Лион Гардинер: Инженер, оңтүстік колониясының негізін қалаушысы

English engineer and colonist

Governor John Winthrop noted Gardiner's arrival in his Journal under the date November 28:
Here arrived a small Norsey bark of twenty five tons sent by Lords Say, etc, with one Gardiner, an expert engineer or work base, and provisions of all sorts, to begin a fort at the mouth of the Connecticut. She came through many great tempests; yet, through the Lord's great providence, her passengers, twelve men, two women, and all goods, all safe.

Gardiner was a military engineer in service of the Prince of Orange in the Netherlands along with John Mason. He was hired by the Connecticut Company in 1635 to oversee construction of fortifications in Connecticut Colony. He finished and commanded the Saybrook Fort at the mouth of the Connecticut River during the Pequot War of 1636–37. In 1639, he purchased an island from Poggaticut the Grand Sachem of the Montaukett tribe, which they called Manchonat, located between the North and South forks of eastern Long Island, in what is now Suffolk County, New York. The original grant by which he acquired proprietary rights in the island made it an entirely separate and independent plantation. It was not connected to either Connecticut Colony or New Amsterdam. He was empowered to draft laws for church and state. He called it the Isle of Wight, but it is now known as Gardiners Island after him. He became patron to the sachem's younger brother Wyandanch and in 1659 was deeded Smithtown, NY as a gift of the sachem, for being a friend to all the indians of Paumanacke when the tribe was on the verge of being wiped out. In 1660, Gardiner wrote the firsthand account Relation of the Pequot Warres. The manuscript was lost among various state archives and rediscovered in 1809; it was first published in 1833.

Shortly before departing from the Netherlands, he married Mary Willemsen Deurcant, the daughter of Dericke Willemsen Deurcant and Hachin Bastiens, who was born at Woerden about 1601. She died in 1665 in East Hampton, New York. They were the parents of three children:

David was born on April 29, 1636, at Saybrook. He married on June 4, 1657, Mary Leringman, a widow, at St. Margaret's Parish in the City of Westminster, England. Mary was born on August 30, 1638, at Saybrook, Connecticut. She married in 1658, Jeremiah Conkling, the son of Ananias Conkling, who was from Nottinghamshire, England. Elizabeth was born on September 14, 1641, at Gardiners Island, New York. She married in 1657, Arthur Howell, a son of Edward Howell of Southampton, Long Island. Her death led to the witchcraft trial of Elizabeth Garlick. Lion Gardiner was buried in East Hampton, New York. A tombstone with a recumbent effigy was erected in his memory in 1886.