Lion Gardiner

  General Notes:

# Occupation: engineer; he designed and erected the blockhouse (1635-36) Old Fort Saybrook, Old Saybrook, Middlesex Co, Connecticut
# Event: during the Pequot Wars Military 1636/37 Fort at Old Saybrook, Middlesex Co, Connecticut
# Event: Lion Gardiner: Long Island's Founding Father ; Transcript of lecture by Roger Wunderlich, Ph.D Article
# Note:

Transcript of Lecture Delivered by
Roger Wunderlich, Ph.D.
March 14, 1998
Lion Gardiner: Long Island's Founding Father

In the year of our Lord, 1635, the tenth of July, came I, Lion Gardiner and Mary my wife from Woerden a towne in Holland, where my wife was born . . . to London and from thence to New England and dwelt at Saybrooke forte four years . . . of which I was commander: and there was borne to me a son named David, 1636 . . . the first born in that place, . . . Then I went to an island of mine owne which I had bought and purchased of the Indians, called by
them Manchonake by us the Isle of Wight, and there was born another daughter named
Elizabeth . . . in 1641, she being the first child of English parents that was born there.
\emdash Lion Gardiner, lines in a family Bible1

Long Island as America is the premise that the history of this Island reflects as well as contributes to most major phases of national life from colonial times to the present. One may examine the Long Island story through the prism of national history, or view the nation's history in terms of events on Long Island\emdash the subjects are interchangeable.
2 The Long Island as America thesis applies equally to the impact of European settlement on the Native American people: the pattern of colonial growth; Long Island in the Revolution and then in the early Republic; slavery; whaling; the building of the Long Island Railroad; farming, fishing, and shipbuilding; the Civil War and the Gilded Age; the Gold Coast estates; the rise of the suburbs; the Roaring Twenties, replete with the Jazz Age, Prohibition, and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan; Long Island as cradle of aviation; the Great Depression; Robert Moses, the controversial master builder; Long Island as arsenal of fighter planes and producer of the Lunar Module; the post-World War II population boom, exemplified by Levittown; the social upheavals of the sixties; the change at the end of the Cold War from a manufacturing to a service economy; and current, postsuburban Long Island, where most of its people work as well as live, beset by the high cost of taxes, housing and energy. There is no
better example of this concept than the career of Lion Gardiner, with whom the search for Long Island's founding father begins and ends. Lion Gardiner, who lived from 1599 until 1663, was the original English settler not only of Long Island but also the future state of New York. This robust pioneer stands as the first as well as the prototype of the colonists, who, in the words of Silas Wood, Long Island's first major historian, "had forsaken the scenes of civilization, broken asunder the ties that bound them to their native soil, . . . encountered the
dangers of the ocean, and . . . submitted to the hazards and privations of a new and savage
country." 3 Gardiner's lifework exemplified the transition from the old to the modern world.
He took part in three of the principal movements that marked the emergence of popular
government from the bonds of absolute monarchy: the winning of Holland's independence
from
Spain, the English Revolution, and the Puritan colonization of New England and Long Island.
As a young man, he served as an engineer in an English regiment stationed in the Netherlands
in support of the northern provinces' battle to break away from the Spanish empire. While
engaged in this early war of national liberation, he was hired by leading opponents of the
state and church of England to build a fort at Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut River.
In 1639, at the end of his four-year contract, he crossed the Sound to become lord of the
manor of Gardiner's Island, a fertile sliver of land between the forks of Paumanok. In 1650 he
purchased land in the recently founded town of East Hampton; three years later he left
Gardiner's Island in the hands of retainers and moved to the fledgling village to assume a
leading role in its civil and religious affairs. His cordial relations with Native Americans
saved eastern Long Island from the bloody interracial warfare that plagued New England.
Toward the end of his life, he became the catalyst for the creation of Smithtown, conveying to
William Smith the thirty thousand acres given to him by the Montauk sachem, Wyandanch,
whose daughter Gardiner helped to ransom when she was kidnapped by mainland Indians.4


Gardiner exerted a major influence on the development of East Hampton, which, together
with Southold, Southampton, Shelter Island, Huntington, Brookhaven, and Smithtown,
comprised the scale-model city-states that distinguished eastern Long Island. Although they
restricted first-class citizenship only to Puritan co-religionists, these self-governing Bible
commonwealths endowed future generations with two of the building blocks of liberty\emdash the
town meeting and the independent church, wholly owned and managed by its congregation.
As Silas Wood described them, "each town of the first settlement was a pure democracy: the
people of each town exercised the sovereign power. All questions were determined by the
voice of the major part of the people, assembled in town meeting."5 These eastern towns
found themselves outside the orbit of domination, so distant were they from the centers of
Dutch and British power. In the words of another of Long Island's nineteenth-century
historians, Nathaniel S. Prime, they were "absolutely in a state of nature, possessing all the
personal rights and privileges which the God of nature gave them, but without the semblance
of authority one over another." When they found it expedient to ally themselves with New
England, it was not because of doubt that they could manage their internal affairs, "but solely
for defence from foreign aggression. And the nature of the union was rather that of an alliance
than subjection."6 When parting from Great Britain took center stage a century later, the
descendants of Puritan pioneers were ready for a republic.


As a townsman of East Hampton, Gardiner helped to shape a new and American social
design, which enabled ordinary folk to own property and enjoy the freedoms restricted to the
privileged gentry across the sea. However, though he was our founding father he was not our
patron saint. While his statesmanship cemented peaceful relations between the settlers and
the Indians, he also presided over the peaceable but permanent transfer of Long Island real
estate from its Native American owners to himself and his fellow settlers. As the symbol of
two phenomena\emdash the formation of the model Puritan township and the nonviolent
displacement of Indians\emdash Lion Gardiner personified the dual and sometimes ambivalent
mission of the colonists of Long Island.
Necessity compelled Gardiner and his compatriots to cope with the basic conditions of life in
completely new surroundings. This involved the providing, from a standing start, of food,
shelter, and artifacts, and a safe and harmonious social order attuned to the New World, not
the Old. Above all, as they dealt with these elementary needs, the uninvited settlers grappled
with the question of their legal right to the land that was now their only home. It was glaringly
apparent that every acre was the possession of the indigenous Native Americans.
It is easy to judge the past by present standards. A moralist can argue that the six thousand
Long Island Indians were entitled to hold their land forever, thus changing the English influx
from a settlement to an invasion. Or, that because there was so much room to coexist on this
lush and sparsely settled island, Lion Gardiner et al cannot be excused for basing their system
of land acquisition on dispossessing the Indians. In particular, why did the English not pay a
fair price instead of trading trifles for treasure?


We may beg the question by reminding ourselves that in many ways it is moot: by the end of
the seventeenth-century, Long Island's Indian population was almost wiped out by the germs
of smallpox, measles, and other diseases inadvertently spread by their almost immune
English carriers. In his memoir, written in 1660, Gardiner mentioned a recent "time of a great
mortality," during which "two thirds of the Indians upon Long-Island died." Ten years later,
in the first English account of New York, Daniel Denton observed how few Indians remained
on Long Island, a state of affairs he welcomed as God's serendipitous bonus to British
colonists: "It hath been generally observed, that where the English come to settle, a Divine
Hand makes way for them, by removing or cutting off the Indians either by Wars one with the
other, or by some raging mortal Disease."7
Although death by disease played the largest part, the issue of how the Indians lost their land
still goads our historical conscience, and we seek acceptable motives for the policies of the
colonists. The blunt reality is that the tide of English immigration, swelled by the prospect of
land for the taking, proved far too strong for deterrence by legal niceties. Lion Gardiner, the
intrepid pioneer and archetype of English homesteaders, was also a business man obsessed
with acquiring real estate from its present, ancestral owners. Many of his contemporaries
held that the Indians were primitive simpletons, whose collective holding of tribal grounds
made real estate dealing impossible. According to the conventional wisdom, the aborigines
were too uncivilized to conceive of buying and selling land they naively believed belonged to
all who lived on it.


Lion Gardiner, to his credit, exhibited none of this pervasive prejudice. He accepted Indians
as friends and not inferiors: his cordial relations with Yovawan and Wyandanch, the
successive sachems with whom he dealt, exempted eastern Long Island from the interracial
bloodshed that afflicted Connecticut and Massachusetts. In the process, however, Gardiner
amassed a fortune in land by "buying" it for trinkets, and expediting sales by promoting the
Native American seller, especially Wyandanch, to the fictitious but handy rubber-stamp rank
of "Sachem of all Long Island." One way to obtain the land was by force: the Long Island
way, perfected, if not invented, by Lion Gardiner, was to "purchase" deeds from a
super-sachem and have them confirmed by colonial writ. As contended by John A. Strong, a
current authority on Long Island's Indian legacy, Lion Gardiner crowned Wyandanch with the
title of Grand Sachem "to legitimize his purchase of lands all over Long Island." The
Montauks' lack of military power "made a mockery of this presumptuous title," the sham
enabling "Gardiner and his associates to avoid the difficulties of negotiating with the
numerous small bands living on the lands in question."8
Lion Gardiner's lineage has not been traced, but according to Curtiss C. Gardiner, who wrote
the history of his famous ancestor on the two-hundred-and fiftieth anniversary of Lion's
arrival on his island, "He was probably a gentleman without title, of the middle rank,
between the nobility and the yeomanry, yet he might have been a yeoman." Granted that
seventeenth-century spelling was on a do-it-yourself basis, Lion generally signed himself as
"Gardener," a name which Curtiss C. Gardiner pointed out "may be derived from an
occupation, the keeper of a garden," and subsequently "may have been changed . . . to
Gardiner, that the occupation and the name of a person might be the more readily
distinguishable." His unusual first name "was Lion, as he invariably wrote it so": there is no
reason to speculate that his baptismal name was Lionel. His army grade was sergeant, as
evidenced by letters to John Winthrop Jr., the governor of the Saybrook colony and
Gardiner's only superior there, in which one correspondent referred to "Seriant Gardener,"
another to "Sergiant Gardiner." Gardiner's later rank of "Leiftenant" was a promotion for his
service at Saybrook. 9


