October 5 | Moments Almanac | Orphan
Jonathan Edwards was born on October 5, 1703, and became one of the most influential theologians in American history. But tucked inside the final chapter of Edwards’s life is the remarkable story of a little boy who, before his third birthday, lost his father, mother, grandfather, and grandmother.
That orphan was Aaron Burr Jr.
In this episode of Moments Almanac, we follow the extraordinary chain of events that connected Jonathan Edwards, the presidency of Princeton, a smallpox inoculation, a devastating year of loss, and a two-year-old child whose name would one day fill the history books.
It’s a reminder that we rarely know the whole story while we’re living through it. We see one page. God sees the whole story.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly.” — 1 Corinthians 13:12
Welcome to Moments Almanac for October 5th. And on this day in 1703, Jonathan Edwards was born in East Windsor, Connecticut. Now, of course, we've discussed Jonathan Edwards on this almanac, and you probably know him as one of the main characters in the Great Awakening, the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, one of the most influential theologians in American history, but today I want to tell you a little story about a boy standing on the edge of Jonathan Edwards' story. His name was Aaron. And before he was three years old, almost everyone around him was gone. Jonathan Edwards had a daughter named Esther. Now this is where you have to really focus in so that you can understand the thread. Esther, brilliant, spirited, and by all accounts much like her father, she married a young minister named Aaron Burr. No, not that Aaron Burr, his father. Aaron Burr Sr. became president of the College of New Jersey, the school we know as Princeton. And in September of 1757, at only forty one years old, Burr suddenly died. He left Esther with two small children, four-year-old Sally and a little boy named Aaron Not Yet II. The college needed a president, and they turned to Esther's father, Jonathan Edwards. Edwards reluctantly accepted the position and arrived at Princeton in 1758. But smallpox was spreading. Edwards believed in the relatively new practice of inoculation and decided to undergo the procedure himself, partly as an example to others. Something went terribly wrong. On April 7th, Esther Edwards Burr died after becoming ill with a fever. Aaron had lost his mother. Then in October, Sarah Edwards, Jonathan's wife, and Aaron's grandmother died of dysentery while traveling to Princeton. In barely thirteen months, death had swept through nearly the entire family. And standing in the wreckage was a little boy who wasn't even three years old, Aaron Burr, Jr. One day he would become a United States Senator, Vice President of the United States, and his name would be forever connected to another name, Alexander Hamilton. But nobody standing beside the little orphan boy could possibly have known any of that. They couldn't see the Senate, they couldn't see the vice presidency, they couldn't see the field where two men would be standing facing one another with pistols. They could only see a child who had lost almost everybody. And that's the moment worth remembering because we have a terrible habit of believing that the moment we're living in is the whole story, and it isn't. Scripture tells us, for now we see through a glass darkly. We see the loss. We see what comes next. We see the frightened child. We see the years still unwritten. We see one page. God sees the whole story. Jonathan Edwards was born on October 5th, 1703. His name would become one of the most recognizable names in American Christianity, but tucked away in the final chapter of his life was a two-year-old orphan whose own name would someday fill history books, and perhaps that's something worth remembering also. Never assume you know the whole story simply because you know what happened on this page. There's always other pages still to come. And that's Moments Almanac for October 5th. Let's pay attention and let's take heart. Notice the scattered moments and share the grace.
