American Minute with Bill Federer
He entered Yale College at age 13 and graduated with honors.
He became a pastor, and his sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God," started the Great Awakening, a revival that swept America, uniting the colonies prior to the Revolution.
He became President of Princeton College. His name was Jonathan Edwards, born October 5, 1703.
Jonathan married Sarah Pierrepont, and, according to "A Study in Education and Heredity" by A.E. Winship (1900), their descendants included a U.S. Vice-President, 3 U.S. Senators, 3 governors, 3 mayors, 13 college presidents, 30 judges, 65 professors, 80 public office holders, 100 lawyers, and 100 missionaries.
This same study examined a family known as "Jukes."
In 1877, after visiting New York's prisons, Richard Dugdale found inmates with 42 different last names all descended from one man, called "Max," born 1720 of Dutch stock.
Max was idle, ignorant and vulgar. His descendants included only 20 with a trade, 310 paupers, who, combined spent 2,300 years in poorhouses, 50 women of debauchery, 400 physically wrecked by indulgent living, 7 murderers, 60 thieves, and 130 other convicts.
The "Jukes" cost the state more than $1,250,000.
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