Using the very helpful research of Tony Reinke, I recently plotted the major locations of Jonathan Edwards’s life on a Google Map. If you click through, you can zoom in. This plots not only the major towns where Edwards lived, but also tries to zoom in to exact locations, like the house where he was born, the church where he preached “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and so on.
In his excellent book, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought (IVP, 2009), Douglas Sweeney explains what it would have looked, sounded, and even smelled like if you went back in time to Jonathan Edwards world:
Perhaps the first thing you would notice as you entered one of the small towns that structured Edwards’ world is the quietness of the daily lives of its residents.
To be sure, you would hear noises—people talking and working with tools, the rhythmic clopping of horses’ hooves, the lowing of cows and bleating of sheep. But you would not hear any engines, whether of cars or heavy machinery. You might well hear a town crier making announcements to the community with the help of a hand bell, a conch shell or even a drum. But you would not hear any planes, trains, automobiles or trucks. Nor would you hear the steady humming, beeping, honking and general wailing of industrial equipment. In fact, the loudest sound to be heard in many early New England towns was the ringing, by the sexton, of the church bell.
As you traversed the town green, you would notice the smell of dung. (In early New England these spaces were often used for grazing.)
But once you became inured to it, and learned to watch your step, your gaze would likely be fixed on the most important building on the green, the local church, or “meeting house,” as the Puritans usually called it. You would not find it impressive. England’s neogothic churches were aesthetically far more pleasing. From cavernous, cross-shaped naves, they attracted attention heavenward with their massive, vaulted ceilings, then to the altar, richly adorned and set in the center of the chancel. Worshipers walked forward reverently at the height of the liturgy to kneel at the rail (which divided nave and chancel very clearly), meet the priest, and then receive the body of Christ.
Walking into a meeting house in Puritan New England, by comparison, was like walking into a barn. In Edwards’ day, many churches sought to improve their meeting houses, adding pew cushions, arched windows, bell towers and spires. But the whitewashed, neoclassical, picture-perfect churches featured in regional tourist guides are the results of nineteenth-century nostalgia.
In colonial New England, churches were plain and sided with clapboard that was often left unpainted.
Below are several drawings of key places from Edwards’s life.
For a complete chronology of Edwards’s life, see this by Ken Minkema.