Thomas Cornell

Bef 1593 - 1655  (> 61 years)

• Name	Thomas Cornell
  Birth	Bef 11 Mar 1593	Saffron Walden, Essex, England   [1]
  Baptism	11 Mar 1593	Saffron Walden, Essex, England   [1]
  Gender	Male
  Baptised	24 Mar 1595  [2]
  Death	1655	Portsmouth, Newport, Rhode Island   [2, 3]
  Person ID	I59	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of TWK
  Last Modified	14 Sep 2024

  
  

  Father	William Cornell
  Family ID	F117	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Rebecca   d. 8 Feb 1673, Portsmouth, Newport, Rhode Island
  Marriage	1620  [4]
  Children	+ 1. Richard Cornell,   b. 8 Jul 1628   d. 11 Aug 1694 (Age 66 years)
  Family ID	F12	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	14 Sep 2024

  
  

• Notes

  He was a constable in Saffron Walden prior to his emigration. At Boston by 1638, where he was a supporter of Anne Marbury Hutchinson, he was in Portsmouth by 4 Feb 1641. From Wikipedia: Cornell became friends with Roger Williams and co-founded the village of Westchester north of New Amsterdam (later New York City) in 1643. He returned to Rhode Island in 1644 and obtained a land grant for 100 acres in Portsmouth, RI on Aquidneck Island that became the Cornell homestead. His neighbor was Edward Hutchison, a son of Anne Hutchison from the Antinomian Controversy. In 1646, Cornell was granted a patent on an area of about four square miles that later became part of the Bronx. It was bounded by Westchester Creek, Bronx River, village of Westchester and East River and was called Cornell's Neck. The area is now known as Clason Point. Thomas' son Thomas Cornell (Jr.) was accused, tried, convicted and hanged for the alleged murder of his mother [...] in Portsmouth in 1673. He was convicted using circumstantial evidence as well as spectral evidence, where witnesses recounted dreams involving ghosts pointing to his alleged guilt. American jurisprudence was later modernized to exclude the use of apparitions and dreams as evidence in trials. This case and its history has been chronicled in the book Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell by Elaine Forman Crane. Thomas Cornell is an ancestor to a number of prominent and notorious Americans, including Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell University, Bill Gates, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon, Senator Bob Graham, Daniel Webster, Secretary of State John Kerry, Amelia Earhardt and axe murderer Lizzie Borden by way of Thomas Cornell (Jr.)'s daughter, Innocent, born after his death to his second wife Sarah Earle Cornell. Thomas Cornell (Jr.)'s fourth-great-grandson Ezra Cornell (1807-1874) donated the original endowment for Cornell University.

  
  

• Sources

  [S1225] G. Andrews Moriarty, "Additions and Corrections to Austin's Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island." The American Genealogist 19:129, 1942; 20:181, 1943; 20:223, 1943; 35:107, 1959; 39:1, 1963. [S5881] Ancestral Lines, Fourth Edition: 232 Families in England, Wales, the Netherlands, Germany, New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania by Carl Boyer III. Santa Clarita, California, 2015. [S7798] Genealogy of the Cornell Family, Being an Account of the Descendants of Thomas Cornell of Portsmouth, R.I. by John Cornell. New York: Press of T. A. Wright, 1902. [S160] Wikipedia.