Mar 31, 2011 - Sale 2241

Sale 2241 - Lot 142

Price Realized: $ 50,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
HIS MISSION TO THE INDIANS AT STOCKBRIDGE EDWARDS, JONATHAN. Correspondence archive concerning his mission to the Indians at Stockbridge. 16 manuscript items, including 6 Autograph Letters Signed and Autograph Documents Signed by Jonathan Edwards, with the remaining documents relating directly to him. Various sizes and conditions, most with 19th-century repairs, each with inked library stamp. Stockbridge, MA, 1752-56
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The famed New Light minister Jonathan Edwards was appointed in 1751 to the mission among the Mohicans at Stockbridge, MA. It was then a rugged frontier outpost with just a handful of English families, led by the wealthy landowner Ephraim Williams (father of the Williams College founder). Edwards had longstanding theological and personal disputes with the Williams family, so he arranged for his friend Brigadier General Joseph Dwight to assume secular control of the outpost. To his dismay, Dwight almost immediately wedded Williams's daughter. This set up a nasty power struggle between the powerful Williams/Dwight camp and Edwards, supported only by his little church's humble lay members.
This small archive documents Edwards's tempestuous time in Stockbridge, which became a defining incident of his career. The general tone of the correspondence is mutual disgust covered over with a thin coat of Christian manners. The earliest document is an Autograph Letter Signed from Edwards to Dwight dated 10 February 1752, the same month as Dwight's engagement. Edwards writes with some alarm of a rumor that Dwight was "dismissing Mr. Ashley & his wife from their business at the boarding school, very speedily & suddenly." In a contemporary manuscript copy dated 18 August 1752, Edwards disputes with Elisha Williams about the decision to install the new Mrs. Dwight as head of the mission's female school, and complains that Ephraim Williams "without restraint or reserve declares by both his words & actions his disesteem & great dislike of me, and resolution to injure my character."
Williams takes the offensive in a 2 May 1753 letter, denying Edwards a hearing on a recent infraction and pointing out that "I have been debarred of yours & the chhs communion for several months past." On 5 July 1753, Edwards agrees to let Dwight back into church membership, but only if his wife apologizes: "Mrs. Dwight should give the church the reasons of her openly turning her back on the sacraments of the Lord's Supper." On 11 September 1753, Edwards informs four members of the Williams family that they must explain their recent slanders of Edwards before the whole church body, "which I hope you will embrace, rather than to cast contempt on the church (which you have obliged your place in covenant to submit to) by refusing to appear before 'em." A week later, Edwards sent a long list of formal charges against five Williamses for their slander. A related charge in Edwards's hand states that Williams had called Edwards "a plague in the town" and orders church discipline for the slander.
Ephraim Williams Jr. (the college benefactor) appears to be dragged into the mess for the first time on 19 November 1753, when he and other family members are taken to task for their "insidious & supercilious language" and are asked to "reflect on the temper you manifest." The family waited more than four months to deliver their 9-page response.
A group of three depositions in support of the Dwight faction also sheds light on conditions in the settlement. Amidst this internal politicking, the English were living among Christianized Mohicans, and sometimes large delegations of Mohawks. On 2 March 1754, Edwards told Dwight that the Mohawks planned to leave this spring, adding that he would not feed them for the remainder of their time in Stockbridge. One Japheth Bush attested that in the winter of 1751 "there were ninety five in number of ye Mohawks beside six or seven Stockbridge boys; which number continued there, till some time in February, & then about twenty of ye Mohawks returned home, the rest remained there till ye spring of ye year when several others went away I suppose to their spring hunt." Bush also complained that when he was assigned to help build the controversial Female School to be led by Mrs. Dwight, he was warned harshly by an Edwards supporter that he better not hurry so much. See Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, pages 375-426.
Edwards letters appear very rarely on the market. Only a lone letter has been spotted at auction since 1970. A complete inventory of this important archive is available upon request.