatory leaves that this is not the fact; and it harms us not to
believe that over every life, however full of error it may be, there is
an unwritten chapter which the angels take into account as they bear
upward the tearful record, and which He, the great Scribe, "who ever
sitteth at the right hand of the Father," and from whose solemn
utterance on earth dropped the forever cherished words which have so
often given life and hope to the penitent fallen,--"_neither do I
condemn thee_,"--interpolates on the mighty leger of eternity for the
great reckoning day.

"Eliza Wharton," generally known, perhaps, as Elizabeth Whitman, was the
eldest of four children--Elizabeth, Mary, Abigail, and William; the
latter of whom was a physician, twice married, and who also left a son
of his own name, (William Elnathan,) who died in Philadelphia in 1846,
unmarried. Her father, the Rev. Elnathan Whitman, was the son of Rev.
Samuel Whitman, who was the third son of Rev. Zechariah Whitman, the
youngest child of John, the original ancestor of the Whitman family. He
(Rev. Samuel W.) graduated at Harvard University in 1696, and was for
several years a tutor there. Thus having passed through the usual,
though then somewhat limited, course of theology, he was ordained as
minister of the gospel in Farmington, Connecticut, in 1706, at that time
one of the largest towns in the state. He inherited by bequest one half
of his father's lands in Stow, Massachusetts, and was thereby also made
executor of his will. He married, March 19, 1707, Mary Stoddard,
daughter of Rev. Solomon Stoddard, second minister of Northampton,
Massachusetts. Mr. Stoddard was born in Boston in 1643, and died in
Northampton in 1729. This Solomon Stoddard was the great-grandfather of
Hon. Solomon Stoddard, now residing in Northampton.

It is worthy of remark here that the early ancestors of "Eliza Wharton"
intermarried also with the Edwards family; so that Hon. Pierpont
Edwards, who figures in this volume as "Major Sanford," could be no less
than second cousin to his unfortunate victim.

Rev. Elnathan Whitman, the father of Elizabeth, was born January 12,
1708-9, and g