This paper is about commercial contacts and their importance to early East Hampton.  I am not the first to suggest that trade and commerce are vital to the origins of the area.  Timothy Breen has said this, as has Richard Dunn.[1]passim.  NY 1999.  The major players are - much to no one’s surprise - Lion Gardiner and John Mulford.  I am pleased to be presented by such an organization as the East Hampton Library.  I want to thank Tom Twomey and Diana Dayton for this opportunity to present the results of many years of research into the early history of East Hampton.  East Hampton as a provisioning port on Block Island Sound, that great water highway, was founded by merchants - settlers interested in making money.

                Contrary to what romantics like to believe, Lion Gardiner acquired the island in typical colonial fashion, first in May of 1639, by purchasing it with gifts and a deed signing with the Montauk Indians, notarized by that Boston lawyer, Thomas Lechford.[2]1931, pp. 92-95.  Then, again in March of 1640, he purchased the island through James Forrett/Farrett[3](Sag Harbor, 1887) Vol I, p. 1., the agent for the Earl of Sterling (William Alexander).  Gardiner had to purchase his island from the owner of this grant, the Earl of Sterling, who had just been granted Long Island with other islands along the southern coast of New England.  Gardiner could only farm.  Profits from supposed furs were reserved for the Earl of Sterling.  Although today the Island is managed by a trust co. in New York City, it is still owned by descendants of Lion and Marrichen; the present owners, cousins, are correctly called ‘proprietors’ - not “Lords of the Manor”.

                The elderly William Alexander finally got his heart’s desire, to be created a nobleman - Earl of Sterling - and to have a large land grant in the Colonies.  He sent over an agent, James Forrett, who would be able to draw on Sterling’s account in Boston, while selling land on Long Island. 

As part of his ‘perks’ Forrett , as agent, could choose some land for himself.  He chose what is now Shelter Island - called Forrett’s Island at that time.  He was agent for a brief period, 1639-1641, when the Earl of Sterling died, and Forrett now out of a job, had to return to England.  In order to get money to pay his passage to England, Forrett mortgaged the unsold lands to the Governor of New Haven, Theophilus Eaton, and the Governor of Connecticut, Edward Hopkins, on 19 July, 1641, for º 110.  If the mortgage was unpaid after 3 years, the title to the undisposed part of Long Island would vest in the mortgagees.  As Isabel Calder says, “July 19, 1644 came and went without word or sign from Forrett, as the mortgagees had expected would be the case, and the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven proceeded to buy up the Indian title to Long Island and disposed of the land to settlers who eventually came under the jurisdiction of one or the other of the two Puritan colonies.”[4]

                Lion Gardiner was not answerable to any colonial government throughout his life time.  In complicated legal cases, he might use the courts of Connecticut, as would his close neighbor and possible cousin John Winthrop, Jr, who purchased Fishers Island in 1640, a year after Lion.

Winthrop would establish the Town of New London and later he became the governor of Connecticut.  Gardiner, of course, never lived in New York!  He died in 1663, when eastern Long Island used the Connecticut government for major legal cases.  It was the next year - 1664, that New Netherlands was taken over by Charles II and given to his brother, the Duke of York.  Long Island was included because Charles II made a deal with the heirs of the Earl of Sterling, agreeing to long term payment plans for Long Island.  Of course, through shenanigans, Charles II never paid the Sterling heirs anything.[5]

                When Lion’s son, David, inherited the island, he was savvy enough to confirm his father’s deeds and compacts.  David applied to the royal governor, Richard Nicholls for a grant, dated 5 October 1664.  This grant reads that the island shall be “only accountable to the governor”, the royal governor of New York.[6]

                In October 1674, when Sir Edmund Andros became Governor of New York, he revoked all grants.  Then David applied to the next royal governor, Thomas Dongan, for a new grant.  Dated 11 September 1686, the grant now read “henceforth to be called the Lordship and Manor of Gardiner’s Island.”[7]  Thus the Island was an entity unto itself for 100 years, until 2 March 1788 when the new State of New York annexed the Island to the Town of East Hampton for tax purposes.

                Governor Nicholls gave similar grants to the Sylvesters for Shelter Island in 1666 and John Winthrop Jr, for Fishers Island in 1668.  Of the 11 manors granted in present New York State in the 1600's, Gardiner’s Island is the only one still owned entirely by descendants of the original grantees.

