A Tale Of Two Families

A Tale of Two Families

This amazing story of two families spans several generations. Both trace their lineage back to two men who lived in colonial America. One called himself Jukes. But his name isn’t so important. He was constantly coming up with a new alias to stay a step ahead of the law. Jukes was, according to his neighbors, “a shiftless, lazy no-account.” The little that he managed to scrape together was mostly gained by his marginal skills as a petty thief. But Mr. Jukes was never clever enough to outwit the local sheriff. He was constantly in and out of jail. His wife was a woman of low morals who spent too much time in a drunken stupor.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a series of sociologists managed to uncover twelve hundred descendants in the Jukes family tree. Some three hundred were professional beggars. More than a hundred were convicted criminals. Sixty were thieves and pickpockets. At least four hundred of them were drunkards or drug addicts. Another seven were convicted murderers, although several more were suspects. More than fifty of them spent time in mental institutions. Of the twelve hundred descendants discovered by the educators, only twenty ever learned a trade. Half who did learned their trade in prison. Less than two hundred of Jukes’s descendants finished high school, and none attended college. The Jukeses’ family record was one of pauperism and prison, imbecility and insanity, prostitution and panhandling, drunkenness and drug abuse.

One sociologist also studied the family tree of a colonial contemporary of Jukes. He was a preacher, as were his father and grandfather. Scholars say that he was the greatest theologian and philosopher ever produced by America. His dynamic preaching sparked a great spiritual awakening that birthed the American Revolution. Maybe you remember this third president of Princeton, the Reverend Jonathan Edwards, and his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” But you may not have ever shaken his family tree to see what fell out.

A total of four hundred descendants have been traced to Jonathan Edwards and his wife, Sarah. Among them was a US vice president, three US senators, three governors, three mayors, thirteen college and university presidents, and thirty judges. Around sixty-five of Edwards’s progeny were college professors. Another hundred were ministers, missionaries, or seminary professors. Eighty were public office holders. In his family tree were one hundred lawyers and sixty medical doctors. Several descendants had written books, published newspapers, or been editors of journals. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, every major industry in America had as its founder or promoter an offspring of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards.

Most families are mixed bags of success and failures. Few are as dismal as Jukes’s descendants, or as stellar as Edwards’s progeny. But the contrast cannot be missed, nor the lesson dismissed. Parents have a profound impact on their world for generations to come. Nothing is more important than the responsibilities and possibilities of parenthood. The story of two families shouts a message:

Your children will become who you are, so be who you want them to be.

Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.

Proverbs 22:6