| Notes |
- From Leggett of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England and West Farms (Bronx), New York (citation details below):
Gabriel Leggett, the great-grandfather of the first American Gabriel, was born in the middle years of the reign of Henry VIII. The first reference to him appears in the records of Clare College of Cambridge University which leased him a house in 1565. In this record he appears as a "laborer" which meant he owned little or no land. The house he leased was part of the buildings of the medieval Hospital of St. John the Baptist, a former leprosarium granted to the college in 1561. Clare College converted the twelfth-century chapel (a substantial structure measuring forty-one by twenty-five feet) into a dwelling of two stories with four fireplaces. This building still stands, west of the town center. Here the Gabriel Leggett family lived with both the Thomas and John families occupying it simultaneously. [...]
In the parish of St. Mary's there are no extant parish registers of baptisms, marriages, or burials before 1599. Gabriel died November 2, 1609, and mentions his grandson Gabriel, father of the first American Gabriel, in his will. At the time of his death, Gabriel owned his own house and fifteen acres of farm land. The several acres and rood (14 acres) owned by the Leggetts abutting the land of a Mr. March were probably located in the vicinity of Grunty Fen, out towards Haddenham. The Marches owned a former manor called Gray's in the Haddenham area, several miles west of the city. It was fairly common to own parcels of land at a distance from one's dwelling.
The fact that Gabriel owned a house and land at the time of his death indicates upward mobility for one who had been a laborer thirty-seven years earlier. Even such a small holding entitled him to call himself a "yeoman." Most yeomen of the fenlands had similarly small holdings. Their wealth came from cattle that they grazed on common lands in the fens.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
- 1609
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