Mordecai Lester

Family/Spouse: Mary. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Murray Lester was born about 1720 in Hempstead, Nassau, Long Island, New York; died before 1790.

Notes:

He, his wife, and his son Mordecai all appear on the 1698 census of Hempstead.

Thomas married Dorcas Gildersleeve before 1691 in Hempstead, Nassau, Long Island, New York. Dorcas (daughter of Richard Gildersleeve and Dorcas Williams) was born about 1663 in Hempstead, Long Island, New Netherland; died after 1698. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Her father's will gives "to dau. Dorkiss Lester eight acres at Newfield".

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Aft 7 Apr 1690, Hempstead, Nassau, Long Island, New York
• Alternate death: 1691

Notes:

Town clerk of Hempstead from 1668 to at least 1671. Town drummer in 1670-71. Constable in 1678. It is said that when he was constable, the local Quakers protested his acts to the governor of New York. We have not seen this sourced, but certainly his father was a notoriously enthusiastic enemy of Quakerism. His will bequeaths to, among others, "dau. Dorkiss Lester".

Various sources claim that he and/or his father signed the Hempstead Petition of 1679, claimed by some as the first assertion of the principle "no taxation without representation," but we have been unable to verify this.

With their usual thoroughness, Janet and Bob Wolfe's genealogy site includes a well-sourced list of everything on record about the younger Richard Gildersleeve.

Richard married Dorcas Williams. Dorcas died in 1704. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Parke and Jacobus say that Dorcas was "perhaps daughter of Moyles and Ann Williams." Moyles Williams was an Indian trader from Virginia who settled in Hempstead, where he died in December 1644.

Notes:

He gave his age as 76 in a deposition given in 1677. Although Parke and Jacobus (citation details below) say he emigrated before 1635 and was first at Watertown, then Wethersfield in 1635-36, he appears to first appear on record at Wethersfield on 11 Sep 1636, when he was ordered by the court to help with the inventory of John Oldham. On 11 Jun 1640 he was "convicted before the Court for 'pernitous speaking,' tending to the detriment and dishonor of the commonwealth, fined 40s. and bound over in a bond of £20." In the same year he and others left the Wethersfield church along with the Presbyterian Rev. Richard Denton and began the process of removing to Stamford. In 1643 he was a deputy from Stamford to the New Haven legislature. In 1644 he and several others moved to Newtown, Long Island, and in 1647 he was one of the freeholders participating in the first land division for Hempstead, where he was a magistrate in 1652 and from 1656 on.

He appears to have been a vigorous persecutor of Quakers. E. B. O'Callaghan, in his History of New Netherland (New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1848; volume 2, page 347) relates the following: "Richard Gildersleeve, a magistrate of Heemstede, was one of the most prominent of the persecutors of the new sect. To 'hold the garments of those who stoned the saints,' was not glory enough for him. He pursued them with proclamations, and inflicted on them and their friends pains and penalties without end."

According to Long Island Genealogies by Mary Powell Bunker (Albany: Joel Munsell's Sons, 1895), his wife's name was Experience.

Various sources claim that he and/or his son Richard signed the Hempstead Petition of 1679, claimed by some as the first assertion of the principle "no taxation without representation," but we have been unable to verify this.

A long essay about Richard Gildersleeve by Charles M. Andrews in The New England Magazine, Feb 1893, can be read online here.

Janet and Robert Wolfe's genealogy site contains an excellent, meticulously sourced list of pretty much everything on record about Richard Gildersleeve.

Richard Gildersleeve (~1601-1681)
Anna Gildersleeve (d. ~1684 = John Smith
Miriam Smith = John Williams (d. 1680)
Miriam Williams = Joseph Mott (d. 1735)
Jane Mott = Benjamin Seaman (d. 1729)
Benjamin Seaman (1719-1781) = Elizabeth Mott (1720-1781)
William Seaman (1764-1835) = Elizabeth Brewerton Benson (1771-1840)
Henry John Seaman (1805-1861) = Katherine Sarah Seaman (1813-1896)
Billopp Seaman (1837-1914) = Adeline Stansbury Iucho (1840-1884)
Adeline Iucho Seaman (1867-1948) = Henry Granville Stephens (1862-1946)
Homé Catherine Stephens (1896-1981) = Addams Stratton McAllister (1875-1946)
Homé Stephens McAllister (b. 1925) = George Walter Reitwiesner (1918-1993)
William Addams Reitwiesner (1954-2010), distinguished genealogist