Your Legacy to Society: Cost or Contribution?

American Minute from William J. 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 and he was born OCTOBER 5, 1703.

Jonathan Edwards 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, while visiting New York's prisons, Richard Dugdale found inmates with 42 different last names all descending from one man, called "Max."

Born around 1720 of Dutch stock, Max was a hard drinker, idle, irreverent and uneducated. His descendants included 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" descendants cost the state more than $1,250,000.

William J. Federer is a nationally recognized author, speaker, and president of Amerisearch, Inc, which is dedicated to researching our American heritage. The American Minute radio feature looks back at events in American history on the dates they occurred, is broadcast daily across the country and read by thousand on the internet.