                Now, we have to get over the notion that East Hampton was originally Maidstone.  None of the original 9 settlers are from there or even from Kent.  Those whose origins are known are from Devonshire, and Hampshire.  They were wealthy men who could afford to buy the land from the Governors of New Haven and Connecticut.

                That Maidstone legend can be traced to 1871 when David Johnson Gardiner published his essays about East Hampton.[8]  In the 19^th c. the idea of Maidstone was eagerly taken up by the ‘summer people’ who named their club, their inns and other organizations with that name.

                How did David Johnson Gardiner come upon this idea of “Maidstone”? The Gardiners still own a lovely brass, spring-driven mantle clock - 15 inches high by 6 inches wide - on whose face is engraved in large letters, “John Cutbush, Maidstone”.[9]  The Cutbush family were clock makers in Maidstone about the beginning of the 1700's and were the first to use the new spring driven clock works.  These were, of course, au courant.  The Gardiners as local gentry and merchants, wanted the most modern and fashionable objects in their homes.  The clock was possibly purchased by the third proprietor, John Gardiner (1661-1738).  David Johnson Gardiner had very little Gardiner resources to base his writings on.

                The great house on Gardiner’s Island burned to the ground in 1774.  Undoubtedly in it were the account books, ledgers, letters from John Winthrop, Jr. and many others, all lost.

                Surviving Gardiner papers include the “Geneva Bible” of 1599, at first in the possession of Lion’s daughter Mary who married Jeremiah Conkling and now in the East Hampton Library.  Lion’s writings - “The Relation of the Pequot War”, now in the Massachusetts Historical Society collections, were formerly in the papers of the Winthrop family of New London.  This manuscript was known to historical writers for many years before it was published in 1797 by B. Trumbull in his 2 volume “History of Connecticut”.[10]Papers and Biography of Lion Gardiner 1599-1663.  passim.  Lion’s will and probate are in the Southampton Town records as is his wife’s.[11]

A close look at the W.J. Blaeu “Map of New Netherlands and New England” reveals that the whole of the south fork of Long Island is called “hampe.”  “Hampe” is an old English word meaning field.  The Native Americans kept these fields cleared as part of their land management life style.  These Indian lands were called ‘wilderness’ by the English settlers only in a biblical sense - there were no Christian peoples living here!  To the English, viewing the land from the decks of coastwise sloops, these cleared lands meant opportunity.  To own large expanses of this land meant herding cattle, sheep and horses; the base of New England’s commercial activity in the mid 17^th century.

                In Samuel Maverick’s famous description of New England[12] he says “And for the Southern part of New-England, it is incredible what hath been done there.”

                “In the year 1626 or thereabouts there was not a Neat Beast Horse or sheepe in the countrey and a very few Goats or hoggs, and now it is a wonder to see the great herds of Catle belonging to every Towne. . ., The Brave Flocks of sheepe, The great number of Horses besides those many sent to Barbados and other Carribe Islands, And withall to consider how many thousand Neate Beasts and Hoggs are yearly killed, and soe have been for many yeares past for Provision in the Countrey and sent abroad to supply Newfoundland, Barbados, Jamaica, and other places.  As also to victuall in whole or in part most ships which comes there.”

                After the Lynn mariner, Captain Daniel Howe[13] deposited his passengers from Lynn, (MA) at their port, North Sea, on Peconic Bay - these settlers became aware of the vast fields closer to the ocean - the south hampe or Southampton.  It’s suitability for raising cattle for export as beef is recognized today in the name ‘Gin Lane’ - for the ‘gin’ or fenced area for the cattle.  Note that the English town of Southampton was originally known as ‘Hampwic’.

                When in 1648, John Mulford led 8 other entrepreneurs to the east of the South Fields, to be nearer to the livestock grazing lands of the Montauk peninsular, the area soon became known as East Hampe, or later East Hampton.

