This Budd’s For You

Mary Budd, a 7x great-grandmother, was born in 1654 on Long Island to John Budd and Mary Horton.  She married Christopher Youngs around 1675.  She is named in her father’s will of 1684.

John Budd junior was supposedly born in England in 1620-23 to John Budd senior and possibly Catheryn Butcher--that would have made him 15-17 years old when he arrived in America with the family.   Numerous records from this time are difficult to associate with specifically the father or son, but items after 1670 are John junior’s.  His will of 1684 identifies his residence as Southold, NY.  He supposedly married Mary Horton, but I have not yet found any documented source for this.

Based on existing records, John Budd senior was in New Haven, CT by 1639, having sailed from London to Boston in 1637.  Stories of John Budd as one of the first settlers of Southold, Long Island in 1640 from Griffin’s Journal, have been disproven by New Haven records.  He was a resident of Southold, Long Island at least by 1649 because he erected a house there (Still standing, but moved to Cutchogue).   In 1653 he was a deputy to the general court in New Haven.  For the year 1658 there are many records of a dispute involving slander against one of his neighbors and then in 1660 he resigned as a lieutenant from the Southold militia.  Some stories indicate his problems were because he was a Quaker, or at the very least, supported the Quakers.  In 1659 he moved to Rye, Westchester County, CT (now NY) where he was a large landowner.  Records in Rye give an indication he was an early equivalent of a land developer and generated some of the same anger as they can today.

On Lyon, Part 2

So, I Googled ‘mary lyon thomas connecticut’ and clicked on the first result, a Wikipedia page for the Thomas Lyon House.   I have to say, discovering some of my ancestors have Wikipedia pages is kind of cool.

More to the point for this post…My 7x great-grandmother, Mary Lyon, who was married to Joseph Stedwell, was born in 1649 in Stamford, CT.  She was the only child of Thomas Lyon and Martha Winthrop.  She was about 4 years old when her mother died and was then raised with her half-siblings by her stepmother, Mary Hoyt.  She didn’t forget her heritage however; in a an assertive move following the bequest from her father of only a share of movable property, Mary pursued a claim on land that had gone to her half-brothers.  She went to court with the claim that a portion of her father’s land came to him through his marriage to his first wife, Mary’s mother.  The court agreed and she received payment in exchange for a quitclaim.  You go, girl!

Thomas Lyon, the first immigrant of this line of my Lyon heritage, was born in England about 1621 and it was supposed he was the brother of two other Lyons who immigrated, Richard and Henry.  (Henry was in my post earlier this week.)  It is known that Thomas was in Stamford, Connecticut by 1647.  At that time he was married to Martha Winthrop and wrote a letter to her grandfather, Gov. John Winthrop of Salem, MA, concerning the possibility of a bequest from her grandmother who had recently died.  Apparently there were complications at hand because of Mary’s mother’s marital situation (she married a second time while still married to a husband who was deranged) and because of Martha’s very poor health (They hoped for means to assist with her care). Fortunately there exist several letters Thomas and Martha sent to her grandfather and her uncle, John Winthrop, Jr, that give an interesting picture of the times and especially of the circumstances faced by Quakers.  (And include the entertaining spelling where Rhode Island is Road Island and Greenwich is Greenage.)  Thomas died in Greenwich, CT in 1690.

As I prepared this post, I received my first issue (Summer 2011) of NEHGS’s American Ancestors.  As I skimmed through the issue before settling down to read more thoroughly, I spotted a listing on page 56 in the Family Focus section under Family Associations.  It seems the Lyon(s) Families Association is sponsoring analyses of DNA test results.  Included in this listing was this tidbit of information:  The long-held presumption about the relationship of the three Lyon brothers was inaccurate.  It turns out Richard and Henry are connected to a fourth Lyon immigrant, William, and none of them are connected to Thomas.