Nothing is known of Gardiner's life before 1635, the starting point of his memoir, "Leift. Lion
Gardener his Relation of the Pequot Warres." While serving as "an Engineer and Master of
Works of Fortification in the legers of the Prince of Orange, in the Low Countries," he was
recruited by Hugh Peter and John Davenport, the exiled Puritan ministers of the English
church of Rotterdam, and "some other well-affected Englishmen of Rotterdam," to build and
command a fort in New England. The project was sponsored by upper-class dissenters from
the government of Charles 1, who, during the 1630s, suspended Parliament, demanded
Anglican orthodoxy, and levied unacceptable taxes. In addition to Davenport, who became a
founder of New Haven, and Peter, a firebrand chaplain-to-be of Oliver Cromwell's army and
Protectorate, its supporters included Viscount Saye and Sele (William Fiennes) and Baron
Brooke (Robert Greville), the spokesmen in the House of Lords of the Puritan opposition; Sir
Arthur Haselrig, a prominent rebel in the House of Commons; and George Fenwick, another
member of Parliament who defied the royal authority. Of these, only Fenwick came to live at
the fort\emdash it was he who named the place Saybrook to honor its two main sponsors. Once the
Long Parliament convened in 1640, and especially after war with the Crown erupted two
years later, the organizers lost interest in Saybrook; Fenwick sold it to the colony of
Connecticut in 1644, before returning to England to resume his seat in Parliament and
command a militia regiment.10
A third nineteenth-century Long Island historian, Benjamin Franklin Thompson, assessed Lion
Gardiner as "one of the many young men of Britain of bold and adventurous spirit, who,
seeking fame or sympathizing with the oppressed," joined the ranks of English
nonconformists, "both of the church and the laity," fighting to liberate Holland. Lion's
commander in the lowlands was Sir Thomas Fairfax, the future general of Cromwell's army.
His Saybrook employers were ringleaders of the movement that eventually overthrew the
British monarchy, beheaded the king, and instituted a short-lived republic: it seems unlikely
that this band of dissidents would hire Gardiner had he not sided with their cause. According
to Curtiss C. Gardiner, "he adhered to the Parliamentary party, and was a Dissenter and a
friend of the Puritans." However, Lion Gardiner's memoir expresses no political viewpoint
in connection with Holland or Saybrook. While in Holland, Thompson noted, he married
"Mary Willemson, a native of [the small city of Woerden], and a lady of prominent
connections." It is tempting to assume that Gardiner sympathized with his rebel employers,
but it is also possible that this unblinking realist took the Saybrook job for the hundred
pounds a year it paid, and the chance to begin married life as the leader of a bold and
prestigious venture.11
As it turned out, Saybrook was a disaster. "According to promise," wrote Lion, "we expected
that there would have come from England 300 able men, 50 to till the ground, and 50 to build
houses. But our great expectation at the River's mouth, came only two men, Mr. Fenwick, and
his man." A recent historian of the Winthrops found that after five discouraging months, John
Winthrop Jr., Gardiner's superior, "quit Saybrook . . . before the end of his term as governor,
and left Lion Gardiner in charge of the thinly manned outpost, to spend a miserable winter
[1636-37] behind the palisades, beleaguered by Pequots." Somehow, Lion managed to
shepherd his small flock of settlers through the hardships of that bitter season, when he "had
but twenty-four in all, men, women, and boys and girls, and not food for two months, unless
we saved our cornfield, which could not possibly be if they came to war, for it is two miles
from our home."12
The war he dreaded was with the Pequots, the intractable local Indians with whom traders
had been skirmishing, and whose extermination was held necessary by many New England
settlers. As a harbinger of impending conflict, twenty Massachusetts Bay men raided the
Pequots and marched home again, to Lion Gardiner's "great grief, for, said 1, you come hither
to raise these wasps about my cars, and then you will take wing and flee away." He was a
pragmatist, not a pacifist. He disapproved of small sorties that resulted in counterattacks on
his vulnerable fort, in one of which he was shot in the thigh by a Pequot arrow. But in 1637,
when Captains John Mason and John Underhill led a large force of colonists and Indian allies
against the Pequot stronghold, Lion rejoiced in the "Victory to the glory of God, and honor of
our nation, having slain three hundred, burnt their fort, and taken many prisoners." Although
he praised the outcome of the Pequot War, he criticized the carnage as the avoidable result of
violence and counter-violence that began with the murder of a Pequot by an Indian friendly to
Massachusetts:

Thus far I have written in a book, that all men and posterity might know how and why so
many honest men had their blood shed, yea, and some flayed alive, others cut in pieces, and
some roasted alive, only because . . . a Bay Indian killed one Pequit.13

The Pequot's defeat led to Gardiner's meeting with Wyandanch, the Montauk leader, who
visited Saybrook three days after the battle. Although Gardiner referred to Wyandanch as the
"next brother to the old Sachem of Long Island," it is more likely that they were colleagues,
with Wyandanch next in line to succeed the "old Sachem," Yovawan, whom the English
called Poggatucut.14
According to Gardiner, the purpose of Wyandanch's call was to "know if we were angry with
all Indians," or only with Pequots. In his typically forthright manner, Lion answered "No, but
only with such as had killed Englishmen." When Wyandanch asked if the English would trade
with "they that lived on Long Island," Gardiner gave him a conditional yes: "If you will kill
all the Pequits that come to you, and send me their heads, then . . . you shall have trade with
us." Wyandanch said he would bring this news to "his brother . . . and if we may have peace
and trade with you, we will give you tribute, as we did the Pequits." Gardiner sealed his
bargain with a grisly demand with which Wyandanch complied:

If you have any Indians that have killed English, you must bring their heads also . . . so he
went away and did as I had said, and sent me five heads, three and four heads for which I
paid them that brought them as they had promised.15

It was not a squeamish age on either side of the ocean. Settlers captured by Native Americans
sometimes suffered deaths as horrible as that inflicted by fellow Englishmen on one of
Gardiner's former employers, the Reverend Hugh Peter, who, shortly after the Restoration,
was hung, drawn, and quartered after being forced to witness the similar fate of a friend.16
The price of peace on Long Island was harsh, but the pact between Gardiner and Wyandanch,
and the lasting friendship that followed, relieved eastern Long Island of the English-Indian
carnage that persisted for forty years in New England, from the Pequot War in Connecticut
through King Philip's War in Massachusetts.
Soon after Winthrop left Saybrook, Lion wrote to him that those who remained would be
loyal and work hard for the colony, but "it seemed wee have neither masters nor owners." If
not provided for, he continued, "then I must be forced to shift as the Lord may direct."17
To shift as the Lord may direct was something Lion did incredibly well. At the end of his
Saybrook contract, in 1639, he crossed the Sound with his family and some farmer-soldiers
from the fort to become the first of an unbroken line of lords of the manor of Gardiner's
Island, seven and a half miles long and three miles across at the widest point, a few miles
off-shore from East Hampton. Lion called it the Isle of Wight because of its contour; the
Indian name, "Manchonake," meant a place where many had died, perhaps from some great
sickness that swept the east end of Long Island before the coming of the English. The
description of Gardiner's Island in 1798 by its seventh-generation proprietor might well have
applied to the island in Lion's time:

The soil . . . is good & is very natural for Wheat and White clover. The timber is of various
kinds, mostly large White oak . . . The land is well watered with brooks, springs & ponds . . .
Beef, Cheese, Wheat, and Wool are the staple articles . . . Fish of various kinds may be
procured at almost any time. For fertility of soil & for various advantages it is not perhaps
exceeded by many farms in the United States.18

In the opinion of Curtiss G. Gardiner, the traditional consideration of "one large black dog,
one gun, a quantity of powder and shot, some rum and a few Dutch blankets [is] not well
founded." The real price, recorded in a lawyer's notebook, was "ten coates of trading cloath,"
paid to "Yovawan Sachem of Pommanocc and Aswaw Sachem his wife," for Lion Gardiner
and his heirs "to have and to hold . . . forever (as of) the third day of the moneth, called, by
the English May in the yeare by them of their Lord . . . 1639." Ten months later, Lion obtained
a confirming grant from the agent of the Earl of Stirling, then the king's grantee for Long
Island and its adjacent islands. The consideration of five pounds a year empowered Gardiner

to enjoy that Island . . . he hath now in possession, Called . . . by the English the Isle of Wight
. . . forever . . . And also to make Execute & put in practice such Laws for Church & Civil
Government as are according to God the King and the practice of the Country without giving
any account thereof to any whomsoever.19

Even before he moved from Gardiner's Island, Lion Gardiner took an active part in the affairs
of East Hampton and its church. He was instrumental in the selection of the first minister,
Thomas James, a young man about whom he wrote to John Winthrop Jr. in 1650, the year the
church was gathered. The letter began, characteristically, with a proposal to sell ten cows
"for fiftie pound, in good marchantabl wampem, bever, or silver." As for the newly formed
church, declared Gardiner in keeping with Puritan striving for a congregation of visible
saints, it aimed for quality, not quantity: it would rather part with some of its members than
"resave more without good testimonies." East Hampton was willing to pay "the young man . .
. 20li a year, with such that as I myself eat, til we see what the Lord will do with us." In a
passage illustrative of Gardiner's erudition at a time of widespread illiteracy\emdash his history of
the Pequot War was peppered with biblical quotations\emdash he asked Winthrop to tell the "yung
man (who) hapily hath not manie books . . . that I have . . the 3 Books of Martyrs, Erasmus,
moste of Perkins, Wilsons Dixtionare, a large Concordiance, Mayor on the New
T(e)stement."20
In contrast to many of his peers, Gardiner did not clutter his mind with superstition, as proven
by his reaction to an accusation of witchcraft. The defendant, Goody Garlick, was charged
with causing the death in childbirth of none other than Lion's young daughter, Elizabeth
Howell, in 1657. Perhaps because Goody and Joshua Garlick, her husband, worked for him
for many years, or perhaps because he had too much common sense to believe in "black cats
and harlequin devils . . . Lion seems to have exerted himself in behalf of this unfortunate
woman," wrote Alexander Gardiner. Lion's influence aborted a trial at Hartford and saved
Goody "from an awful fate."21
Lion Gardiner and Thomas James became bosom friends, a relationship that expanded from
ecclesiastical to business matters. A 1658 entry in the East Hampton Town Record reported
that "Wyandanch, Sachem of Long Island," gave half of all whales cast up on the beach from
"Nepeake eastward to the end of the Island" to Leiftenant Lion Gardiner, and the other half to
Thomas James. The "first good whale" was given "freely and for nothing," after which the
grantees would pay "what they shall Judge meete, and according as they find profit by them."
However, it is likely that this windfall was prompted by the Montauks' by-now complete
reliance on the armed power of the settlers. The Pequots, before their defeat, and the
Narragansetts after that had staged predatory raids on the Montauks, extorting payments of
wampum in exchange for refraining from violent reprisals. Following Gardiner's pact with
Wyandanch, the Indians, decimated by sickness and unable to compete in war, transferred
their allegiance and annual payment of tribute from mainland Native American to English
"protectors." In his 1983 study of East Hampton, T. H. Breen concluded that the Montauks
lost their gamble that "their alliance with Gardiner and the other settlers would translate into
power over the Narragansetts." When this "strategy backfired, they found themselves even
more dependant upon the English."22
When New England Indians tried, without success, to foment armed resistance to English rule
of Long Island, Wyandanch not only refused to join the conspiracy but reported the plot to
Gardiner, for which Nathaniel S. Prime commended him:

Though often cajoled and threatened by the N. E. Indians to induce him to conspire against his
new neighbors, he not only rejected their overtures but even delivered their agents into the
hands of the English. He reposed unbounded confidence in Lion Gardiner; and communicated
to him, without reserve, every thing that involved his own interests, or the safety of the
whites.23

Prime's impression of Wyandanch as a statesman who crossed racial lines to preserve the
peace is not shared by Gaynell Stone, a current scholar of Long Island's Indian heritage.
According to Stone, the militarily weak

Wyandanch was a figurehead supported by the English . . . to consummate their continuing
land purchases . . . Perhaps he had no choice, caught as he was between two aggressive
forces, the Narragansetts and the English.24

East End English settlers and Native Americans never met on the field of battle, but the
Montauks and Narragansetts did. In a 1654 raid the Narragansett/Niantic warlord Ninigret is
said to have pillaged the camp of Wyandanch on the night of his daughter's wedding, killed
the groom, and kidnapped the bride. On behalf of the grief-stricken father, Thomas James
begged John Winthrop Jr. to help to speed delivery of the wampum raised for ransom, "which
he [Wyandanch] hears was intercepted by Thomas Stanton [a colonist]." "At last," wrote
Curtiss C. Gardiner, "through the exertions of [Lion] Gardiner . . . (the young woman) was
redeemed and restored to her afflicted parents."25
To express his gratitude, Wyandanch, with his wife and son, made a free gift to Lion
Gardiner, "his heirs, executors and assigns forever," of land that "lyeth on Long Island . . .
between Huntington and Setauket... [and] more than half way through the island southerly."
Dated East Hampton, 14 July 1659, the deed acknowledged twenty-four years of Lion's
"kindness . . . counscell and advice in our prosperity," with special remembrance that,

in our great extremity, when we were almost swallowed up of our enemies\emdash . . . he
appeared to us not only as a friend, but as a father in giving us money and goods, whereby we
defended ourselves, and ransomed my daughter.