                Lion Gardiner, as we all know, was the professional soldier and engineer at the fort at Saybrook, a project of the Warwick Patentees.[14] In order to be chosen for the position of on-site manager of an escapist habitation for these wealthy noblemen, he would have to be a pious soldier of some social standing.[15]  Lion Gardiner was a well connected , well educated young man.  It has been suggested that Lion Gardiner and John Winthrop, Jr were cousins.  If so, this explains the many connections of their lives.  Their grandmothers may be the Brown sisters, daughters of Thomas Brown, a merchant tailor of London. They are in both the Winthrop line and the Gardiner line.  The Winthrop line is well documented, people are working on the Gardiner line.[16]

                Brought up in northern Essex, Lion was well acquainted with those wishing to get away from Royalist England - the Earl of Warwick, Lord Say and Sele, Lord Brook, the Winthrops, even Rev Hugh Peter and Rev John Davenport, all Essex men.  As a soldier in Woerden in the Low Countries, Lion was approached by the Rev Hugh Peter, the English minister in Rotterdam, about 10 miles away where there was a large English population, with the offer of a lucrative position.

                But we are ahead of the story.  In 1621, Lion was recruited by his Essex countryman, Sir Edward de Vere to fight for the Netherlands in the ongoing religious war between the calvinistic protestants and the roman catholic adherents.  The fighting had begun in 1566 and ranged all over the Low Countries.  There was a Twelve Years Truce from 1609-1621, when the fighting resumed until 1648, the Peace of Westphalia, which set the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg as we know it today.

                Woerden was a small but fortified city, not too far from the coast of North Sea. The front lines were some distance east of Woerden and were to move further east, 100 miles closer to the Rhine by 1648.[17]

             In his own writings Lion notes that during the truce the Hollanders reinforced their forts and other means of defense, knowing that the war would resume in 1621.  Lion Gardiner describes his career in 1635 as “an engineer and master of works in the fortifications in the “legers” (a Dutch word meaning ‘army’) of the Prince of Orange in the Low Countries.”  By November 1624, Lion Gardiner had attained the rank of Corporal in Sir Edward de Vere’s company, stationed in Woerden.

                In Woerden he met Mary/Marrichen Duercant.  Well documented in that city, she was the youngest of six children of Dirk (Theodore) Duercant and his wife Haechen.  In 1603 Dirk became a schepen or magistrate in the City of Woerden.  His untimely death in the summer of 1605 made his six children, all under the age of 25 at that date, to become wards of the Woerden Orphan Chamber, a unique Dutch system to ensure each child’s inheritance.

                The Orphan Chamber required that the money each child was to inherit be deposited in the “Orphan’s Chest” where it would accumulate interest and be available when each child reached age 25.  Each child was to be educated; the boys were to learn a trade.  At age 25 each Duercant offspring received 25 guilders, and ‘alimentation and a matrimonial outfit’.  (These terms are unexplained).  In English, the children’s names are Elizabeth, William, Cornelius, Janet, Peter and Mary/Marrichjen.[18]

                As yet, no marriage license has been found for Lion and Marrichen in any Netherlands archive.  There are two Orphan Chamber receipts, signed by Lion Gardiner as husband of Marrichen Duercant, one in 1624 and one in 1626.[19]  The reason for the 1624 signing is unclear but three siblings were dead by that date.  Marrichen was 25 in 1626.  Her husband signed for her 25 guilders and her ‘alimentation and matrimonial outfit’.

                In Rotterdam was the most notable non-conformist divine of his century, Hugh Peter.  In Rotterdam, too was the Rev John Davenport.  These Essex men were friends of the Earl of Warwick as well as of John Winthrop.  Peter would be the agent of the patentees to approach Lion Gardiner to offer him the position to set up a colony in the new world, to “draw, order and make a city, town and fortifications” at the newly created fort at the mouth of the Connecticut river.  The Warwick Patentees designed Saybrook as an escape habitation if things in England became too rough.  Other Warwick patentees were Viscount Saye & Sele, Lord Brooke, and George Fenwick.[20]

                In this contract, 35 year old Lion Gardiner was to receive º100 per annum for four years, plus transportation expenses, and housing and subsistence to the place of destination (i.e. Saybrook).  Promised was a full complement of personnel for the building of a fort and residences for the Warwick patentees and their families.  This was upscale pay and accommodations on a par with the top range for a colonial minister of º100 per year.  In 1632, King Charles I provided an annual pension for his favorite artist, Sir Anthony Van Dyke, of º200 and a house in Blackfriars.

