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MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN
AMERICAN HISTORY

VOL. XIII

TH

JANUARY, 1885

THE MANOR OF GARDINER'S ISLAND*

No. I

HE first English settlement within the present limits of the State of New York was founded under circumstances of peculiar and romantic interest. Its site was an island, four miles from the eastern extremity of Long Island—a little woodland gem in a wilderness of waters. It was nine miles long by one and a half miles wide, containing some three thousand five hundred acres. This entire island was purchased by Lion Gardiner from the Indians, with all the usual ceremonials of such transactions, and the purchase duly confirmed by the agent of Lord Stirling on the 10th of March, 1639. The new land-holder proceeded at once to erect a comfortable dwelling-house, of which he took possession, with his wife and two children, the younger an infant daughter, in the early summer of the same year. This well-considered and deliberate choice of a permanent private residence, full thirty miles from the nearest European neighbor, reads upon the truthful records, as we are well aware, like the fanciful castlebuilding of the writers of fiction.

Before tracing the growth and development of the picturesque island into a productive manorial property, the fact is worthy of notice that it has been longer in possession of one family than any other individual estate on this continent, having had twelve proprietors in the direct line, even to the present hour. Its early history is rich in Indian legend and old-time tales of love and sacrifice. No portion of our country was so persistently frequented by pirates and ocean rovers. No point so completely exposed to foreign enemies in times of war. The manor-house now standing upon the island was built in 1774 by David Gardiner, the sixth proprietor, one hundred and thirty-five years after the original settlement. The estate had then become a garden of beauty. From eighty to one hundred dependents kept it trimmed and blooming. Great fields of oats, wheat, and other grains, made graceful obeisance to the sickle. Some two thousand loads of hay were stored in its barns every autumn. Three hundred or more cattle grazed in its sunny pastures; and five times as many sheep-with

*COPYRIGHT, 1885, BY MRS. MARTHA J. LAMB.

VOL. XIII.-No. 1.-1

an annual yield of a dozen thousand pounds of wool. The dairy produced butter in large quantities, and the cheese averaged as many as one hundred and twenty pounds per day for the season. The lord of the island rarely stabled less than sixty horses, the finest in the country. He raised annually one hundred or more hogs. Wild turkeys hovered about in great numbers, coming to the yards daily to be fed with the tame fowls; and a large herd of deer roamed at will among the fine old trees which would have done credit to any English park.

The founder of the manor of Gardiner's Island was one of the heroic few who, leaving a land of plenty and luxury, faced perils known and unknown with steady nerve, and finally in an unbroken forest projected the industries of a continent. It would almost seem as if our first settlers were gifted with prophetic vision as they entered upon the duties of American citizenship. We are compelled to admire their self-poise, and we need, particularly if we would avoid an incomplete education, an intelligent understanding of their leading characteristics. It is impossible to over-estimate the influence of each original settlement upon the present character of our people. Nor are we in any danger of cultivating too high a respect for the simple beginnings of our vast, rich, and progressive country. The career of Lion Gardiner is less conspicuous than that of some of his contemporaries; yet no man of the obscure period in which he lived was imbued with more personal independence, or radiated an influence more healthful and enduring. He was a professional engineer, the first who ever stood upon the soil of New England. He was by birth and breeding an Englishman, but he had breathed the republican atmosphere of Holland at a time when rights of conscience were not recognized elsewhere in Europe, and had imbibed principles of constitutional law and liberty which his energy and genius could adapt to the exigencies of life in the new country. He landed in Boston on a cold, bleak, blustering, November morning in 1635. He was thirty-six years of age, of fine military presence, well proportioned although slightly under the average height, with quiet face, eyes keen, intelligent and deep-set, and the manners and bearing of a gentleman. He was expected, and received a warm welcome from Governor Thomas Dudley, and from the ex-governors, and deputy governors, and future governors of much governed Boston, of whom were present John Winthrop, John Endicott, Simon Bradstreet, Sir Henry Vane, John Haynes, Roger Ludlow, Richard Bellingham, and the younger John Winthrop-an exceptional group of gubernatorial lights for one little town not quite five years old. The younger Winthrop had just returned from Europe with his commission to govern a new commonwealth-embracing the greater portion of the

present State of Connecticut and extending westward to the Pacific Ocean -which he had received from a company of English noblemen who had become dissatisfied with the conduct of affairs under the graceful but erring monarch, Charles I., and had obtained a patent for this broad extent of territory, intending permanent removal to America.