Above the marks of his son Wiancombone, and "The Sachem's Wife" (Wicchiaubit), the
signature of Wyandanch is a drawing of two stick figures shaking hands, an unusual gesture of
affection and equality. Yet a skeptic will wonder who worded the document, which states
that now that the sachem and his wife are old, "we have nothing left that is worth his [Lion's]
acceptance but a small tract of land left us, [which] we desire him to accept," a strangely
modest description of thirty thousand choice acres.26
If Lion used his friendship with Indians to his advantage, his trust in them was genuine. When
Wyandanch was ordered to testify before the magistrates of Southampton, and his people
feared for their sachem's safety, Lion, who happened to be at the Montauk camp, presented
himself as a hostage. "I will stay here till you all know it is well with your Sachem," he
declared, in his strong, terse, style, "if they bind him, bind me, and if they kill him, kill me."
All's well that ends well, albeit somewhat grimly; Wyandanch found the four Indians who
committed the murder in question "and brought them to Southampton, and they were all
hanged at Hartford." In 1659, Wyandanch met his death, perhaps from sickness, perhaps at the
hands of hostile Indians because of his English collaboration. In his memoir, Gardiner stated
that although Wyandanch perished during the "great mortality (epidemic) among them (the
Indians) . . . it was by poison." He mourned the passing of the sachem: "My friend and
brother is gone, who will now do the like?"\emdash a lament with ambiguous overtones.27
In 1660, the governor of Barbados, who was a friend of John Winthrop Jr.'s, expressed
interest in buying Gardiner's Island. Oh no, wrote Lion to Winthrop, "I having children and
children's children, am not minded to sell it at present." Not "at present" or ever would this
island leave possession of the Gardiners (although it nearly changed hands several times in
the present century). "Butt I have another plac," went on Lion, "(1 suppose) more convenient
for the gentleman that would buy, liinge upon Long Iland, between Huntington and
Setokett."28
When this sale fell through, Lion and his son David conveyed to Richard Smith (then known
as Smythe) the land that would be the principal part of the future town of Smithtown. Smith, a
friend of Lion's, was one of the three English witnesses to Wyandanch's deed; it is said that
Wyandanch's daughter was returned to her father at Smith's home in Setauket, where the
grateful sachem presented his gift of land to Gardiner. Lion died soon after this, and his son
consummated the sale to Smith, of which no record remains.29
Lion Gardiner died in 1663, at the age of sixty-four, one year before the English conquest of
New Netherland from the Dutch: the creator of its first settlement never heard the words
"New York." Although he had to dilute his fortune in order to redeem the debts run up by
David, his extravagant son, he left a considerable estate. In his will he apologized to his
wife, his sole beneficiary, for not leaving more, because David, "after hee was at liberty to
provide for himself, by his own engagement hath forced me to part with a great part of my
estate to save his credit, soe that I cannot at present give to my daughter and grandchild that
which is fitting for them to have."30
In 1665, one year after the English ousted the Dutch from New Netherland,, Mary Gardiner
died and, contrary to Lion's wishes, left Gardiner's Island to their son. Richard Nicolls, the
governor of the newly formed New York Province, gave David Gardiner a grant for the Isle
of Wight at an annual quit rent of five pounds. Five years later, the rent was commuted to one
lamb yearly, upon demand, by Governor Francis Lovelace. In 1686, David received a new
patent from Governor Thomas Dongan, who erected the Isle of Wight "a lordship and manor
to be henceforth called the lordship and manor of Gardiner's Island." The rent of one lamb a
year was renewed, as was the Gardiners' sovereignty. In the judgment of Benjamin F.
Thompson, the fees for these parchments were "perquisites of the governors . . . to fill their
pockets at the people's expense." Power to hold court-leet (criminal) and court-baron (civil),
as well as the advowson (the naming of clergy), and other ancient rights issued to David
Gardiner were never exercised\emdash they were given in anticipation of the manor's "becoming a
numerously tenanted estate," which it did not. Their ownership remained uncontested, but the
Gardiners' unlimited powers were curtailed in 1788, when the state legislature annexed the
island to the town of Easthampton (then one word).31
The life of Lion Gardiner, Long Island's first English settler and founding father, illumines
our understanding of Long Island as America. To begin with, his experience contradicts the
assumption that Long Island was cloned from New England. Gardiner and fellow settlers
were not New Englanders who came to Long Island, but English emigrants who sojourned in
New England before choosing to make the Island their permanent home. He embodied the old
and new system of ownership: he was the lord of his own manor who also served as a
townsman of the Puritan commonwealth of East Hampton. There, in the words of the historian
Peter Ross, "he filled the office of magistrate and in all respects was regarded as the
representative citizen of that section of the island." His rejection of charges of witchcraft
shows that even widely held superstition did not corrupt the clarity of his mind, even though
the case pertained to the death of his own daughter.32
Gardiner learned the language and gained the trust of his Indian neighbors, whom he treated
without condescension. When a Southampton court summoned Wyandanch to testify, he
unflinchingly offered himself as a hostage pending the safe return of the sachem. Largely due
to his diplomacy, the interracial wars of the mainland did not erupt on eastern Long Island. In
the process, Gardiner acquired a handsome fortune in Long Island land by inducing his Indian
friends to sell him large tracts at small prices, confirmed by English deeds.
Three hundred and fifty-nine years have passed since Lion Gardiner, freedom fighter and
pioneer, set foot on eastern Long Island. He and his hardy wife, Mary, who left her
comfortable home in Holland to cross the ocean with her husband and suffer the rigors of
frontier life, are symbols of the transition from the Old World to the New by the first
generation of emigrants. They were Americans long before the word was coined.

NOTES

1. Curtiss C. Gardiner, Lion Gardiner and His Descendants (St. Louis: A. Whipple, 1890), 3.
These lines, in Gardiner's hand, were written in a Geneva Bible found many years after his
death. First published in 1560, the unauthorized, pocket-size Geneva Bible, with Calvinistic
marginal notes, was the pre-King James version favored by the English laity. Gardiner's
inscribed copy, published in 1599, the year of his birth, is in the exhibit case of the East
Hampton Free Library's Long Island Room, open from 1 to 4:30 p.m. , Monday through
Saturday, under the supervision of Dorothy King.

2. James E. Bunce and Richard P. Harmond, eds., Long Island as America: A Documentary
History to 1896 (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1977); the Long Island Historical Journal,
published semiannually by the Department of History, SUNY at Stony Brook, is devoted to
the study of Long Island as America.

3. Silas Wood, A Sketch of the First Settlement of the Several Towns of Long Island, with
their Political Condition, to the End of the American Revolution (1824; reprint, Historical
Chronicles of New Amsterdam, Colonial New York and Early Long Island, Cornell Jaray,
ed. 1865, reprint, Port Washington: Ira J. Friedman, 1968), 19.

4. Lion Gardiner is his own best source, in "Leift. Lion Gardener his Relation of the Pequot
Warres," Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (hereafter cited as CMHS),
vol. 3, 3d series (Cambridge, 1833), 131-60; the manuscript, written at East Hampton in
1660, was found in 1809 among the papers of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut; see
also his letters to John Winthrop Jr. in the "Winthrop Papers" (hereafter cited as "WP")
CMHS, vols. 10, 3d Series, 6 and 7, 4th series, and 1 and 8, 5th series, and Records of the
Town of East Hampton (hereafter cited as EHTR), 5 vols. (Sag Harbor: James H. Hunt,
1887) 1: passim. For secondary sources for Lion and later Gardiners (written mainly by
descendants), in addition to Curtiss C. Gardiner, cited above; see John Lyon (most later
Gardiners with this name were Lion, but some were Lyon) Gardiner, "Notes and
Memorandums Concerning Gardiners Island, Written in May 1798 by John Lyon Gardiner the
Present Proprietor of That Island . . . .. Collections of the New-York Historical Society for
the Year 1859 (New York, 1970), 260-72; Alexander Gardiner, "History of the Gardiner
Family," CMHS, vol. 10, 3d series (Boston, 1846), 173-85; Sarah Diodati Gardiner, Early
Memories of Gardiner's Island (The Isle of Wight, New York) (East Hampton: East Hampton
Star, 1947); William S. Pelletreau, "East Hampton," in History of Suffolk County (New
York: W. W. Munsell. 1882), especially 5, 25, 30; Robert Payne, The Island (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1958); Jason Epstein and Elizabeth Barlow, Last Hampton; A History and
Guide, rev. 3d ed. (New York: Random House, 1985); Roger Wunderlich, ""An Island of
Mine Owne": The Life and Times of Lion Gardiner, 1599-1663," LIHJ 2 (Fall 1989: 1-14.
For Smithtown, see J. Lawrence Smith, "Smithtown," in History of Suffolk County New
York: W. W. Munsell, 1882).

5. Wood, 19.

6. Nathaniel S. Prime, History of Long Island, from Its First Settlement by Europeans. to the
Year 1845, with Special Reference to Its Ecclesiastical Concerns Part I (New York: Robert
Carter, 1845), 77-78.

7. Lion Gardiner, "Pequot Warres," 157-68; Daniel Denton, A Brief Description of
New-York: formerly Called New Netherlands (London, 1670, reprinted in Cornell Jaray, ed.
1865, reprint, Port Washington: Ira J. Friedman, 1968), 6-7.

8. John A. Strong, "How the Montauk Lost Their Land," in Gaynell Stone, ed., Readings in
Long Island Archaeology and Ethnic History, vol 3, The History & Archaeology of the
Montauk, 2d. ed. (Stony Brook: Suffolk County Archaeological Association, Nassau County
Archaeological Committee, 1993), 79; for Gardiner and Wyandanch, see also Strong, The
Algonquian Peoples of Long Island: From Earliest Times to 1700 (Interlaken, N.Y.: Empire
State Books, 1997, prepared under the auspices of Hofstra University, 1997), passim.

