Regarding her marriage and role as help mate and keeper of the home:
"No person of discernment could be conversant in the family without observing and admiring the great harmony and mutual love and esteem that subsisted between them [Jonathan and Sarah]."
"In the midst of these complicated labours, he [Jonathan Edwards] found at home one who was in every sense a help mate for him, one who made their common dwelling the abode of order and neatness, of peace and comfort, of harmony and love, to all its inmates, and of kindness and hospitality to the friend, visitant, and the stranger."
"Sarah's way of handling such a husband was simply to let him be sure of her steady love, and then free him to think. She meanwhile was the one who coped with the children's disagreements and thought of ways to use up yesterday's joint of lamb."
"...Sarah had most of the responsibility for the property. She saw that the garden was planted, that the hired man had his instructions for each day. They used to tell in Northampton how once[Jonathan] Edwards asked, 'Isn't it about time the hay was cut?' To which Sarah mildly replied, 'It's been in the barn for two weeks."
"It was a happy circumstance that he could trust everything to the care of Mrs. Edwards with entire safety and with undoubting confidence. She was a most judicious and faithful mistress of a family, habitually industrious, a sound economist, managing her household affair with diligence and discretion."
"While she uniformly paid a becoming deference to her husband and treated him with entire respect, she spared no pains in conforming to his inclination and rendering everything in the family agreeable and pleasant; accounting it her greatest glory and there wherein she could best serve God and her generation, to be the means in this way of promoting his usefulness and happiness."
"How could she have known the gift she was giving us as she freed Jonathan to fulfill his calling?"
Regarding her hospitality and character:
"She was peculiarly kind to strangers. By her sweet and winning manners and ready conversation she soon became acquainted with them and led him immediately to feel as if he were at home."
"Sarah had been conspicuous because she never gossiped. Hopkins claimed that 'when she heard persons speaking ill of others she would say what she thought she could in truth and justice, in their excuse.' "
"By now Sarah had learned the costliness as well as the magnificence of being married to an unusual man. Because her husband was totally committed to what appeared to him to be the will of God, he was not cramped by the tiny fears that make another kind of man cautious. Such a man is likely to collide with others who hold differing views of the truth. Fortunately, Sarah had now worked past her earlier need to be approved by everyone. The consistent serenity she had achieved after her crisis made it possible for her to go on lovingly supporting Edwards and giving her children confidence that they were safer at home however chilly the community was toward them."
Regarding her parenting:
"Her system of discipline began at a very early age, and it was her rule to resist the first, as well as every subsequent exhibition of temper or disobedience in the child, however young, until its will was brought into submission to the will of the parents."
"She had need to speak but once and she was obeyed; murmuring and answering again were not known among them. In their manners they were uncommonly respectful to their parents."
“Quarreling and contention were in her family wholly unknown. She carefully observed the first appearance of resentment and ill-will in her young children towards any person whatever, and did not connive at it, but was careful to show her displeasure, and suppress it to the utmost; yet not by angry, wrathful words."
Regarding her industry and thrift:
"Actually the Edwardses lived frugally, but it was instinctive with Sarah to do ordinary tasks with flair. She was the kind of woman who took the trouble to tie her hair with a ribbon for breakfast when many wives came down tousled; who spent an extra minute to stamp a design on a block of home-churned butter; who knew how to give a flourish to simple dishes with parsley, spearmint, or sage, all grown in a square of herbs by the kitchen door; who, when she had a bowl of peas to shell, would take it out into the sunshine in the garden. She put in day lilies, hollyhocks, pansies, pinks (the flowers women loved to plant on the frontier, for it gave them a sense of putting down roots)."
"For Jonathan, Boston meant a chance to graze in bookstores... For Sarah, it was a chance to catch up on fashions. She had many daughters to dress and she had kept her New Haven feeling for elegance. So she peered in shop windows where baby dolls displayed samples of the London styles. Later, keeping that picture in her head, she would add lace to the sleeves of last year's dress to make it look new, would revive another with a new white apron."
