raduated 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 born in 1752. She was a child
of early promise, and remarkable in maturer years for her g