9. Curtiss C. Gardiner, 46. xvii; Edward Hopkins to John Winthrop Jr., 28 October 1635,
"WP," CMHS, vol. 6, 4th series (Boston, 1863), 326, 329, announcing the departure from
London of the Batcheler, the twenty-five-ton North Sea bark bearing "Serieant Gardener, his
wife and her maid, and his workmaster to New England"; Sir Richard Saltonstall to John
Winthrop Jr., 27 February 1635 (new style 1636), ibid., 579-91, asking to be commended to
"Sergieant Gardiner . . . whom I purpose, God willing, to visit this summer, if he will
provide a house to receiue me & mine at my landing." Two letters signed "Lion Gardener," in
1652 and 1660, were endorsed "Leift. Gardiner" by John Winthrop Jr. ("WP," CMHS, Vol 7,
4th Series, 64-65); in the "Pequot Warres" and most of his letters in the "WP," Lion spelled
his last name "Gardener."

10. Lion Gardiner, "Pequot Warres," 136. English units in the Netherlands defended the
Dutch Republic, a loose federation of provinces under the stadholdership of the prince of
Orange, which waged a long and successful struggle for independence from Spain (see Pieter
Geyl, The Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century, rev. and enl. ed. (New York: Barnes &
Noble, 1961 [first pub. 1936 as The Netherlands Divided]); for a guide to modern
interpretations of the English Revolution, including those of Christopher Hill, R. H. Tawney,
H. R. Trevor-Roper, Lawrence Stone, Perez Zagorin, and many other historians, and the roles
of Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, Sir Arthur Haselrig, George Fenwick, Hugh Peter, John
Davenport, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Sir Thomas Fairfax, and others encountered by Gardiner,
see R. C. Richardson, The Debate on the English Revolution (London: Methuen, 1977), and
Derek Hirst, Authority and Conflict: England 1603-1658 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press,
1986).

11. Benjamin F. Thompson, History of Long Island from Its Discovery and Settlement to the
Present Time, 3rd. ed., revised and greatly enlarged with additions and a biography of the
author by Charles Werner (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1918) 3:313-14; Curtiss C.
Gardiner, 46.

12. Lion Gardiner, "Pequot Warres," 137-39; Richard S. Dun, Puritans and Yankees: The
Winthrop Dynasty of New England 1630-1717 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1962), 69.

13. Lion Gardiner, "Pequot Warres," 140, 150, 151. Like Gardiner, Mason and Underhill
were soldiers in the Netherlands before coming to New England; see Major John Mason, "A
Brief History of the Pequot War," CMHS, vol. 8, 2d series (Boston, 1836):120-53; Louis B.
Mason, The Life and Times of Major John Mason, 1600-1672 (New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1935); Captain John Underhill, Nerves from America . . . (London, 1638; facsimile
reprint ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), an account of the Pequot War that justified the
slaughter because sometimes "Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their
parents" (40).

14. Lion Gardiner, "Pequot Warres," 150. Yovawan, the Manhansett sachem, and
Wyandanch, the Montauk sachem, resided in present-day eastern Suffolk County, the region
the Indians called Paumanok.

15. Ibid.

16. Prime, 93.

17. Curtiss C. Gardiner, 65.

18. John Lyon Gardiner, "Gardiners Island," 270-71, 261-62.

19. For the terms of the original deed for Gardiner's Island, copied in the records of a Boston
lawyer, Thomas Lechford, see Curtiss G. Gardiner, 58-61; EHTR, 2-3.

20. Lion Gardiner to John Winthrop Jr., 27 April 1650, "WP," CMHS, Vol 7, 4th Series, 59;
for William Perkins (1558-1602) and other Puritan theologians, see Perry Miller, Orthodoxy
in New England (Boston, 1933), The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (1953;
reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), and Errand Into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Mass.:
Belknap Press, 1956).

21. Alexander Gardiner, "Gardiner Family," 183-84; for the charges against Goody Garlick,
see EHTR 1: 132-36, and 139-40.

22. EHTR 1:150, 13 November 1658; T. H. Breen, Imagining the Past, East Hampton
Histories (Boston: Addison, Wesley, l989), 112.

23. Prime, 93.

24. Gaynell Stone, "Long Island as America: A New Look at the First Inhabitants," Long
Island Historical Journal I (Spring 1989): 166.

25. Curtiss C. Gardiner, 65; Thomas James to John Winthrop Jr., 6 September 1654, "WP,"
CMHS, vol. 7, 4th series, 482.

26. J. Lawrence Smith, "Smithtown," 2. The deed is recorded in the Book of Deeds, office of
the Secretary of State, Albany, NY, 11: 118-19; a copy is in the collection of the Brooklyn
Historical Society.

27. Curtiss C. Gardiner, 65; Lion Gardiner, "Pequot Warres," 157-58; for Wyandanch's
death, his appointment of Lion and David Gardiner as guardians of his son, the challenging of
this by John Ogden, a rival of the Gardiners, and the purchase of 9,000 acres of Montauk land
by the Gardiners and others from Wiancombone and his mother Wicchiaubit, known as the
Sunk Squaw after her husband's death, see Strong, "How the Montauk Lost Their Land," 35,
79-80.

28. Lion Gardiner to John Winthrop Jr., 5 November 1660, "WP," CMHS, vol. 7, 4th series,
64-65; the governor of Barbados was called "Mr. Serie" by Winthrop, and "Daniell Searle"
by Lion.

29. For the founding of Smithtown, without any bull, see J. Lawrence Smith, "Smithtown,"
2-3.

30. Gardiner's estate was inventoried at £256, his property on Gardiner's Island at £511, as
enumerated in Pelletreau, "East Hampton" 26.

31. Thompson, 1:198, 209, 3:318.

32. Peter Ross, A History of Long Island, from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, 3
vols (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1902) 1:80.
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The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military has this to say of our ancestor


Gardiner, Lion (1599\endash 1663) born in England, military engineer and colonist responsible for building the fort and developing the settlement at Saybrook, Connecticut. The garrison was attacked by the Pequot and Gardiner sent his men as part of the Puritan expedition that carried out the massacre of the native tribe at Fort Mystic in the Pequot War (1637).
In 1639 Gardiner moved to an island off the eastern end of Long Island, called Montauk, which he purchased from the Indians and where his family lived independently of the nearby mainland colonies.
Montauk Iskland is now called Gardiner's Island and is part of New York state. It is still privately held by his descendants.

