Lion Gardiner
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| Lion Gardiner in East Hampton | |
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 The tomb of Lion Gardiner in East Hampton, New York was built in 1886 depicts him in recumbent effigy pose (Photo, April 2006).
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| Background information |
Lion Gardiner (1599-1663), an early English settler in the New World, founded the first English settlement in what became the state of New York. His legacy includes Gardiners Island which remains in the family and is the largest privately owned island in the United States.
[edit] Biography
Gardiner was born in England in 1599; died in East Hampton, New York, in 1663. A military engineer in service of the Prince of Orange in the Netherlands, he was hired by the Connecticut Company in 1635 to oversee construction of fortifications in the new colony. He finished and commanded the Saybrook Fort at the mouth of the Connecticut River during the Pequot War of 1636-1637. In 1639 he purchased from the Montaukett tribe an island called by them Manchonat, which he renamed the Isle of Wight, but which has since been known as Gardiners Island which is located between the North Fork, Suffolk County, New York and South Fork, Suffolk County, New York. The original grant by which Gardiner acquired proprietary rights in the island made it an entirely separate and independent "plantation," in no way connected either with New England or New York. He was thus empowered to draft laws for Church and state.
His son, David Gardiner, was the first white child born in Connecticut (in 1636) at Saybrook.
In 1660 he wrote Relation of the Pequot Warres, which was lost among various state archives until rediscovered in 1809 and first published in 1833.
He was buried in East Hampton, New York. In 1886 a recumbent effigy was erected to his memory, and his supposed grave was opened. In it, a skeleton was found intact. It was that of a man over six feet in height, with a broad forehead and strong jaws. Gardiner (and many of his progeny) are buried in the South End Cemetery by Town Pond.
