The Coquette | Page 2

that little could be said to throw
light or interest upon the history, and even less upon the character, or in
extenuation of the follies or the frailties of the unfortunate subject of
the following pages, and upon which public opinion had long ago
rendered its verdict and sealed it for a higher tribunal. Yet I am happy
in assuring any who may pause over these prefatory leaves that this is
not the fact; and it harms us not to believe that over every life, however
full of error it may be, there is an unwritten chapter which the angels
take into account as they bear upward the tearful record, and which He,
the great Scribe, "who ever sitteth at the right hand of the Father," and
from whose solemn utterance on earth dropped the forever cherished
words which have so often given life and hope to the penitent
fallen,--"neither do I condemn thee,"--interpolates on the mighty leger
of eternity for the great reckoning day.
"Eliza Wharton," generally known, perhaps, as Elizabeth Whitman,
was the eldest of four children--Elizabeth, Mary, Abigail, and William;
the latter of whom was a physician, twice married, and who also left a
son of his own name, (William Elnathan,) who died in Philadelphia in
1846, unmarried. Her father, the Rev. Elnathan Whitman, was the son

of Rev. Samuel Whitman, who was the third son of Rev. Zechariah
Whitman, the youngest child of John, the original ancestor of the
Whitman family. He (Rev. Samuel W.) graduated at Harvard
University in 1696, and was for several years a tutor there. Thus having
passed through the usual, though then somewhat limited, course of
theology, he was ordained as minister of the gospel in Farmington,
Connecticut, in 1706, at that time one of the largest towns in the state.
He inherited by bequest one half of his father's lands in Stow,
Massachusetts, and was thereby also made executor of his will. He
married, March 19, 1707, Mary Stoddard, daughter of Rev. Solomon
Stoddard, second minister of Northampton, Massachusetts. Mr.
Stoddard was born in Boston in 1643, and died in Northampton in 1729.
This Solomon Stoddard was the great-grandfather of Hon. Solomon
Stoddard, now residing in Northampton.
It is worthy of remark here that the early ancestors of "Eliza Wharton"
intermarried also with the Edwards family; so that Hon. Pierpont
Edwards, who figures in this volume as "Major Sanford," could be no
less than second cousin to his unfortunate victim.
Rev. Elnathan Whitman, the father of Elizabeth, was born January 12,
1708-9, and graduated from Yale College, New Haven, where he was
for several subsequent years a tutor. He at length settled as minister
over the Second Church in Hartford, Connecticut, and there married
Abigail Stanley, daughter of Colonel Nathaniel Stanley, treasurer of the
colony of Connecticut, a woman of uncommon energy of character and
of superior mental acquirements, (a correct portrait of whom
accompanies these pages, taken from an original painting.) He died in
Hartford also, March 2, 1776, aged sixty-eight years, after having
served in the ministry in that place forty-three of the same. His
tombstone bears the following inscription:--
IN MEMORY OF
THE REV. ELNATHAN WHITMAN,
Pastor of the Second Church of Christ in Hartford, and one of the
fellows of the corporation of Yale College, who departed this life the
2d day of March, A.D. 1776, in the 69th year of his age and 44th of his
ministry.
Endowed with superior natural abilities and good literary acquirements,
he was still more distinguished for his unaffected piety, primitive

simplicity of manners, and true Christian benevolence. He closed a life
spent in the service of his Creator, in humble confidence of eternal
happiness through the merits of the Savior.
"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord."
His wife survived him nineteen-years, and died November 19, 1795,
aged seventy-six. It was during the dark, early period of her
widowhood that the sad events occurred which have furnished the
historian and the novelist with themes of the deepest pathos, and to
which prominence is given in the following pages. But,
"Woes cluster. Rare are solitary woes; They love a train--they tread
each other's heels."
So said the sublimest of poets, and so has all experience proved. Thus,
in her case, this affliction did not come alone; but at a period nearly
connected with this, in the dreary, solitary hours of the night,--her night
of sorrow too,--her house was discovered on fire, which, for lack of
modern appliances, was totally destroyed, with all its contents,
consisting not only of many curious and valuable articles of furniture
both for use and ornament, but embracing, also, an uncommon library,
overflowing with rare books, pamphlets, &c., which her late husband
had collected with great effort and research.
Elizabeth, the eldest of her family, was