# Event: Article
# Note:

Transcript of Lecture Delivered by

Sherrill Foster, 4 Fireplace Road, East Hampton, NY 11937

on Thursday, September 27, 2001 at The East Hampton Library

MERCHANTS AND EARLY EAST HAMPTON*
This paper is about commercial contacts and their importance to early East Hampton. I am not the first to suggest that trade and commerce are vital to the origins of the area. Timothy Breen has said this, as has Richard Dunn.[1]passim. NY 1999. The major players are - much to no one's surprise - Lion Gardiner and John Mulford. I am pleased to be presented by such an organization as the East Hampton Library. I want to thank Tom Twomey and Diana Dayton for this opportunity to present the results of many years of research into the early history of East Hampton. East Hampton as a provisioning port on Block Island Sound, that great water highway, was founded by merchants - settlers interested in making money. Contrary to what romantics like to believe, Lion Gardiner acquired the island in typical colonial fashion, first in May of 1639, by purchasing it with gifts and a deed signing with the Montauk Indians, notarized by that Boston lawyer, Thomas Lechford.[2]1931, pp. 92-95. Then, again in March of 1640, he purchased the island through James Forrett/Farrett[3](Sag Harbor, 1887) Vol I, p. 1., the agent for the Earl of Sterling (William Alexander). Gardiner had to purchase his island from the owner of this grant, the Earl of Sterling, who had just been granted Long Island with other islands along the southern coast of New England. Gardiner could only farm. Profits from supposed furs were reserved for the Earl of Sterling. Although today the Island is managed by a trust co. in New York City, it is still owned by descendants of Lion and Marrichen; the present owners, cousins, are correctly called 'proprietors' - not "Lords of the Manor". The elderly William Alexander finally got his heart's desire, to be created a nobleman - Earl of Sterling - and to have a large land grant in the Colonies. He sent over an agent, James Forrett, who would be able to draw on Sterling's account in Boston, while selling land on Long Island. As part of his 'perks' Forrett , as agent, could choose some land for himself. He chose what is now Shelter Island - called Forrett's Island at that time. He was agent for a brief period, 1639-1641, when the Earl of Sterling died, and Forrett now out of a job, had to return to England. In order to get money to pay his passage to England, Forrett mortgaged the unsold lands to the Governor of New Haven, Theophilus Eaton, and the Governor of Connecticut, Edward Hopkins, on 19 July, 1641, for º 110. If the mortgage was unpaid after 3 years, the title to the undisposed part of Long Island would vest in the mortgagees. As Isabel Calder says, "July 19, 1644 came and went without word or sign from Forrett, as the mortgagees had expected would be the case, and the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven proceeded to buy up the Indian title to Long Island and disposed of the land to settlers who eventually came under the jurisdiction of one or the other of the two Puritan colonies."[4] Lion Gardiner was not answerable to any colonial government throughout his life time. In complicated legal cases, he might use the courts of Connecticut, as would his close neighbor and possible cousin John Winthrop, Jr, who purchased Fishers Island in 1640, a year after Lion. Winthrop would establish the Town of New London and later he became the governor of Connecticut. Gardiner, of course, never lived in New York! He died in 1663, when eastern Long Island used the Connecticut government for major legal cases. It was the next year - 1664, that New Netherlands was taken over by Charles II and given to his brother, the Duke of York. Long Island was included because Charles II made a deal with the heirs of the Earl of Sterling, agreeing to long term payment plans for Long Island. Of course, through shenanigans, Charles II never paid the Sterling heirs anything.[5] When Lion's son, David, inherited the island, he was savvy enough to confirm his father's deeds and compacts. David applied to the royal governor, Richard Nicholls for a grant, dated 5 October 1664. This grant reads that the island shall be "only accountable to the governor", the royal governor of New York.[6] In October 1674, when Sir Edmund Andros became Governor of New York, he revoked all grants. Then David applied to the next royal governor, Thomas Dongan, for a new grant. Dated 11 September 1686, the grant now read "henceforth to be called the Lordship and Manor of Gardiner's Island."[7] Thus the Island was an entity unto itself for 100 years, until 2 March 1788 when the new State of New York annexed the Island to the Town of East Hampton for tax purposes. Governor Nicholls gave similar grants to the Sylvesters for Shelter Island in 1666 and John Winthrop Jr, for Fishers Island in 1668. Of the 11 manors granted in present New York State in the 1600's, Gardiner's Island is the only one still owned entirely by descendants of the original grantees. Now, we have to get over the notion that East Hampton was originally Maidstone. None of the original 9 settlers are from there or even from Kent. Those whose origins are known are from Devonshire, and Hampshire. They were wealthy men who could afford to buy the land from the Governors of New Haven and Connecticut. That Maidstone legend can be traced to 1871 when David Johnson Gardiner published his essays about East Hampton.[8] In the 19th c. the idea of Maidstone was eagerly taken up by the 'summer people' who named their club, their inns and other organizations with that name. How did David Johnson Gardiner come upon this idea of "Maidstone"? The Gardiners still own a lovely brass, spring-driven mantle clock - 15 inches high by 6 inches wide - on whose face is engraved in large letters, "John Cutbush, Maidstone".[9] The Cutbush family were clock makers in Maidstone about the beginning of the 1700's and were the first to use the new spring driven clock works. These were, of course, au courant. The Gardiners as local gentry and merchants, wanted the most modern and fashionable objects in their homes. The clock was possibly purchased by the third proprietor, John Gardiner (1661-1738). David Johnson Gardiner had very little Gardiner resources to base his writings on. The great house on Gardiner's Island burned to the ground in 1774. Undoubtedly in it were the account books, ledgers, letters from John Winthrop, Jr. and many others, all lost. Surviving Gardiner papers include the "Geneva Bible" of 1599, at first in the possession of Lion's daughter Mary who married Jeremiah Conkling and now in the East Hampton Library. Lion's writings - "The Relation of the Pequot War", now in the Massachusetts Historical Society collections, were formerly in the papers of the Winthrop family of New London. This manuscript was known to historical writers for many years before it was published in 1797 by B. Trumbull in his 2 volume "History of Connecticut".[10]Papers and Biography of Lion Gardiner 1599-1663. passim. Lion's will and probate are in the Southampton Town records as is his wife's.[11] A close look at the W.J. Blaeu "Map of New Netherlands and New England" reveals that the whole of the south fork of Long Island is called "hampe." "Hampe" is an old English word meaning field. The Native Americans kept these fields cleared as part of their land management life style. These Indian lands were called 'wilderness' by the English settlers only in a biblical sense - there were no Christian peoples living here! To the English, viewing the land from the decks of coastwise sloops, these cleared lands meant opportunity. To own large expanses of this land meant herding cattle, sheep and horses; the base of New England's commercial activity in the mid 17th century. In Samuel Maverick's famous description of New England[12] he says "And for the Southern part of New-England, it is incredible what hath been done there." "In the year 1626 or thereabouts there was not a Neat Beast Horse or sheepe in the countrey and a very few Goats or hoggs, and now it is a wonder to see the great herds of Catle belonging to every Towne. . ., The Brave Flocks of sheepe, The great number of Horses besides those many sent to Barbados and other Carribe Islands, And withall to consider how many thousand Neate Beasts and Hoggs are yearly killed, and soe have been for many yeares past for Provision in the Countrey and sent abroad to supply Newfoundland, Barbados, Jamaica, and other places. As also to victuall in whole or in part most ships which comes there." After the Lynn mariner, Captain Daniel Howe[13] deposited his passengers from Lynn, (MA) at their port, North Sea, on Peconic Bay - these settlers became aware of the vast fields closer to the ocean - the south hampe or Southampton. It's suitability for raising cattle for export as beef is recognized today in the name 'Gin Lane' - for the 'gin' or fenced area for the cattle. Note that the English town of Southampton was originally known as 'Hampwic'. When in 1648, John Mulford led 8 other entrepreneurs to the east of the South Fields, to be nearer to the livestock grazing lands of the Montauk peninsular, the area soon became known as East Hampe, or later East Hampton. Lion Gardiner, as we all know, was the professional soldier and engineer at the fort at Saybrook, a project of the Warwick Patentees.[14] In order to be chosen for the position of on-site manager of an escapist habitation for these wealthy noblemen, he would have to be a pious soldier of some social standing.[15] Lion Gardiner was a well connected , well educated young man. It has been suggested that Lion Gardiner and John Winthrop, Jr were cousins. If so, this explains the many connections of their lives. Their grandmothers may be the Brown sisters, daughters of Thomas Brown, a merchant tailor of London. They are in both the Winthrop line and the Gardiner line. The Winthrop line is well documented, people are working on the Gardiner line.[16] Brought up in northern Essex, Lion was well acquainted with those wishing to get away from Royalist England - the Earl of Warwick, Lord Say and Sele, Lord Brook, the Winthrops, even Rev Hugh Peter and Rev John Davenport, all Essex men. As a soldier in Woerden in the Low Countries, Lion was approached by the Rev Hugh Peter, the English minister in Rotterdam, about 10 miles away where there was a large English population, with the offer of a lucrative position. But we are ahead of the story. In 1621, Lion was recruited by his Essex countryman, Sir Edward de Vere to fight for the Netherlands in the ongoing religious war between the calvinistic protestants and the roman catholic adherents. The fighting had begun in 1566 and ranged all over the Low Countries. There was a Twelve Years Truce from 1609-1621, when the fighting resumed until 1648, the Peace of Westphalia, which set the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg as we know it today. Woerden was a small but fortified city, not too far from the coast of North Sea. The front lines were some distance east of Woerden and were to move further east, 100 miles closer to the Rhine by 1648.[17] In his own writings Lion notes that during the truce the Hollanders reinforced their forts and other means of defense, knowing that the war would resume in 1621. Lion Gardiner describes his career in 1635 as "an engineer and master of works in the fortifications in the "legers" (a Dutch word meaning 'army') of the Prince of Orange in the Low Countries." By November 1624, Lion Gardiner had attained the rank of Corporal in Sir Edward de Vere's company, stationed in Woerden. In Woerden he met Mary/Marrichen Duercant. Well documented in that city, she was the youngest of six children of Dirk (Theodore) Duercant and his wife Haechen. In 1603 Dirk became a schepen or magistrate in the City of Woerden. His untimely death in the summer of 1605 made his six children, all under the age of 25 at that date, to become wards of the Woerden Orphan Chamber, a unique Dutch system to ensure each child's inheritance. The Orphan Chamber required that the money each child was to inherit be deposited in the "Orphan's Chest" where it would accumulate interest and be available when each child reached age 25. Each child was to be educated; the boys were to learn a trade. At age 25 each Duercant offspring received 25 guilders, and 'alimentation and a matrimonial outfit'. (These terms are unexplained). In English, the children's names are Elizabeth, William, Cornelius, Janet, Peter and Mary/Marrichjen.[18] As yet, no marriage license has been found for Lion and Marrichen in any Netherlands archive. There are two Orphan Chamber receipts, signed by Lion Gardiner as husband of Marrichen Duercant, one in 1624 and one in 1626.[19] The reason for the 1624 signing is unclear but three siblings were dead by that date. Marrichen was 25 in 1626. Her husband signed for her 25 guilders and her 'alimentation and matrimonial outfit'. In Rotterdam was the most notable non-conformist divine of his century, Hugh Peter. In Rotterdam, too was the Rev John Davenport. These Essex men were friends of the Earl of Warwick as well as of John Winthrop. Peter would be the agent of the patentees to approach Lion Gardiner to offer him the position to set up a colony in the new world, to "draw, order and make a city, town and fortifications" at the newly created fort at the mouth of the Connecticut river. The Warwick Patentees designed Saybrook as an escape habitation if things in England became too rough. Other Warwick patentees were Viscount Saye & Sele, Lord Brooke, and George Fenwick.[20] In this contract, 35 year old Lion Gardiner was to receive º100 per annum for four years, plus transportation expenses, and housing and subsistence to the place of destination (i.e. Saybrook). Promised was a full complement of personnel for the building of a fort and residences for the Warwick patentees and their families. This was upscale pay and accommodations on a par with the top range for a colonial minister of º100 per year. In 1632, King Charles I provided an annual pension for his favorite artist, Sir Anthony Van Dyke, of º200 and a house in Blackfriars. In the 1630's the costs of moving people, animals, foodstuffs and equipment was considerable. Both Governor John Winthrop and Rev. Francis Higginson of Salem[21] calculated the costs of transatlantic passage. A man, his wife and a servant cost º16 10s, º11 for their goods, º15 2s for a cow. In 1629 standard transatlantic freight charges were º4 a ton. Wealthy migrants who wished to travel in style could pay an additional º1 10s for a cabin. Undoubtedly Lion and his wife Mary/Marrichen Duercant had such upper class accommodations when they crossed the ocean. Accepting the position in 1635, Marrichen and Lion prepared to leave Woerden. In Rotterdam, both husband and wife had to sign the required 'Certificate of Conformity' to enter England. As this gives their ages, Lion's birth is estimated at 1599.[22] In London, Lion met with the Warwick patentees. He was given an advance on his salary. Undoubtedly he and Marrichen went shopping. They found that they were to cross the ocean in a cargo ship, one loaded with the iron parts for a draw bridge. Supplies for Gardiner included 23 ½ yards of 'redd flagg stuffe', presumably for trade with the Indians.