k at Smith
College; John Mason Tyler, graduate of Amherst and Union Theological
Seminary, studied at Gothenburg and Leipsic, professor of Biology at
Amherst and eminent lecturer.

To William Edwards, another son of Timothy, oldest son of Jonathan
Edwards, an entire chapter will be given.

CHAPTER X

COLONEL WILLIAM EDWARDS

Fascinating is the story of Colonel William Edwards, grandson of
Jonathan Edwards, the inventor of the process of tanning by which the
leather industry of the world was revolutionized. In no respect did the
intellectual and moral inheritance show itself more clearly than in the
recuperative force of the family of Colonel Edwards.

Attention has already been called to the remarkable way in which
the father, Timothy Edwards, re-established himself and educated
his large family after his great financial reverses in the period of
the Revolutionary war, but the story of Colonel William Edwards is
even a more striking illustration of this same power. He was born at
Elizabeth, New Jersey, November 11, 1770. He was a mere child during the
Revolutionary struggle. Before he was two years old the father removed
to Stockbridge, Mass., and the boy grew up in as thoroughly a rural
community as could be found. The school privileges were very meagre.
No books were printed in the American colonies because of British
prohibition. From early childhood he had to work, first as his mother's
assistant, tending the children and doing all kinds of household work
such as a handy boy can do. As soon as he could sit on a horse he rode
for light ploughing and by the time he was ten was driving oxen for
heavy ploughing and teaming.

William Edwards was only thirteen when he was put out as an
apprentice to a tanner in Elizabethtown, N.J. To reach this place the
lad had to ride horseback to the Hudson river, about thirty miles, make
arrangements to have the horse taken back, and take passage on a West
Indies cattle brig to New York. It took him a week to get to New York.
He then took the ferry for Elizabethtown.

When young Edwards began life as a tanner it took twelve months for
the tanning of hides. This was by far the most extensive tannery in
America. It had a capacity of 1,500 sides. The only "improvement" then
known--1784--was the use of a wooden plug in the lime vats and water
pools to let off the contents into the brook. The bark was ground by
horse power. There was a curb fifteen feet in diameter, made of