Regarding the Lord's preeminence in their family:
"The first event in the lives of all the children was when their father wrote down the date of their birth in the Bible. That Bible had been a wedding gift, and it was the core of the Edwardses life together. Every life within that house was entrusted, from its first hour, to the care of the One who was, they were confident, the Living God. As a result their household was one in which heaven and earth were near together. When Edwards choked out his last words, he spoke accurately as he had always tried to do. It was truly 'an uncommon union'."
"Every family ought to be a little church, consecrated to Christ and wholly influenced and governed by His rules. And family education and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all other means are like to prove ineffectual."-Jonathan Edwards
"True religion is a divine light in the souls of the saints and as it shines out in conversation before men, it tends to induce others to glorify God." -Jonathan Edwards
Regarding her influence on her husband:
"When [Jonathan] Edwards had as a college student drawn up his list of seventy 'Resolves,' one had been: 'Resolved, to live with all my might while I do live.' He had done that, and she had been the chief reason he had."
"In the last minutes of his life, Edwards had tried to speak. Lucy, Esther, and Dr. Shippen leaned forward. Edwards spoke in a low voice and still distinctly. The words were not about heaven or hell, or about books or theories. He spoke of Sarah: 'Give my kindest love to my dear wife, and tell her that the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual and therefore will continue forever.' "
Regarding their descendants:
"Probably no two people married since the beginning of the 18th century have been the progenitors of so many distinguished persons as were Jonathan Edwards and Sarah Pierrepont." -The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society
"Whatever the family has done it has done ably and nobly. Much of the capacity and talent, intensity and character, of the more than 1,400 of the Edwards family is due to Mrs. Edwards." -A.E. Winship
In 1900, A.E. Winship tracked down 1,400 of their descendants and published a study of the descendants this single marriage had produced:
13 college presidents
65 professors
100 lawyers, and a dean of an outstanding law school
30 judges
66 physicians
80 holders of public office:
3 United States senators
mayors of three large cities
governors of three states
a Vice President of the United States
a controller of the United States Treasury
“Many large banks, banking houses, and insurance companies have been directed by them. They have been owners or superintendents of large coal mines… of large iron plants and vast oil interests… and silver mines…. There is scarcely any great American industry that has not had one of this family among its chief promoters….”
"Members of the family wrote 135 books and edited 18 journals and periodicals. They entered the ministry in platoons and sent 100 missionaries overseas, as well as stocking many mission boards with lay trustees... The line continues to be vigorous, intelligent, enlivening to society. Yet all of this achievement came out of a family with no large inherited fortune. All the children's accomplishments were a result of their personal initiative... Has any other mother contributed more vitality to the leadership of a nation?"
Her favorite gift has been her new "monica" (harmonica). 
Having Tea Parties Together
I am very thankful for a sweet brother like Oliver who enjoys running errands and hanging out with me. 
Please pray that God will comfort my great-grandmother, Nannie, as she adjusts to her new life without him.
The country roads were way too icy for me to travel to my final Wilton Course Two cake decorating class last night so my teacher said that I could just make the grand finale basketweave cake at home and bring in a picture next week when I begin Course Three. 
The basketweave technique looked daunting in the book, but thankfully, it was not as difficult as I had assumed.
Next week I'll begin Course Three, which is about fondant and tiered cakes.
We got almost a foot of snow over the weekend and are expecting more tomorrow. 
My daisies look like someone stepped on them and my rosebuds resemble boxing gloves, but overall I'm pleased with what I have learned in this second course. I just need a lot more practice! I will post a picture of my final cake from this course soon.
Another goal for this week is to complete the mandatory continuing education courses for my real estate brokers' license. I have always dreaded the annual continuing education courses (the teachers usually take two hours worth of material and stretch it to fulfill the eight hour requirement), so this year I am taking the courses online.
Tonight I am simply sipping tea and enjoying a cozy, quiet evening.