[23] There were some workmen aboard, as well as Marrichen's maid, Eliza Colet. Departing from London in August 1635, their 25 ton "Batcheler", was accompanied by a similar sized cargo boat. They stopped at several ports in the English Channel. They loaded on Marrichen's trunks at a Dutch port, then continued. Much time was spent at the ports, gathering workmen and merchandise. The other boat was considered unseaworthy, and was left behind. Arriving in Boston three months later, 28 November 1635, the Gardiners were greeted by Gov John Winthrop who put Lion to work on supervising construction of a fort for one of the Boston Harbor islands. This sojourn in Boston was paid for by the Warwick patentees. While in Boston, the Gardiners socialized with the Winthrop family, especially as they were kin, and then possibly with William Coddington and his wife Mary, future governor of Newport, R.I., among other influential friends of the Winthrops. In early March, 1635/6, Lion and Marrichen, now heavily pregnant, left Boston to sail to the Saybrook Fort at the mouth of the Connecticut River. John Winthrop Jr, may have sailed with them as he was at the fort from April through June of that year. Winthrop perhaps wanted to make sure that Lion and Marrichen were comfortable in their new home, with all the proper amenities for their station in life. His medical knowledge would be useful too, with the birth of the first baby. In a later letter, (6 Nov 1636 to Jwjr in Boston), Lion notes that he returned two servants, Robert and Sorce.[24] No mention is made of Eliza Colet, Marrichen's maid. Possibly Lion knew that instead of the several hundred men promised, there was only a handful there. The threat of both internal disorder and external attack predisposed company planners toward the creation of semi-feudal military garrisons and trading posts.[25] A drawing re-creating the fort shows a rectangular center area surrounded by large long buildings on each of the four sides. One of the long buildings has a chimney at each end, the others have a center chimney. Then some open ground within palisaded walls with the typical military triangular points at each corner. Shown is one gate with possibly the iron drawbridge brought over on the "Batcheler".[26] But habitations had been erected and the Gardiners moved into the Great Hall. A 'Great Hall' was a typical late medieval aristocratic building, considered suitable accommodation for any of the patentees/lords who were expected to come.[27] It was a very large, almost barn-like room with small rooms opening off if along the sides. The Great Hall itself was for cooking and communal eating. Their son David would be born there on the 29th of April 1636. In 1636, Saybrook Fort was the only English habitation facing onto Long Island Sound. That Spring, John Winthrop, Jr was appointed 'provisional governor of the colonies of the Warwick Patent'. In June, his father, Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay, purchased a 'buff coat' for Lion. This was a thick leather coat that was almost impenetrable by arrowheads. The standard metal armor was impractical in the forest. Saybrook's natural endowments as a trans-shipment place between the river craft of the Connecticut River and the ocean going vessels made it a trading port. Some of the goods that John Winthrop Jr. listed were prunes, textiles, maize, furs and for the Indians - those marvels: looking glasses and jews harps. During 1636 the Gardiners were hosts to others- Rev Hugh Peter, among them. In a letter of 6 November 1636 to John Winthrop Jr, Gardiner discusses the lack of provisions at Saybrook. He notes other visitors passing through - some Dutch (from New Netherland), Virginians, and that Essex countryman, Mr. Pyncheon, now from Springfield. In the last paragraph of this letter, Gardiner adds "a Ketch from Narragansett loaded with corn proceeded up the river to Hartford." Lion intercepted it and offloads 100 bushels of the corn- to feed his personnel.[28] The next spring, 23 March 1636/7, Gardiner writes to Winthrop Jr discussing troubles with the Indians up and down the River.[29] The Pequot war was brewing. Lion warned the Massachusetts Bay authorities in his most famous quote "You come hither to raise these wasps about my ears, and then you will take wing and flee away".[30] Lieutenant Lion Gardiner did not participate in the actual fight, staying at the Saybrook Fort. He did give succor to the returning soldiers who had surprised the Pequots in the night-time attack on the Pequots' camp. Lion, at Saybrook, had a small ferry to cross the mouth of the Connecticut. This he sent across the river to bring Capt John Mason and his twenty men to the Fort.[31] In a letter to William Pyncheon at Springfield, he notes, in addition to his surplus cattle, sheep and goats, that he has hired Ozarias (?), and "two from New Netherlands - a tayler and a shipwright." Gardiner adds "he will have the dutchman make a sailboat of 30-40 ton."[32] This was undoubtedly the boat that various correspondents mentioned as transporting them around Block Island Sound. In April, 1638 Rev John Davenport, with Theophilus Eaton, on their way to found New Haven, stopped by the settlement at Saybrook. The distance between the two places is about 25 miles, a half day's sail. Lion's friend, Davenport, knew of his surveying abilities, and asked him to come to New Haven to survey the site of their new religious settlement. With his "crosstaff & compass", (appraised at º4.10 in 1663) it is presumed that he did survey the famous 'nine squares' of New Haven. The town was to include 30 odd households in a meaningful relationship.[33] By the next year, Lion knew that his four year contract was not to be renewed. He did not wish to return to England, with all the troubles there.[34] Sailing around the eastern end of Long Island Sound, Gardiner was aware of this verdant island of 3,375 acres, with 15.27 miles of shoreline between the two forks of Long Island.[35] In owning this estate, Lion could deal with the Indians and his own workmen/farmers in a manner that suited his own religiosity of man's humanity to man. Moving onto the Island, Lion and Marrichen undoubtedly moved into housing already built. In the appraisal of Lion's estate in 1664, there are 4 houses and two barns on the Island. There is 'ye great house & long table, The New house, the house Simons lives in, and ye Bake house & cellar'. The barns are identified as 'the new barne' and 'ye old barne'.[36] In 1639 the Isle of Wight stood in isolation. By late spring of the next year, English settlements were established on Long Island, - Southold from the New Haven Colony and Southampton from Lynn in Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the fall of 1640 John Winthrop, Jr would buy his own island, Fishers Island, although the family would not move there for another six years.[37] Other actors are arriving on the scene. William Pyncheon had settled Springfield on the upper Connecticut River in 1636.[38] The merchant with his West Country connections, Richard Collicott, was in Dorchester in 1632, age 26, and was in Boston by 1658.[39] William Coddington was first in Boston in 1630, then in Newport by 1639.[40] John Mulford, and his younger brother William, from South Molton near Barnstaple in the West Country would arrive in Salem with other West Country people. >From 1637 to 1643 the population of Salem under Rev Hugh Peter increased from 900 to 1200, about ½ of them were West Countrymen.[41] Still in the Barnstaple area of Devon was William Osburn who becomes prominent later. And then there are the sisters, Thomasine and Friedeswide, named for early Devonian saints. Block Island Sound was the great water highway in the 1600s. Captain Howe was well aware of his position in the circuit; transporting the barrels, kegs, tierces and such from the residents near small harbors to the ports of Newport and Boston. Captain Howe, in his agreement with the Southampton settlers, made his two trips a year from North Sea port to Boston, the source of all the gossip about products and places. The coastwise sailing vessels would leave Boston, go around Cape Cod and the Islands into Narragansett Bay at Newport. Here they would load on the barreled provisions acquired by the Newport merchants and head for the Barbados with a diversified cargo. In the late 1630s and early 1640s this was the source of income for the settlers of the area. We have already put William Coddington into Newport. We have seen Captain How bring the Lynn people to Southampton. John Mulford has arrived in Salem. Newport and New London are the new major ports of Block Island Sound. By the 1640s Barbados underwent an explosive development creating the major sugar economy. [42] The growing of sugar became so lucrative that it was cheaper to import food rhan to grow it. [43] In a 1647 letter to John Winthrop, Richard Vines of Barbados tells of a merchant coming to "your port to trade for provisions for the belly, which at present is very scarce, by reason of 5 or 6 months delay, and not that only, but men are so intent upon planting sugar that they had rather buy food at very dear rates than produce it by labor, so infinite is the profit of sugar works after once accomplished." [44] With that kind of news, all the grazing lands around Block Island Sound were devoted to cattle raising. In the 1630's the provisioning trade with the sugar planters on the island of Barbados, the most eastward of the islands in the Carribean, was in its early development. Barbados was the easiest to get to by wind powered sailboats. Here was opportunity open to those who could organize it. Eastern Long Island residents, through their various connections in New England became an integral part of this trade. Gardiner was first raising pigs and goats - these animals closely grub the earth. Then, when the grasses grow (with additional English grass seed) the meadows are favorable for cattle, horses and sheep, the most lucrative animals. John Winthrop Jr was developing his island in the same manner. Animal husbandry and English grass seed are the topic of the many letters that Lion wrote to JW Jr. A large cast of characters of friends and relatives of the settlers on the East End soon arose. Lion Gardiner, who learned so much in his four years at Saybrook Fork, entered this business quickly. His men on the Island could prepare salted beef in hogsheds, or leather goods, or raw wool in barrels. Coddington of Newport was expecting Lion to transport him to Providence in that boat that the Dutch shipwright had built. Winthrop, Coddington and Gardiner corresponded with each other about cattle, sheep, English grass seed, Indian 'meal' as well as hay for the animals. No wheat was grown, as the damp climate of the area (including Narragansett Bay) was too conducive to disease.[45] By 1640 on Long Island, two towns were being settled; Southold on the north fork from New Haven Colony and what has become known as Southampton on the south fork from the Massachusetts Bay Colony on what appeared to be one extensive meadow or moorland.[46] Land hungry residents from Lynn, MA, negotiated with Captain Howe to move to another site. Having invested some of their money in his vessel, their agreement with Howe was that he would make two trips a year between Boston and their port of North Sea, bringing English goods and taking away their produce.[47] With the guaranteed two trips a year and the developing sugar plantations in Barbados, trade would be burgeoning. The demand for beef was strong in the Atlantic Coastal towns, too. The Tidewater towns of the Chesapeake were demanding beef, not cereal in their imports. [48] Among other visitors to Gardiner's Island was Captain Howe who remained on the Island for some time, enough to receive some money for a trading matter.[49] John Mulford was brought to Southampton from Salem where he first resided after he came across the Atlantic with other West Country folk. Mulford, through friendship and kin, had developed a coterie of friends interested in trade. I call them the 'Barnstaple Cluster', all families interested in making money. The Barnstaple Cluster includes three men and their wives, all of whom may have known each other in Devonshire - Richard Collicott (1604-1686) in Dorchester and Boston, William Osburne (1620-1662) in Dorchester and New Haven and John Mulford (1616-1686) Salem and East Hampton. The first and second wives of these men were sisters, Thomasine and Friedeswide. In Boston, Collicott was importing goods through the major West Country port, Barnstaple, Devon. His second wife was Thomasine.[50] When "Sargeant Collicot" lived in Dorchester (his earlier residence), he owed "William Coddington, gentlemen. º123 5s.9d on 12 April 1639".[51] John Mulford decided after three years in Southampton to move closer by 12 miles to the wide open plain of the Montauk Peninsula where the benign native American population lived. Mulford seems to have been the guiding force in the move of the 9 property owners east near the appealing grazing lands in 1648. However, Captain Howe had already had a house built on what would become the Town Street where the 'J.Harper Poor' house stands.[52] As there seem to be no documented carpenters, joiners or similar woodworking personnel among these early residents, these houses were undoubtedly knock-down houses made in such large workshops as that of Thomas Joy (d.1678) of Hingham, MA who was constantly sueing people for their unpaid balance on their house frames.[53] Such goods could have been brought by Captain Howe (and other mariners) into the newly established and larger port of North West Harbor. Perhaps it was Captain Howe who pointed out the advantages of this closer harbor. An old road, now unopened, from Southampton to Northwest Harbor is called 'Merchant's Path'. The first documented wharf was built there by the Mulfords in 1652. This harbor was a day's sail closer to Gardiner's Island and the trade routes than the small North Sea Harbor facing Peconic Bay. The North Sea port is where the infamous Capt John Scott had his house.[54] Originally the East Fields was not contemplated as a separate village. Perhaps they had had Lion survey the street, organize the home lots and for payment, gave him a large lot. At first the residents thought to continue with the church in Southampton. But there was a change in plans. In April 1650, Lion Gardiner writes to John Winthrop, Jr saying "we are not to have above 12 families." Continuing, Lion says, "concerning the young man you wrote of . . . we are willing to pay him 20 li a year, as well as provisions for the table". Lion concludes the letter by listing the religious books he owns that the young man may borrow. Thomas James was the young ministerial student, living in New Haven. He was ordained in the church there, and came to East Hampton in 1652, having gotten a higher rate of pay - º45 per annum. In the 1660's, William Osburne and his wife, Friedeswiede, had moved from Boston to New Haven, possibly because their Harvard alumni son was teaching school there. William died suddenly, legend says from a lightning bolt while eating at a family dinner, but more probably from a sudden stroke.[55] His New Haven inventory of 29 April 1662 was valued at º260.10.01. His Boston inventory taken 4 months later, was º836.07.05 which included "the inventory of house, land and 1/4 part &c of a ketch and goods", as well as acreage in Dorchester and Wenham, MA.[56] In 1656 in Southold, on the north fork, Capt Joseph Youngs records his ship, the Mary and Margaret, "now riding at anchor in Southold Bay, and by God's grace bound for the Barbados" with barrels of Beef.[57] Backed by English and Dutch capital, Barbados was growing sugar for the market by the 1640's and 50's. The need for provisions was apparent, as well as for live horses to turn the wheels in the sugar mills on the islands.[58] Long Islanders were raising cattle, sheep, horses in large numbers. As late as 1776, the herds of cattle on eastern Long Island numbered over 100,000 with an even larger number of sheep.