Valley of Vision

Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine.

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Divine Promises

Valley of Vision

John Owen, Puritan In July 1657, during a commencement at Cambridge, a prevaricator, a university official known for delivering satirical remarks, joked to the Oxonians (students or alumni of Oxford) that Dr. John Owen, the dean of Christ Church, used so much hair powder it could “discharge eight cannons.” Later that year at Oxford, Mr. Daniel Danvers of Trinity College, serving as terrae filius (a student chosen to give a satirical address), responded to this claim. Speaking to the Cantabrigians (students or alumni of Cambridge), he humorously questioned the logic of the statement, noting that “white for white makes no report,” implying that powdered hair, unlike gunpowder, couldn’t make noise or explode. Danvers went on to describe Owen as a man with a reputation for vanity, who frequently styled his hair with fragrant powder and dressed fashionably. His attire featured decorative details, such as “sets of points” (ribbons or ties) at his knees, fine boots, and “lawn boot-hose tops” (linen adornments over the tops of his boots), reflecting the trendy style of young men of the time. His seal and signature

The Minister of Deerfield and the Young Jonathan Edwards John Williams, the 1704 raid, and a family bond that shaped Edwards’s early memories The Rev. John Williams (1664–1729) became the first settled minister of Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1688. Deerfield was a small English settlement on the New England frontier, where colonial communities stood amid continuing conflict between England and France and their Indigenous allies during Queen Anne’s War. Williams served there for years, raising a family with his wife, Eunice Mather Williams (1664–1704). Before dawn on February 29, 1704, a force of French and Indigenous warriors attacked Deerfield. The assault brought killing, fire, and capture to the settlement. Williams, Eunice, and several of their children were taken from their home and marched north through the winter toward Canada. Two of the Williams children had been killed during the raid, and Eunice, weakened after giving birth only weeks earlier, died along the journey. Williams and several surviving children were eventually taken to Canada. Negotiations led to Williams’s release, and he returned to Deerfield in 1706. His young daughter Eunice, then about seven, remained in Kahnawake with a Mohawk family who had adopted her. She grew up there, married, and made a life in the community. Her father continued to hope for her return, but she remained separated from the family in Deerfield for most of her life. After returning, Williams published The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion in 1707. His account described the raid, the painful march, his captivity, and his return. It became a widely read early American captivity narrative, preserving the family’s ordeal in Williams’s own words and making the minister of Deerfield known far beyond his frontier congregation. I did not know but at the time of visiting all these graves that Williams’s connection to Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703–March 22, 1758) was through their family. Williams’s wife Eunice was the daughter of Esther Warham Mather from her first marriage; Esther later married Solomon Stoddard and had a daughter, Esther Stoddard, who became Jonathan Edwards’s mother. Eunice and Jonathan’s mother were maternal half-sisters, so John Williams was Jonathan’s uncle by marriage. The Deerfield tragedy was therefore not distant news to the Edwards household. Jonathan was an infant when the raid occurred, but as he grew up he heard his family pray for “Uncle Williams” and the cousins held in Canada. Williams remained minister at Deerfield until his death in 1729. Edwards later served in Northampton, where his grandfather Solomon Stoddard had been minister, and became one of the most influential preachers and theologians of his generation. The story of Deerfield linked the two men through kinship, loss, captivity, and the faith their families sought to hold onto through hardship.