                In the 1630's the costs of moving people, animals, foodstuffs and equipment was considerable.  Both Governor John Winthrop and Rev. Francis Higginson of Salem[21] calculated the costs of transatlantic passage.  A man, his wife and a servant cost º16  10s, º11 for their goods, º15  2s for a cow.  In 1629 standard transatlantic freight charges were º4 a ton.  Wealthy migrants who wished to travel in style could pay an additional º1 10s for a cabin.  Undoubtedly Lion and his wife Mary/Marrichen Duercant had such upper class accommodations when they crossed the ocean.

                Accepting the position in 1635, Marrichen and Lion prepared to leave Woerden.  In Rotterdam, both husband and wife had to sign the required ‘Certificate of Conformity’ to enter England.  As this gives their ages, Lion’s birth is estimated at 1599.[22]

                In London, Lion met with the Warwick patentees.  He was given an advance on his salary.  Undoubtedly he and Marrichen went shopping.  They found that they were to cross the ocean in a cargo ship, one loaded with the iron parts for a draw bridge.  Supplies for Gardiner included 23 ½ yards of ‘redd flagg stuffe’, presumably for trade with the Indians.[23]  There were some workmen aboard, as well as Marrichen’s maid, Eliza Colet.  Departing from London in August 1635, their 25 ton “Batcheler”, was accompanied by a similar sized cargo boat.  They stopped at several ports in the English Channel.  They loaded on Marrichen’s trunks at a Dutch port, then continued.  Much time was spent at the ports, gathering workmen and merchandise.  The other boat was considered unseaworthy, and was left behind.

               Arriving in Boston three months later, 28 November 1635, the Gardiners were greeted by Gov John Winthrop who put Lion to work on supervising construction of a fort for one of the Boston Harbor islands.  This sojourn in Boston was paid for by the Warwick patentees.

                While in Boston, the Gardiners socialized with the Winthrop family, especially as they were kin, and then possibly with William Coddington and his wife Mary, future governor of Newport, R.I., among other influential friends of the Winthrops.

                In early March, 1635/6, Lion and Marrichen, now heavily pregnant, left Boston to sail to the Saybrook Fort at the mouth of the Connecticut River.  John Winthrop Jr, may have sailed with them as he was at the fort from April through June of that year.  Winthrop perhaps wanted to make sure that Lion and Marrichen were comfortable in their new home, with all the proper amenities for their station in life.  His medical knowledge would be useful too, with the birth of the first baby.  In a later letter, (6 Nov 1636 to Jwjr in Boston), Lion notes that he returned two servants, Robert and Sorce.[24]  No mention is made of Eliza Colet, Marrichen’s maid.

                Possibly Lion knew that instead of the several hundred men promised, there was only a handful there.  The threat of both internal disorder and external attack predisposed company planners toward the creation of semi-feudal military garrisons and trading posts.[25]

                A drawing re-creating the fort shows a rectangular center area surrounded by large long buildings on each of the four sides.  One of the long buildings has a chimney at each end, the others have a center chimney.  Then some open ground within palisaded walls with the typical military triangular points at each corner.  Shown is one gate with possibly the iron drawbridge brought over on the “Batcheler”.[26]

              But habitations had been erected and the Gardiners moved into the Great Hall.  A ‘Great Hall’ was a typical late medieval aristocratic building, considered suitable accommodation for any of the patentees/lords who were expected to come.[27]  It was a very large, almost barn-like room with small rooms opening off if along the sides.  The Great Hall itself was for cooking and communal eating.  Their son David would be born there on the 29^th of April 1636.

                In 1636, Saybrook Fort was the only English habitation facing onto Long Island Sound.  That Spring, John Winthrop, Jr was appointed ‘provisional governor of the colonies of the Warwick Patent’.  In June, his father, Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay, purchased a ‘buff coat’ for Lion.  This was a thick leather coat that was almost impenetrable by arrowheads.  The standard metal armor was impractical in the forest.

                Saybrook’s natural endowments as a trans-shipment place between the river craft of the Connecticut River and the ocean going vessels made it a trading port.  Some of the goods that John Winthrop Jr. listed were prunes, textiles, maize, furs and for the Indians - those marvels: looking glasses and jews harps.

