or to her husband. She was daughter of Col. Williams, of
Williamstown, who commanded a brigade in the old French War, and whose
son founded Williams College. A daughter of Madame Dwight, older than
Pamela, married Mark Hopkins, "a distinguished lawyer of his time,"
says Madame Quincy, and grandfather of Rev. Mark Hopkins, D.D.,
perhaps the most illustrious president of the college founded by
Madame Dwight's family.

The intermarriage of the Williamses, Dwights, and Hopkinses formed a
fine, aristocratic circle, into which the Sedgwicks were not very
cordially welcomed. "My mother's family (of this," says Mrs. Sedgwick,
"I have rather an indefinite impression than any knowledge) objected
to my father on the score of family, they priding themselves on their
gentle blood; but as he afterwards rose far beyond their highest
water-mark, the objection was cast into oblivion by those who made
it."

A few years after this marriage, the war of the Revolution began. Mr.
Sedgwick entered the army, served as an officer under Washington,
whose acquaintance and favor he enjoyed, and from that time, for forty
years until his death, he was in public life, in positions of
responsibility and honor. He was member of the Continental Congress,
member of the House of Representatives, Speaker of the House, Senator
from Massachusetts, and, at his death, judge of the Massachusetts
Supreme Court.

Judge Sedgwick was a staunch Federalist and, in spite of the fact that
he himself was not born in the purple, he shared the common Federalist
contempt for the masses. "I remember my father," says Miss Sedgwick,
"one of the kindest-hearted men and most observant of the rights of
all beneath him, habitually spoke of the people as 'Jacobins,'
'sans-culottes,' and 'miscreants.' He--and this I speak as a type of
the Federalist party--dreaded every upward step they made, regarding
their elevation as a depression, in proportion to their ascension, of
the intelligence and virtue of the country." "He was born too soon,"
says his daughter apologetically, "to relish the freedoms of
democracy, and I have seen his brow lower when a free and easy
mechanic came to the front door, and upon one occasion, I remember his
turning off the east steps (I am sure not kicking, but the
demonstration was unequivocal) a grown up lad who kept his hat on
after being told to remove it." In these days one would hardly tell
him to remove it, let alone hustling him off the steps.