[59] Live horses were shipped to Barbados in boats with specially constructed deck stalls. All sizes of barrels or kegs were used to ship the many products developed in this area, as goose feathers for bedding, butter in small firkins, whale oil and baleen (bone), turpentine, shingles, cow hides (both tanned and dried), skins of raccoon, "cat" (muskrat), fox, otter, tallow candles, bay-berry wax. In exchange the merchants received such English products as nails, pewter, metal pots & kettles, glass, English ceramics, bolts of brightly patterned cloth, both woolen and linen cloth, rum and salt. As Barbados was an English "free"port, these items were not taxed, whereas if brought into Boston they were taxed. A successful merchant develops credit connections and contacts, through kin or very close friends. Lion had connections with William Coddington in Newport, and those of the Winthrops, and possibly Captain Howe, the mariner. In 1656 David, at age 20, went to London to consolidate these contacts, to develop new ones. David was not as prudent as his father would have liked. In his will, Lion states, "My son David, after hee was at liberty to provide for himself, by his owne engagement hath forced me to part with a great part of my estate to save his credit . . ."[60] Capt. Daniel Howe had returned permanently to England by 1653, a connection for David to start with. Howe's family lived in the London area.[61] What would have cost so much? Perhaps lodging was comparatively cheap. But clothes! David had to be wearing top-of-the-line clothes, or no one would talk to him. The merchants his father had dealt with should have gifts. They should not be cheap knickknacks. David had to choose the right church. At the fashionable St. Margaret's Westminster he met the young widow, Mary (Lingman) Herringham, a long time member. Perhaps she had merchant connections, through her late husband's family or her own. They were married June 7, 1657, at St. Margaret's. They remained in London for another year, before they returned to live on the Island. It is interesting to note that David's possible uncle, Sir Thomas Gardiner, an ardent royalist and solicitor-general for King Charles I in 1643, had died in October 1652, four years previously. Whether David looked up his erstwhile family is not known. David Gardiner, who became proprietor of the Island after his mother's death in 1665, was engaged in a land deal about 1684. Thomas Symons of Albermarle Co., North Carolina, writes to David Gardiner: "understanding . . . that thou dost frequent Boston every yeere . . ." [sell my land for me]. The payment would be in "Linnen and Woolens but not of ye finest sort."[62] In 1687, Thomas Symons again writes "c/o of Samuel Walker", merchant in Boston, "where I was told thou didst used to lodge when in Towne . . ." Symons would take in payment, "Kersey, Peniston, bleue Linning, Dowlis, Seirge, Lockerum and Canvas." Symons wants to be remembered to all of David's family and "all my Cosins". In the letter, Symons names men who come from Boston to Charlestown every year.[63] Symons is undoubtedly a son of the Simons who was manager of the Island when Lion died. Symons appears to be another merchant, possibly a purchaser of barrels of salted beef that David has to sell from his warehouse, as did the other merchants. When her husband, William Osburne died in 1662, Friedeswiede, as a wealthy widow, remained in New Haven with her children; Recompense, the Harvard graduate and teacher; Hannah, Bezaleel, Joseph, and Jonathan. The next year, May 1663, she and the widower, John Mulford, were married in New Haven, moving into his presumably elegant house on East Hampton's Main Street.[64] In the 'rate list' or (tax list) of 1675, John Mulford's rate is º318-0-0, and in 1683, º283-16-8, the wealthiest man in East Hampton. Totals from this list are - cattle 998, sheep 906. John Mulford had 36 cattle, 11 horses and 58 sheep on that list. A 1727 document itemizing the cattle owners shows 3,424 cattle grazing on Montauk.[65] The estimate of 1776, American Revolutionary times, gives 2000 cattle and 3000 sheep grazing, the reason for the demand for armed protection along the Montauk coastline from the British forces. With five Osburn teenage children and five Mulford teenagers now living in the same house there were no intermarriages among the step siblings. Each made a prestigious marriage. John Mulford's eldest son, Samuel, had married an heiress, Hester/Esther Conkling. Elected to the Assembly of the Province of New York, by 1703, Samuel countered the Royal governors about "the rights of natural born Englishmen." He always appended the word 'merchant' after his signature.[66] Keeping his eye on the main chance, Samuel purchased the house "in Boston where the merchants live" that Jonathan Osburne inherited after his mother died in 1692.[67] Adjacent to the Collicott's residence, Friedeswide, in her second widowhood, had moved to Boston to be near her sister, Thomasine, now also a widow.[68] Samuel enlarged his business, building in 1702 a large warehouse at Northwest Harbor. Using his whaling dory, Samuel's crew of Indians harpooned many whales swimming in the ocean- another lucrative business- with many uses for the oil and the bone or baleen. Samuel and Hester had six children, four boys and two girls. One of the daughters, Elizabeth, married in 1696 John Christophers of the famous New London, CT merchant family. In February 1702/3, who is in Barbados? John Christophers and his brother-in-law, Timothy Mulford. Were they on the same vessel? Or was Timothy on his own boat or a super cargo on an investment boat?[69] Poor John, he is deathly sick. He tells Timothy his last wishes - that Timothy is to sell the boat and the cargo that is at the dock in Barbados. Keeping the merchant connection, the widow, Elizabeth (Mulford) Christophers, then marries John Pickett, son of another major merchant family in New London. In conclusion: from these tidbits of evidence, we find that activity among the merchants around Block Island Sound dealt in many products. In using their kin and their friends of the same social strata constantly and in letter writing, bargaining, investing and tracking the vessels, buying and selling, these men were busy making money. Making money was the impetus for the settlement of the 'eastern fields' or East Hampton. [1]Awakening the Past, 350th Anniversary Lecture Series, ed. Tom Twomey. T.H. Breen essay, p. 268, passim and Richard S. Dunn, essay on p. 89, [2]Isabel M. Calder, "Sterling and Long Island" in Essays in Colonial History Presented to Charles McLean Andrews by his Students, New Haven [3]3 May 1639, deed between Montauk Indians and Lion Gardiner, Lechford Manuscript Note-Book, (Cambridge, 1885), p. 207-8. 15 printed lines. 10 March 1639/40 Deed from James Farrett for Earl of Sterling to the Island 'called by the English Isle of Wight' East Hampton Town Records, [4]Ibid p. 92. [5]Calder, "Sterling and Long Island", p. 95. [6]"Manors in New York", Henry B. Hoff, NYG&B Newsletter, Fall 1999, p. 58. [7]Ibid, p. 58. [8]David Johnson Gardiner, "Chronicles of the Town of Easthampton, County of Suffolk, New York", reprinted in Exploring the Past, ed. Tom Twomey, NY 2000, p. 124. [9]Photo of the clock in Dean Failey, Long Island is my Nation, 2nd edition 1998, p. 157, ill. p. 184. [10]These facts researched by Curtiss C. Gardiner, and published by him in 1890 in [11]The Second Book of Records of the Town of Southampton, Long Island, N.Y. Sag Harbor, 1877, pp. 42-49. [12]Samuel Maverick "A Briefe Diescription of New England and Severall Townes Therein, Together with the Present Government Thereof," published in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, ser. 2, vol. 1 (1884-1885), pp. 148-9. [13]Daniel How/Howe, Robert Charles Anderson, ed. The Great Migration Begins (1995) Vol. II, pp. 1011-1013. [14]Investors in Saybrook were Henry Darley, M.P. (c.1596-c.1671); William Fiennes, Lord Saye & Sele, M.P. (1582-1662) ; Robert Greville, Lord Brook, M.P. (1608-1643) ; Richard Knightley, M.P. (d. 1639) ; John Pym (1584-1643) ; Sir Nathaniel Rich, Earl of Warwick, M.P. (1585-1636) and William Woodcock (d. 1638). [Karen Kupperman, Providence Island 1630-1642 (1933) passim.] [15]Richard P. Gildrie, Salem, Massachusetts 1626-1683, Charlottesville, 1975, p. 6. [16]This has been suggested by George Sanborn of the New England Historical Genealogical Society, 101 Newbury St, Boston, who also pointed out the biography of Lion's possible brother or uncle, Sir Thomas Gardiner (1591-1662), a Royalist lawyer: Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. VII (1908), ed. Stephen and Lee, pub. Finch Gloucester, p.865. [17]Albert Blankert, review of Ger Luijten and Ariane Van Scuhtelen, eds. Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art, 1580-1620, Art Bulletin, (March 1995) Vol. LXXVII, No. 1, p. 146. [18]William J. Hoffman, "Transcription of Record of Orphan Chamber of Woerden, No. 2, fol CCXII recto. margin notes, reprinted in Henry B. Hoff, ed. Genealogies of Long Island Families from the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, (Baltimore) 1987. Vol. 1, p. 365-6. (Originally published in 1935 and 1941.) Using the meagre facts from these records I have tentatively arranged the six children this way: [with possible birthdates] Lijsbeth [b.1585] d. bef Nov 1624; Willem [b.1588] d. bef Oct 1624; Cornelis [b. 1590] d. bef Nov 1624; Jannechjen [b. 1592] d. bef July 1626; Pieter [b. 1594] m. 1616; Marrichjen (1601-1665). [19]Nico Plomp, Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau Voor Genealogie, [Yearbook of the Central Bureau for Genealogy], Vol. 50, The Hague, 1996, pp. 141-142. My thanks to Evert Volkersz for translating this article from the Dutch language. [20]John T. Fitch, Puritan in the Wilderness, Camden, Maine, (1993) p. 33. [21]See Francis Higginson in The Great Migration Begins, Robert Charles Anderson (1995) Vol. II, pp. 933-937. [22]Calculated from age given on 'Certificate of Conformity', signed in Rotterdam in 1635. Printed in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. 14, p. 322. The original form is in the Public Record Office in London. [23]Cargo noted by Governor John Winthrop in his Journal upon arrival in Boston Harbor. [24]Letter of 6 Nov 1636, reprinted in J.T. Gardiner, Lion Gardiner and His Desccendants, (privately printed) 1927, p. 10. [25]Richard P. Gildrie, Salem, Massachusetts 1626-1683, Charlottesville, 1975, p. 6. [26]Fitch, op cit. Drawing by Frank Tinsley, Old Saybrook Historical Society, (1965) p. 54, fig. 13. [27]Lady Alice Boteler, daughter of Sir Edward Apsely of Sussex and wife of Col. George Fenwick died "in the Great Hall at Saybrook Fort . . . in 1645." Donna Holt Siemiatkoski, paper on the "The English Roots of Saybrook Colony: The Warwick Patentees and Their Associates. (1989) p. 13. [28]Letter of 6 Novembe 1636, reprinted by C.C. Gardiner, Lion Gardiner and his Descendants, (privately printed) 1883. [29]Letters of John Winthrop, Jr. Massachusetts Historical Society Collections. [30]This famous quote is from Lion's "Relation of the Pequot War". The ms found in the Trumbull papers in the 1820's. Now in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Excellent discussion of the Pequot War and Lion's connection with it in Frank Thistlewaite, Dorset Pilgrims, London 1989, ch. VI. [31]Frank Thistlewaite, Dorset Pilgrims, London 1989, Ch. VI passim. [32]J.T. Gardiner, Genealogy . . ., (1927) p. 12. [33]Elizabeth Mills Brown, "John Brockett of New Haven: the Man and the Myth", Journal of New Haven Colony Historical Society, Vol. 27, #2, Winter 1980, pp. 3-34. [34]Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution 1603-1714, Norton Library History of England, (1966) N.Y. passim. [35]A special issue of the South Fork Natural History Society (SoFo) Newsletter, Vol. 6 No. 1, 1994, 52 pages of excerpts from naturalists' writings on the habitat. [36]The Second Book of Records of the Town of Southampton, Long Island, NY, pp 46-48, J.H. Hunt, printer, Sag Harbor, 1877. [37]Harold Donaldson Eberlein, Manor Houses and Historic Homes of Long Island and Staten Island, 1928, rep. 1966, Port Washington, NY p. 68. Grant of Fishers Island from Massachusetts Bay Colony, 7 October 1640 [also granted from Connecticut]. [38]William Pyncheon in The Great Migration Begins, Robert Charles Anderson, ed. (1995) Vol III p. 1536-1538. [39]Ibid, Richard Collicott, Vol I, pp. 439-446. [40]Ibid, William Coddington, Vol I, pp. 395-401. [41]Richard P. Gildrie, Salem, Massachusetts, 1626-1683. Charlottesville, 1975, p. 54. [42]D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, Vol I, Atlantic America, 1492-1800, p.165. [43]Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies 1624-1713, Chapel Hill, 1972, p 272, 91. [44]Winthrop Papers, Vol VI, 1650-1654, ed. Malcolm Freiberg (1992) p.171-172. [45] Myron O. Stachiw, "Wickford and the West Bay Region" in Laura B. Driemeyer and Myron O. Stachiw, The Early Architecture and Landscapes of the Narragansett Basin, Vol III, prepared for the Annual Meeting and Conference of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Newport, R.I. April 25-29, 2001, p. 59. [46] Joseph S. Wood, The New England Village, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, p.35. [47] J.S. Wood, Ibid, p.20 "ideal for cattle raising". [48] Lorena S. Walsh, "Provisioning Tidewater Towns", in Explorations in Early American Culture, Vol 4, 2000, University Park, PA, p.77. [49] Daniel How, Great Migration Begins, Vol II, p.1013. [50] Richard Collicot, Great Migration Begins, Vol I, pp.439-446. [51] Great Migration Begins, Vol I, p.397. [52] Daniel How, Great Migration Begins, Vol II, p.1012, "May 1650, Daniel How sold to Thomas Backer (sic) (of New Haven) 'all his accomodations at Easthampton with housings, orchards, gardens, fencing lands & meadows...' quoting from the East Hampton Town Records. [53]Private conversation with Abbott Lowell Cummings, Fall 2000 who said that all these documents are at Columbia Point and that it would take a lot of time to go through them. (J.F.Kennedy Library). [54] Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves 1624-1713, (University of North Carolina Press, 1972) p. 75. "Capt." John Scott is called a "trickster" in the 1660s. His house was at North Sea, where his wife remained when he flew to the West Indies to take up a new life. [55]Susan (Mulford) Cory, Descendants in the Mulford Family, Vol III, part II, p. 202. "Osburne a wealthy merchant." [56]New England Historical Society Register, Vol II (Oct 1857) p. 345. [57]Southold Town Records, Vol I, p. 187. [58]Dunn, p. 272. [59]Frederic Gregory Mather, The Refugees of 1776 from Long Island to Connecticut (1913) (reprint Clearfield Company 1995) p. 29. [60]Southampton Town Records, Vol I, p. 42. [61]Daniel Howe, Great Migration Begins, Vol II, p. 1013. [62]E.H.T. Records, Vol II, p. 150. [63]E.H.T. Records, Vol II, p. 172-3. [64]Sherrill Foster, "Two Seventeenth Century Widows in East Hampton", Suffolk County Historical Society Register, Vol XXIII, No 1, (Summer 1997) pp. 11-17. [65]Jeannette Edwards Rattray, "Story of Second House" (1969), forthcoming book organized by the East Hampton Library Board of Managers. This new document was found in the 1950's. [66]Todd Lee Savitt, "Samuel Mulford of East Hampton", Master's Thesis (U. of Virginia 1970). [67]Original deed in Long Island Collection, East Hampton Library, donated by Rev David Mulford. Discussed in T.H. Breen, Imagining the Past, Addison-Wesley Publishing co, 1989, p. 214. [68]Richard Collicot, Great Migration Begins, (Boston 1995) Vol I, p. 397 "Sister Moleford . . ." [69]Information from published list of Barbados Records. Complete information not obtained. *Not to be cited without explicit written consent of the author.