                During 1636 the Gardiners were hosts to others- Rev Hugh Peter, among them.  In a letter of 6 November 1636 to John Winthrop Jr, Gardiner discusses the lack of provisions at Saybrook.  He notes other visitors passing through - some Dutch (from New Netherland), Virginians, and that Essex countryman, Mr. Pyncheon, now from Springfield.  In the last paragraph of this letter, Gardiner adds “a Ketch from Narragansett loaded with corn proceeded up the river to Hartford.”  Lion intercepted it and offloads 100 bushels of the corn- to feed his personnel.[28]

                The next spring, 23 March 1636/7, Gardiner writes to Winthrop Jr discussing troubles with the Indians up and down the River.[29]

                The Pequot war was brewing.  Lion warned the Massachusetts Bay authorities in his most famous quote “You come hither to raise these wasps about my ears, and then you will take wing and flee away”.[30]

                Lieutenant Lion Gardiner did not participate in the actual fight, staying at the Saybrook Fort.  He did give succor to the returning soldiers who had surprised the Pequots in the night-time attack on the Pequots’ camp.  Lion, at Saybrook, had a small ferry to cross the mouth of the Connecticut.  This he sent across the river to bring Capt John Mason and his twenty men to the Fort.[31]  In a letter to William Pyncheon at Springfield, he notes, in addition to his surplus cattle, sheep and goats, that he has hired Ozarias (?), and “two from New Netherlands - a tayler and a shipwright.”  Gardiner adds “he will have the dutchman make a sailboat of 30-40 ton.”[32]  This was undoubtedly the boat that various correspondents mentioned as transporting them around Block Island Sound. 

                In April, 1638 Rev John Davenport, with Theophilus Eaton, on their way to found New Haven, stopped by the settlement at Saybrook.  The distance between the two places is about 25 miles, a half day’s sail.  Lion’s friend, Davenport, knew of his surveying abilities, and asked him to come to New Haven to survey the site of their new religious settlement.  With his “crosstaff & compass”, (appraised at º4.10 in 1663) it is presumed that he did survey the famous ‘nine squares’ of New Haven.  The town was to include 30 odd households in a meaningful relationship.[33]

                By the next year, Lion knew that his four year contract was not to be renewed.  He did not wish to return to England, with all the troubles there.[34]  Sailing around the eastern end of Long Island Sound, Gardiner was aware of this verdant island of 3,375 acres, with 15.27 miles of shoreline between the two forks of Long Island.[35]  In owning this estate, Lion could deal with the Indians and his own workmen/farmers in a manner that suited his own religiosity of man’s humanity to man.

            Moving onto the Island, Lion and Marrichen undoubtedly moved into housing already built.  In the appraisal of Lion’s estate in 1664, there are 4 houses and two barns on the Island.  There is ‘ye great house & long table, The New house, the house Simons lives in, and ye Bake house & cellar’.  The barns are identified as ‘the new barne’ and ‘ye old barne’.[36]

                In 1639 the Isle of Wight stood in isolation.  By late spring of the next year, English settlements were established on Long Island, - Southold from the New Haven Colony and Southampton from Lynn in Massachusetts Bay Colony.  In the fall of 1640 John Winthrop, Jr would buy his own island, Fishers Island, although the family would not move there for another six years.[37]

                Other actors are arriving on the scene.  William Pyncheon had settled Springfield on the upper Connecticut River in 1636.[38]  The merchant with his West Country connections, Richard Collicott, was in Dorchester in 1632, age 26, and was in Boston by 1658.[39]  William Coddington was first in Boston in 1630, then in Newport by 1639.[40]

                John Mulford, and his younger brother William, from South Molton near Barnstaple in the West Country would arrive in Salem with other West Country people.  >From 1637 to 1643 the population of Salem under Rev Hugh Peter increased from 900 to 1200, about ½ of them were West Countrymen.[41]  Still in the Barnstaple area of Devon was William Osburn who becomes prominent later.  And then there are the sisters, Thomasine and Friedeswide, named for early Devonian saints.

                Block Island Sound was the great water highway in the 1600s.  Captain Howe was well aware of his position in the circuit; transporting the barrels, kegs, tierces and such from the residents near small harbors to the ports of Newport and Boston.  Captain Howe, in his agreement with the Southampton settlers, made his two trips a year from North Sea port to Boston, the source of all the gossip about products and places.  The coastwise sailing vessels would leave Boston, go around Cape Cod and the Islands into Narragansett Bay at Newport.  Here they would load on the barreled provisions acquired by the Newport merchants and head for the Barbados with a diversified cargo.  In the late 1630s and early 1640s this was the source of income for the settlers of the area.  We have already put William Coddington into Newport.  We have seen Captain How bring the Lynn people to Southampton.  John Mulford has arrived in Salem.  Newport and New London are the new major ports of Block Island Sound.

