GENEALOGICAL AND FAMILY NOTES n 



Rhode Island in 1660, married Jerusha Mayhew, widow 

 of Joseph Wing, and their son John Eatton married the 

 granddaughter, Joanna, 4 of Lydia and Eliakim Wardell. 



Gerard (or Jared) Spencer, born 1610, lived at Lynn, 

 Massachusetts, in 1638, and was one of the first settlers 

 of East Haddam, Connecticut, in 1660. His son Samuel 

 was grandfather of Joseph and Elihu Spencer. Joseph 

 rose to the rank of general in the Revolutionary army, 

 and died in 1789. 



Elihu, born at East Haddam in 1721, graduated at 

 Yale in 1746, and entered the ministry of the Presbyterian 

 church, being ordained at the same time as Jonathan 

 Mayhew. He was a second cousin and an intimate friend 

 of Jonathan Edwards and cousin of David and John 

 Brainerd, the missionaries to the Indians. He was settled 

 over the churches of Elizabethtown and Shrewsbury, in 

 1747, as the successor of President Dickinson. After 

 serving at Jamaica, Long Island, and St. Georges, Dela- 

 ware, he removed in 1770 to Trenton, New Jersey. 5 

 Upon the breaking out of the war of the Revolution he 

 was an enthusiastic adherent to the American cause and 

 entered the army as chaplain. It was felt by the Colonial 



4 Joanna Eatton, mother of Lydia Spencer, was, through her 

 grandmother, Jerusha Mayhew, a descendant of the Rev. Thomas 

 Mayhew, missionary to the Indians and son of Thomas Mayhew, 

 first governor and patentee of Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and 

 the Elizabeth Islands, Massachusetts. The missionary is said to 

 have been much beloved by his Indian flock. Called with his father 

 by royal mandate to England, to give an account of the condition 

 of the colony and their work among the aborigines, they were lost 

 at sea, on their way in 1679. (Note by a member of the family.) 



5 Thompson's History of Long Island, 2nd edition, vol. ii, p. ill. 

 In other MS. I find the name Jared instead of Gerard for the first 

 settler. 



