1966. Lt. Richard Gildersleeve
IV(135) was born on 2 Feb 1660
in Newtown, Long Island, New York. He died in 1717 in Northport, Long Island,
New York. He has reference number 256. Richard was born in Hempstead, Long
Island on 2 February 1660. He bought land in Huntington, Suffolk County, Long
Island, April 2, 1687, from John Golding and wife. The town granted him twenty-two
acres of land at Clapboard Hollow and Crab Meadow. His assessment was thirty-seven
pounds. On January 10, 1694, he bought from Edward Ketcham one hundred and fifty
acres of upland on the west side of Nesaguage river. On April 20, 1699, he conveyed
a tract of land in Hempstead to Richard Valentine. On May 2, 1704, he sold his
property right of Hempstead to his brother, Thomas.
Of the two known sons of his father he seems to have been the less interested
in participation in civic affairs. He was town agent in matter concerning a
grist mill (grist is an English word for grain), and lieutenant in the colonial
militia in 1690. His commission was signed by the ill-fated Jacob Leisley.
He built a homestead on the Merrick River at Hempstead, having shared in the
division of the town lands in 1679. He was a Presbyterian and was listed as
supporting the Rev. Jeremiah Hobart in 1682 at Hempstead and was a
patentee of the town when the Dongan Patent of 1685 was granted.
In 1667, having sold his home in Hempstead to Jonathan Smith, he then bought
a proprietor's right in Huntington, New York. In the latter township he erected
a home on the cliffs fronting north on the beach of Long Island Sound at Crab
Meadow, near Northport Harbor. However, he retained considerable land estates
in Hempstead. In 1698 he installed his son Manassah on a farm near Rockaway
River. Before 1694 he had bought, with a partner, all of Pegusquis Nect between
Neguntsteagus and Copiagus rivers in the present town of Babylon from the Secatogus
Indians, but he sold this property in 1699. In 1694 he
purchased land in Smithtown. As inheritor of his father's homestead in 1704,
after the death of his mother, and sold that property. Other references attest
to the fact that he progressively liquidated his holding in Hempstead, chiefly
to his brother Thomas.
He was listed, April 1672, as one of the fifteen proprietors who owned shares
in the so-called ten farms set up by Huntington in their dispute with Smithtown,
and which extended between Northport Harbor and the Smithtown line.
He was assessed to pay in 1698 a proportion in Huntington' Baiting Place Purchase
from the Massapequa Indians. He received his share in the sales of town lands
in 1711 and 1713 at the Halfway Hollow Hills. His las years from 1687 to 1717
were spent as a land proprietor in Huntington, New York.
Gildersleeve Pioneers, by Willard Harvey Gildersleeve, 1941, page 182: Richard
Gildersleeve, 3d was born about 1655 in the town of Newtown, Long Island, New
York, when the Dutch controlled the western part of the island as a part of New
Netherlands. His father had moved from Hempstead in 1652 to escape the Indian
depredations and had built a home in the village of Middlebury (Elmhurst), where
in 1656 he paid a part of the Indian purchase to the Canarsie Indians.
In 1658, his father bought a home in Hempstead town spot and moved into it, having
sold his home in Newtown to Francis Doughty. In 1664, the English fleet captured
the Dutch fort at New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan and Hempstead became
a part of the royal proprietary province of New York. There were only a few
settlements along the Hudson River at Albany and Esopus, a few in Westchester
County and Staten Island so that Long Island with its several pioneer towns formed
the main part of the settlements in the province.
The only facilities for education were provided by a few schoolmasters that came
to town. His boyhood home was on the west side of Hempstead village and he worked
on the various farming operations of his grandfather and father.
As some of the big holdings owned by the town began to be divided up among the
settlers for private use and the spirit of independent living increased, farming
and herding began to lose its community organization, and inherited custom of
old English parishes and continued by the Puritan settlers of Hempstead for common
safety against wolves and Indians with their hungry dogs.
As a boy, he often witnessed the Indians and certain wolf hunters come into the
village with the wolf heads to collect the bounties voted at town meetings.
The freeholders or proprietors had so much town land at their disposal that they
were at all times subject to attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, of land
grabbers. Not only did neighboring towns but different land speculators and
individuals seeking manors to set up aristocratic domains, patents within patents,
tried to get some of the town lands of Hempstead. The agents of the Duke of
York managed to get hundreds of acres through political trickery of the patent
policies of the governors with the Indians as puppets to
further tangle up titles to land; yet the Gildersleeves and other proprietors
managed to save thousands of acres for the town by constant watch and by constant
law suits. Thus Hempstead was noted among Long Island towns for having immense
areas of town lands for at least two hundred years.
Page 184: Richard 3d became a proprietor of Hempstead in 1683, with all patent
rights and responsibilities thereto and thus could share in all future divisions
of the Commons of the town.
Page 186: Richard 3d devoted himself to farming operations all his life. The
record of the earmark for his cattle was now necessary as he was letting them
graze in common on town land with others. Steps were taken in 1684, to fence
in a part of the large Hempstead Plains and to avoid trouble they petitioned
the governor for permission.
He was married to Experience Ellison in 1677 in
Hempstead, Long Island, Queens, Nassau County, New York.
Experience Ellison(135) was
born on 2 Jun 1657 in Braintree, Norfolk, Massachusetts. She died about 1689
in Northport, Suffolk, New York. She has reference number 257. Notes for Experience
Ellison: SOURCE: The History of the Allison Family AD 1135-1893 by L . A. Morrison
[1893]:249. Colonial Families of Long Island and Connecticut by Herbert F. Sev
ersmith [1948]:923. Lt. Richard Gildersleeve IV and Experience Ellison had the
following children:
2236 i.
Manasseh Gildersleeve(135) was
born in 1678 in Hempstead, Long Island, Queens, Nassau County, New York. He
died on 27 Aug 1701 in Huntington at Crab Meadow, Suffolk Co., NY.
+2237 ii.
Thomas Gildersleeve.
2238 iii.
Ann Gildersleeve(135) was
born in 1682 in Hempstead, Long Island, Queens, Nassau County, New York.
2239 iv.
Reuben Gildersleeve(135) was born
in 1700 in Northport, Suffolk, New York.
2240 v.
Zophar Gildersleeve(135) was born
in 1706 in Northport, Suffolk, New York.
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