                By the 1640s Barbados underwent an explosive development creating the major sugar economy.  [42] The growing of sugar became so lucrative that it was cheaper to import food rhan to grow it.  [43] In a 1647 letter to John Winthrop, Richard Vines of Barbados tells of a merchant coming to “your port to trade for provisions for the belly, which at present is very scarce, by reason of 5 or 6 months delay, and not that only, but men are so intent upon planting sugar that they had rather buy food at very dear rates than produce it by labor, so infinite is the profit of sugar works after once accomplished.”  [44] With that kind of news, all the grazing lands around Block Island Sound were devoted to cattle raising.

                In the 1630's the provisioning trade with the sugar planters on the island of Barbados, the most eastward of the islands in the Carribean, was in its early development.  Barbados was the easiest to get to by wind powered sailboats.  Here was opportunity open to those who could organize it.  Eastern Long Island residents, through their various connections in New England became an integral part of this trade.

                Gardiner was first raising pigs and goats - these animals closely grub the earth.  Then, when the grasses grow (with additional English grass seed) the meadows are favorable for cattle, horses and sheep, the most lucrative animals.  John Winthrop Jr was developing his island in the same manner.  Animal husbandry and English grass seed are the topic of the many letters that Lion wrote to JW Jr.

                A large cast of characters of friends and relatives of the settlers on the East End soon arose.  Lion Gardiner, who learned so much in his four years at Saybrook Fork, entered this business quickly.  His men on the Island could prepare salted beef in hogsheds, or leather goods, or raw wool in barrels.  Coddington of Newport was expecting Lion to transport him to Providence in that boat that the Dutch shipwright had built.

                Winthrop, Coddington and Gardiner corresponded with each other about cattle, sheep, English grass seed, Indian ‘meal’ as well as hay for the animals.  No wheat was grown, as the damp climate of the area (including Narragansett Bay) was too conducive to disease.[45]

                By 1640 on Long Island, two towns were being settled; Southold on the north fork from New Haven Colony and what has become known as Southampton on the south fork from the Massachusetts Bay Colony on what appeared to be one extensive meadow or moorland.[46]

                Land hungry residents from Lynn, MA, negotiated with Captain Howe to move to another site.  Having invested some of their money in his vessel, their agreement with Howe was that he would make two trips a year between Boston and their port of North Sea, bringing English goods and taking away their produce.[47]  With the guaranteed two trips a year and the developing sugar plantations in Barbados, trade would be burgeoning.  The demand for beef was strong in the Atlantic Coastal towns, too.  The Tidewater towns of the Chesapeake were demanding beef, not cereal in their imports. [48]

                Among other visitors to Gardiner’s Island was Captain Howe who remained on the Island for some time, enough to receive some money for a trading matter.[49]  John Mulford was brought to Southampton from Salem where he first resided after he came across the Atlantic with other West Country folk.  Mulford, through friendship and kin, had developed a coterie of friends interested in trade.  I call them the ‘Barnstaple Cluster’, all families interested in making money.

                The Barnstaple Cluster includes three men and their wives, all of whom may have known each other in Devonshire - Richard Collicott (1604-1686) in Dorchester and Boston, William Osburne (1620-1662) in Dorchester and New Haven and John Mulford (1616-1686) Salem and East Hampton.  The first and second wives of these men were sisters, Thomasine and Friedeswide.

