Something right in the family

I have been reading Elisabeth Dodds' book on Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, Marriage to a Difficult Man. Last night I came across an incredible section in which Dodds recounts the impact of the Edwards' family over the generations after their deaths. This is what she says:

Up until the year 1900 (that is approximately 150 years after Jonathan Edwards died), the marriage between Jonathan and Sarah Edwards had produced:

13 college presidents
65 professors
100 lawyers (one being the dean of an outstanding law school)
30 judges
66 physicians (one being the dean of a medical school)
80 holders of public office (3 U.S. Senators, mayors of three large cities, governors of three states, a U.S. Vice-President, and a controller of the U.S. Treasury)

Then Dodds continues describing the family, saying:

"Almost all the men had college degrees and many completed graduate work in a time when this was unusual. The women were repeatedly described as 'great readers' or 'highly intelligent,' although girls were not sent to college then. Members of the family wrote 135 books, ranging from Five Years in an English University to a tome on Butterflies of North America. They edited eighteen journals and periodicals. They entered the ministry in platoons and sent one hundred missionaries overseas, as well as stocking many mission boards with lay trustees. One maverick married the daughter of a South Sea Island chieftain but even that branch reverted to type, and its son became a clergyman.

"As [A.E.] Winship put it: '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....The family has cost the country nothing in pauperism, in crime, in hospital or asylum service; on the contrary, it represents the highest usefulness.'"

Dodds does not record for us the number of men that entered the ministry from this family, only saying that there were enough to describe it as "platoons" of men. But she does point out that 100 persons went onto the mission field! And all this came not from some wealthy family with all the resources that accompany such. It came from a bookwormish minister and his uncommon wife.

Absolutely amazing!