Celebrating Our Heritage: Northampton and Bridge Street Cemetery

One of the perks of deputation travel is the opportunity to see many historic sites we might never have an excuse to visit otherwise. Northampton has been the home of many famous people. Sojourner Truth (former slave who became a speaker for abolition and women's suffrage) and Lydia Maria Child (who penned the famous Thanksgiving song, "Over the River and Through the Woods”) both lived there. Former President Calvin Coolidge was a lawyer in town and served as Northampton's Mayor before he traveled to the White House. Alexander Graham Bell was there as a teacher in the 1870s. Amelia Earhart spent some time in Northampton learning engine mechanics. Even the creator of the graham cracker, Sylvester Graham, lived in Northampton and is buried in the Bridge Street Cemetery.

However, it was none of those famous individuals which served as the motivation for our detour to the so-called “Paradise City.” We went to Northampton, Mass., to Bridge Street Cemetery for the sole purpose of visiting with two notable servants of God, Jonathan Edwards and David Brainerd. God’s servants were used in real places and real-life settings, and so there’s something special about connecting with those settings and places. Both Brainerd’s journal (the first internationally recognized biography to be printed in America and the first full missionary biography ever to be published) and Edward’s biography have had a great impact on my own spiritual life and ministry. (Incidentally, it was Edwards who first published Brainerd’s journal.) Having spent much time in the journals, resolutions and sermons of these two men, I was tickled pink to be able to visit one of my favorite pastors and favorite missionaries in the same visit.

I got there and was chagrined to realize that Edwards is actually buried in Princeton, NJ. (Shouldn’t I have known that?) I was sorely disappointed, because here is something special about standing on the spot from which a saint will be resurrected! We were assuaged, however, by the presence of a large memorial to Edwards standing right beside one to Timothy Dwight—his grandson and president of Yale during the revival of the early 19^th century.

It was also special to see David Brainerd’s grave (lying right beside that of Jerusha Edward’s). He died when he was three months younger than I am right now. I consider myself at the beginning of a course he had already finished by my age. Both Brainerd and Edwards died premature deaths. I’m not living to make my grave a tourist attraction, but these men are a reminder to me to redeem the time and work for eternity. Brainerd had fulfilled the desire he had once expressed in his journal: “I [want] to wear out my life in His service and for His glory.” Is that our desire?

Sadly enough, as I left the cemetery, I found my mind mulling over little more than the Subway sandwiches we were planning to buy for the family and the long road down the interstate that lay before us. The mundane has a way of overtaking the most sublime meditations! In spite of the distraction of the mundane, I hope that the inspiration (and rebuke) that came from our short visit with Jonathan Edwards and David Brainerd will remain with me for a long time to come.

(Top Middle: gravestone of Jerusha Edwards; top right: David Brainerd's marker; center of middle row: Stoddard tablet markers; bottom row: Edwards and Dwight Memorials)