               In Boston, Collicott was importing goods through the major West Country port, Barnstaple, Devon.  His second wife was Thomasine.[50]  When “Sargeant Collicot” lived in Dorchester (his earlier residence), he owed “William Coddington, gentlemen.  º123 5s.9d on 12 April 1639".[51]

                John Mulford decided after three years in Southampton to move closer by 12 miles to the wide open plain of the Montauk Peninsula where the benign native American population lived.  Mulford seems to have been the guiding force in the move of the 9 property owners east near the appealing grazing lands in 1648.  However, Captain Howe had already had a house built on what would become the Town Street where the ‘J.Harper Poor’ house stands.[52]  As there seem to be no documented carpenters, joiners or similar woodworking personnel among these early residents, these houses were undoubtedly knock-down houses made in such large workshops as that of Thomas Joy (d.1678) of Hingham, MA who was constantly sueing people for their unpaid balance on their house frames.[53]  Such goods could have been brought by Captain Howe (and other mariners) into the newly established and larger port of North West Harbor.  Perhaps it was Captain Howe who pointed out the advantages of this closer harbor.  An old road, now unopened, from Southampton to Northwest Harbor is called ‘Merchant’s Path’.  The first documented wharf was built there by the Mulfords in 1652.  This harbor was a day’s sail closer to Gardiner’s Island and the trade routes than the small North Sea Harbor facing Peconic Bay.  The North Sea port is where the infamous Capt John Scott had his house.[54]

                Originally the East Fields was not contemplated as a separate village.  Perhaps they had had Lion survey the street, organize the home lots and for payment, gave him a large lot.  At first the residents thought to continue with the church in Southampton. But there was a change in plans.  In April 1650, Lion Gardiner writes to John Winthrop, Jr saying “we are not to have above 12 families.”  Continuing, Lion says, “concerning the young man you wrote of . . . we are willing to pay him 20 li a year, as well as provisions for the table”.  Lion concludes the letter by listing the religious books he owns that the young man may borrow.  Thomas James was the young ministerial student, living in New Haven.  He was ordained in the church there, and came to East Hampton in 1652, having gotten a higher rate of pay - º45 per annum.

                In the 1660's, William Osburne and his wife, Friedeswiede, had moved from Boston to New Haven, possibly because their Harvard alumni son was teaching school there.  William died suddenly, legend says from a lightning bolt while eating at a family dinner, but more probably from a sudden stroke.[55]  His New Haven inventory of 29 April 1662 was valued at º260.10.01.  His Boston inventory taken 4 months later, was º836.07.05 which included “the inventory of house, land and 1/4 part &c of a ketch and goods”, as well as acreage in Dorchester and Wenham, MA.[56]

                In 1656 in Southold, on the north fork, Capt Joseph Youngs records his ship, the Mary and Margaret, “now riding at anchor in Southold Bay, and by God’s grace bound for the Barbados” with barrels of Beef.[57]

                Backed by English and Dutch capital, Barbados was growing sugar for the market by the 1640's and 50's.  The need for provisions was apparent, as well as for live horses to turn the wheels in the sugar mills on the islands.[58]  Long Islanders were raising cattle, sheep, horses in large numbers.  As late as 1776, the herds of cattle on eastern Long Island numbered over 100,000 with an even larger number of sheep.[59]  Live horses were shipped to Barbados in boats with specially constructed deck stalls.

                All sizes of barrels or kegs were used to ship the many products developed in this area, as goose feathers for bedding, butter in small firkins, whale oil and baleen (bone), turpentine, shingles, cow hides (both tanned and dried), skins of raccoon, “cat” (muskrat), fox, otter, tallow candles, bay-berry wax. In exchange the merchants received such English products as nails, pewter, metal pots & kettles, glass, English ceramics, bolts of brightly patterned cloth, both woolen and linen cloth, rum and salt.  As Barbados was an English “free”port, these items were not taxed, whereas if brought into Boston they were taxed.

               A successful merchant develops credit connections and contacts, through kin or very close friends.  Lion had connections with William Coddington in Newport, and those of the Winthrops, and possibly Captain Howe, the mariner.  In 1656 David, at age 20, went to London to consolidate these contacts, to develop new ones.  David was not as prudent as his father would have liked.  In his will, Lion states, “My son David, after hee was at liberty to provide for himself, by his owne engagement hath forced me to part with a great part of my estate to save his  credit . . .”[60]  Capt. Daniel Howe had returned permanently to England by 1653, a connection for David to start with.  Howe’s family lived in the London area.[61]

                What would have cost so much?  Perhaps lodging was comparatively cheap.  But clothes!  David had to be wearing top-of-the-line clothes, or no one would talk to him.  The merchants his father had dealt with should have gifts.  They should not be cheap knickknacks.  David had to choose the right church.  At the fashionable St. Margaret’s Westminster he met the young widow, Mary (Lingman) Herringham, a long time member.  Perhaps she had merchant connections, through her late husband’s family or her own.

