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When Jonathan Edwards was about to die, he dictated his final words to his daughter Lucy. His thoughts were of his wife, Sarah, who had not yet joined him at their new home in Princeton, New Jersey, where he had just become college president.

"It seems to me to be the will of God that I must shortly leave you," he said. "Therefore 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 for ever. … And as to my children, you are now to be left fatherless, which I hope will be an inducement to you all to seek a father who will never fail you."

Jonathan had, throughout his life, looked to Sarah as a spiritual paragon. But their "uncommon union" was not the only significant female influence in his life. Edwards's mother, sisters, and daughters also evidenced both high intelligence and strong spiritual mettle. Most likely as a result of his interactions with them, Edwards had a notably high view of women for the day, repeatedly holding them up as exemplars during his ministry.

His mother, Esther Stoddard Edwards, was the daughter of Solomon Stoddard, the Puritan minister dubbed the "Pope of the Connecticut River Valley." Growing up in a home filled with books and frequented by New England's elite, and highly educated for a woman of the time, Esther "surpassed her husband in native vigor of understanding," according to Edwards biographer Sereno Dwight. She instilled in the young Jonathan her own great love for books.

Esther was not alone in demonstrating to Jonathan the intellectual and spiritual capacities of women. He grew up surrounded by ten talented sisters, as bright as they were tall—the patriarch Timothy Edwards called them his "sixty feet of daughters."

Unusually for his time, Timothy prepared not only his son, but also each of his daughters for college. All but one of Jonathan's sisters made the trek from East Windsor, Connecticut, to Boston for finishing school, with sister Mary attending a finishing school in Hadley, Massachusetts.

Young Jonathan's sisters even assisted in his education. While serving as a chaplain during an Indian war, Edwards's father wrote home, charging the older sisters with tutoring Jonathan in his Latin studies.

Evidence of the Edwards sisters' intellect is found in a manuscript entitled "The Soul." For many years, Edwards scholars mistakenly assumed that the author of this essay, which uses wit and incisive satire to criticize a philosophically materialist view of the soul, was the great theologian himself. More recently, however, Edwards scholar Kenneth Minkema identified Jonathan's oldest sister, Esther, as its author.

A younger sister, Hannah, kept a journal later transcribed by her daughter Lucy. In this journal and in drafts of letters, Hannah not only reflects her own extensive learning, but also expresses progressive sentiments about relationships between men and women—convictions fueled by her own experiences in courting. Seriously pursued by two men, first Matthew Rockwell of East Windsor, Connecticut, and then John Sargent of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, she found herself caught in a tug of war between them. She eventually rejected both of their proposals and married a third suitor, Seth Wetmore of Middletown, Connecticut. The situation created quite a stir, however, as Matthew Rockwell had been so convinced of Hannah's supposed obligation to him that he had built a house for her, inscribing her initials on the mantel.

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