# Event: Lion Gardiner purchased the island called Monchonack from the Indians LAND 1639 Gardiner's Island (Monchonack / Isle of Wight), off Long Island, New York
# Note:

Gardiner's Island, c.3,000 acres (1,210 hectares), in Gardiners Bay between the two flukelike peninsulas of E Long Island, SE N.Y. It was settled by colonist Lion Gardiner in 1639 as the first permanent English settlement in New York state and has been owned since by his descendants.

# Event: Bio-sketch
# Note:

Gardiner, Lion (1599-1663), military engineer and colonist, was born in England. His birthplace and parentage are uncertain. He served in the English army and went to the Netherlands, where he became a "Master of Works of Fortification" in the armies of the prince of Orange. In 1625 he married a Dutch woman, Mary Wilemson (or Duereant) of Woerden, Holland. They eventually had three children, of whom David Gardiner (born in 1636) was the first white child born in Connecticut, and Elizabeth (born in 1641) was the first English child born in New Netherland (present-day New York State). In 1635 Gardiner made contact with Hugh Peter and John Davenport -two eminent Puritan ministers living in Rotterdam. After discussions and negotiations, Gardiner signed a contract for four years--at one hundred pounds a year--to work as an engineer in the New World, especially to build a fort at the mouth of the Connecticut River for a projected new colony. This agreement was loosely under the umbrella of the so-called Warwick Patent (1632-1644), a tract of land that included most of present-day Connecticut.
Gardiner sailed to London and then to the New World aboard the Batchelor, arriving in Boston on 28 November 1635. Greeted by John Winthrop (1588-1649) and other Massachusetts Bay leaders, Gardiner examined the environs of Salem and stated that a fortification there was unnecessary since "it was Capt. Hunger that threatened them most." He helped the people of Boston to build a fort on Breed's Hill and then sailed in the spring of 1636 for the mouth of the Connecticut River, where twenty Bostonians had already begun to create a settlement. Gardiner directed them in building a fort and developing Saybrook, Connecticut. Gardiner arrived just in time, for the Dutch in New Netherland were planning to lay claim to the mouth of the river as well.
Gardiner understood the danger of the fort's location, exposed both to possible Dutch incursions and to the hostility of the local Native Americans, the Pequot tribe. When events led toward a full-scale conflict between white settlers and the Pequots, Gardiner chastised Massachusetts Bay leader John Endecott who was leaving on a punitive raid against the Pequots. Gardiner claimed that "you come hither to raise these wasps about my ears, and then you will take wing and flee away." Indeed, members of the Saybrook garrison were attacked during the winter of 1636-1637, and Gardiner was wounded in the leg. In the spring of 1637 Gardiner sent twenty of his men along with the expedition of Captains John Mason (1600-1672) and John Underhill against the Pequots. The Puritan expedition burned Fort Mystic and 700 Pequots were either killed, captured, or burned to death. Although he had opposed the start of the Pequot War, Gardiner now hailed this "victory to the glory of God and honour of our nation." In the immediate aftermath of the Pequot War, Gardiner became friendly with and a protector of the sachem Waiandance (now Wyandanch) of the Montauk tribe, which was located on eastern and central Long Island and which formerly had paid tribute to the Pequots.
When his contract with the Puritans expired in 1639, Gardiner moved his family to the island at the eastern end of Long Island that the Indians called Montauk. Gardiner called it the Isle of Wight, but it eventually became known as Gardiner's Island, the name it still bears. Gardiner purchased it from the Indians for ten coats of trading cloth. He also secured a patent from James Farrett, the deputy of Lord Stirling on Long Island. The Gardiner family lived peacefully on the island in near self-sufficiency, nearly independent of both the new Connecticut colony and New Netherland. Gardiner's privately held island was something of an anomaly--a colony set up not for religious motives or for expansion of the claims of a mother country, but for personal enjoyment. Politically his island was almost a neutral zone in the midst of several conflicting spheres of influence: the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Connecticut Colony, New Netherland, the Montauk tribe, the Narragansett tribe, and others. All of these groups knew of Gardiner, and most of them recognized him as the lord and proprietor of the island.
Gardiner maintained his strong friendship with Waiandance and helped the Montauks to defend themselves against the Narragansett Indians, who made raids across Long Island Sound. At Gardiner's request the Massachusetts Bay authorities sent a vessel to patrol the sound. In 1653 Gardiner moved to Easthampton, Long Island, and became a leading member of that community. In later life he wrote his history of the Pequot War (1660). Disappointed in the behavior of his son, David, Gardiner left his property to his wife in his will. Gardiner died on his island. His wife survived him by two years, after which the property reverted to David. In 1686 New York governor Thomas Dongan raised Gardiner's Island to the level of an English manor, with the Gardiner family holding full manorial rights. The island entered into history at least twice more: Captain Kidd (William Kidd buried treasure there in 1699, and Julia Gardiner left her ancestral home to marry President John Tyler (1790-1862) in 1844.
Perhaps Gardiner's largest claim to historical note is that he created a personal fiefdom, later raised to a manor, that remained in the family's hands; as of 1993 the sixteenth generation of Gardiners still owned the island.




Bibliography
Documentary sources on Lion Gardiner's life are not plentiful. Gardiner's Relation of the Pequot Warres is in Charles Orr, ed., History of the Pequot War: The Contemporary Accounts of Mason, Underhill, Vincent and Gardener [sic] (1897). Robert Payne, The Island (1958), contains in-depth information on Gardiner and Gardiner's Island. To understand the Pequot War and Gardiner's place in it, one should turn to Herbert Milton Sylvester, Indian Wars of New England, vol. 1 (1910), and Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (1975). ¹

Lion married Merichgen Dirksdr Deurcant. (Merichgen Dirksdr Deurcant was born about 1610 in Woerden, Utrecht, Netherlands and died in 1663 in East Hampton, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, USA.)