                They were married June 7, 1657, at St. Margaret’s.  They remained in London for another year, before they returned to live on the Island.

                It is interesting to note that David’s possible uncle, Sir Thomas Gardiner, an ardent royalist and solicitor-general for King Charles I in 1643, had died in October 1652, four years previously.  Whether David looked up his erstwhile family is not known.

                David Gardiner, who became proprietor of the Island after his mother’s death in 1665, was engaged in a land deal about 1684.  Thomas Symons of Albermarle Co., North Carolina, writes to David Gardiner: “understanding . . . that thou dost frequent Boston every yeere . . .” [sell my land for me].  The payment would be in “Linnen and Woolens but not of ye finest sort.”[62]  In 1687, Thomas Symons again writes “c/o of Samuel Walker”, merchant in Boston, “where I was told thou didst used to lodge when in Towne . . .”  Symons would take in payment, “Kersey, Peniston, bleue Linning, Dowlis, Seirge, Lockerum and Canvas.”  Symons wants to be remembered to all of David’s family and “all my Cosins”.  In the letter, Symons names men who come from Boston to Charlestown every year.[63]  Symons is undoubtedly a son of the Simons who was manager of the Island when Lion died.  Symons appears to be another merchant, possibly a purchaser of barrels of salted beef that David has to sell from his warehouse, as did the other merchants.

                When her husband, William Osburne died in 1662, Friedeswiede, as a wealthy widow, remained in New Haven with her children; Recompense, the Harvard graduate and teacher; Hannah, Bezaleel, Joseph, and Jonathan.  The next year, May 1663, she and the widower, John Mulford, were married in New Haven, moving into his presumably elegant house on East Hampton’s Main Street.[64]

                In the ‘rate list’ or (tax list) of 1675, John Mulford’s rate is º318-0-0, and in 1683, º283-16-8, the wealthiest man in East Hampton.  Totals from this list are - cattle 998, sheep 906.  John Mulford had 36 cattle, 11 horses and 58 sheep on that list.  A 1727 document itemizing the cattle owners shows 3,424 cattle grazing on Montauk.[65]  The estimate of 1776, American Revolutionary times, gives 2000 cattle and 3000 sheep grazing, the reason for the demand for armed protection along the Montauk coastline from the British forces.

                With five Osburn teenage children and five Mulford teenagers now living in the same house there were no intermarriages among the step siblings.  Each made a prestigious marriage.

                John Mulford’s eldest son, Samuel, had married an heiress, Hester/Esther Conkling.  Elected to the Assembly of the Province of New York, by 1703, Samuel countered the Royal governors about “the rights of natural born Englishmen.”  He always appended the word ‘merchant’ after his signature.[66]

                Keeping his eye on the main chance, Samuel purchased the house “in Boston where the merchants live” that Jonathan Osburne inherited after his mother died in 1692.[67]  Adjacent to the Collicott’s residence, Friedeswide, in her second widowhood, had moved to Boston to be near her sister, Thomasine, now also a widow.[68] 

                Samuel enlarged his business, building in 1702 a large warehouse at Northwest Harbor.  Using his whaling dory, Samuel’s crew of Indians harpooned many whales swimming in the ocean- another lucrative business- with many uses for the oil and the bone or baleen.

                Samuel and Hester had six children, four boys and two girls.  One of the daughters, Elizabeth, married in 1696 John Christophers of the famous New London, CT merchant family.  In February 1702/3, who is in Barbados?  John Christophers and his brother-in-law, Timothy Mulford.  Were they on the same vessel?  Or was Timothy on his own boat or a super cargo on an investment boat?[69]

                Poor John, he is deathly sick.  He tells Timothy his last wishes - that Timothy is to sell the boat and the cargo that is at the dock in Barbados.  

                Keeping the merchant connection, the widow, Elizabeth (Mulford) Christophers, then marries John Pickett, son of another major merchant family in New London.

                In conclusion: from these tidbits of evidence, we find that activity among the merchants around Block Island Sound dealt in many products.  In using their kin and their friends of the same social strata constantly and in letter writing, bargaining, investing and tracking the vessels, buying and selling, these men were busy making money.  Making money was the impetus for the settlement of the ‘eastern fields’ or East Hampton.