Person:John Thompson (229)

John Thompson, the ancestor of the Thompsons of the county of Suffolk, came to Asford, [Setauket] Long Island, in 1656, and with Colonel Richard Woodhull, Colonel Richard Floyd, and others, was one of the fifty-five original proprietors of the town of Brookhaven. By allotment of land and by purchase he became the owner of a large amount of real estate, which, on his death, he divided among his children. He married Hannah, daughter of Jonathan Brewster, son of Elder William Brewster, the most prominent of the band of Pilgrims who came over in the Mayflower, and sister of the Rev. Nathaniel Brewster, B.D. (born about 1620, died 1690), afterward the clergyman at Setauket, who graduated at Harvard College, 1642, in the first class, and was the first native-born person graduated in the New World. He went to England and took orders, and was settled at Alby, in Norfolk, for some years, but in 1662 returned to America and was minister of the First church in Boston, but settled finally at Brookhaven. Trinity College, Dublin, conferred on him the degree of Bachelor of Divinity. Brewster married Sarah Ludlow, daughter of the Worshipful Roger Ludlow, a distinguished lawyer and deputy governor of Massachusetts and Connecticut. His daughter, Hannah Brewster, afterward married her cousin, Samuel2 Thompson.

John Thompson, Esquire, resided near the public green, and was a refined and scholarly man, and held in high estimation by his fellow-townsmen, who frequently elected him to responsible town offices. He died October 14, 1688, leaving three sons, William, Anthony, and Samuel, and several daughters, one of whom, Elizabeth, married Job Smith, son of Richard Smith, the patentee of Smithtown, who purchased the Indian grant of Lion Gardiner (Gardiner received this valuable tract of land as a recompense for having ransomed the daughter of the Sachem Wyandance. The deed to Lion Gardiner is in possession of the Long Island Historical Society). Smith made other purchases and procured a patent from Governor Nicolls in 1665, and from Governor Andros in 1677, and also a release from David Gardiner of the Lordship and Manor of Gardiner’s Island, confirming his father’s conveyance.