The leaders of the enterprise included such notables as Oliver Cromwell, John Hampden, Sir Matthew Boynton, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Sir Arthur Heslerigge, Lord Say and Sele, Lord Brooke, afterward Earl of

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Warwick (the ancestor of the present Earl who occupies Warwick castle, so familiar to all traveling Americans) and Colonel George Fenwick. They had not only made choice of a governor but had employed Lion Gardiner as a competent engineer to precede them to America, for "the drawing, ordering, and making of a city, towns, and forts of defense." The site of a city of castles and palaces, "to be rendered suitable for the reception of men of quality" had already been selected at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Lion Gardiner was to be its "engineer, architect, and builder," and was to have "three hundred able-bodied men" under his control-two hundred as a garrison, fifty to till the ground, and fifty to build houses. He was employed to command the post four years, subject to the direction of Governor Winthrop. Supplies needful for his purposes were to be for

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warded from England as the work advanced. As this was an important trust in connection with the beginning of empire in a new world, the inference is that Gardiner was known to possess the requisite qualifications. His family have been traced by Sir Thomas Christopher Banks to the Gardiner who married one of the co-heiresses of the ancient Barony of Fitzwalter. His education was exceptional for the period; and his taste for mathematics had resulted in the study of civil and military engineering. He had been in the English army as an officer under Sir Thomas Fairfax, seeing much active service; and his skill as an engineer had attracted the notice of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, who made him "Master of Works of Fortifications" at his camp in the Netherlands. It will be remembered that in the course of the famous conflict between the Protestants and Catholics, which engrossed the attention of the whole civilized world in the early part of that remarkable century, the treaty of alliance between .England and the United Netherlands, concluded through much astute diplomacy to worry Spain, brought the armies of the two nations into military association; and also that loosely as the little Dutch States were tied together in their struggle for freedom they had already been raised to the rank of a great power, and their army had become one of the standard schools of military art to which warlike students flocked for instruction from every Protestant country in the Old World. Thus it must have been a deserved honor, when an Englishman was placed at the helm of defense manufacture in Holland, by a great general bred to the science of war and commanding in a contest the like of which no people in human history every waged against a foreign tyranny.

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SILVER BUTTON.*

While Lion Gardiner was serving under the Dutch flag he was in constant and familiar intercourse with the celebrated Hugh Peters, and the eminent London divine, Rev. John Davenport, who with numerous English Dissenters had found an asylum, and founded a Protestant Church in Rotterdam. They were both enlisted in the famous project of exodus to the banks of the Connecticut River, and urged Gardiner to accept the offer of the patentees. Davenport soon after sailed for America, and was one of the founders of New Haven, preaching on the 18th of April, 1638-the first Sunday after his arrival-under an oak tree; and he was one of the "Seven Pillars" chosen to support the civil government of the

*The silver button of the above sketch was worn by Lion Gardiner while "Master of Works of Fortifications," under the Prince of Orange. The translation of the motto is "Long life to the Prince of Orange." Copied for the Magazine from the original button.

New Haven Colony. In the meantime, while stationed in the vicinity of the city of Woerden, Gardiner made the acquaintance of Mary Wilemsen, a Holland lady of gentle birth and varied excellencies, whom he married and brought with him to this country. Their nuptials were celebrated at Woerden on the 10th of July, 1635. They proceeded at once to London, whence they sailed for Boston in the Norsey bark Batchelor, Thos. Webb, master, a vessel provided by the Company, of only twenty-five tons burden, in which they were tossed on the rough waves from the 11th of August until the 28th of November-three months and seventeen days. Mrs. Gardiner was attended by a French maid-servant, Elizabeth Colet, and there was one other passenger on the voyage. The officers and crew numbered eight.

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And these twelve souls were consigned to a miniature craft, much less in size than the ordinary yacht of to-day, and about as fit to cope with the perils of the Gulf Stream and the net-work of unseen currents caused by the wind and the tides as a Dutch cradle. No wonder Winthrop wrote of it in his journal: "Her passengers and goods are here all safe through the Lord's great Providence."

The presence of an able engineer in Boston roused the people to secure his experienced services in completing a fortress for their protection. against savage foes. Up to that hour Boston was without any fort, save the mere suggestion of one commenced with a few rusty cannon. It was agreed that every citizen should contribute fourteen days' labor-or money to the same effect; and a committee consisting of the two Winthrops, Sir

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