DR. JOHN L. LECONTE. lU 



leau, daughter of Pierre Joyeulx de Valleau. of Martinique. He soon 

 returned to New York and purchased a considerable estate, aided by 

 presents from King William. His wife's father must soon have died, 

 for during his life, and perhaps before they returned to New York, they 

 came into possession of her father's estates in Martinique, and sold in 

 New York the sugar produced thereon. The date of his wife's death is 

 not known, but it could not have been long after the birth of their only 

 son William (Dec. o, 1702), for on April 17th of the following year he 

 married a second time Margaret Mahant (Mahoo, Mahoe, or Mahault), 

 by whom he had two other children, Pierre and Esther. He and his 

 wife died in New York on the same day, Sept. 15, 1720, of yellow fever. 



William, the son of the fir«t wife, married Anne (Marie Ann) Beslie, 

 of New llochelle,* and had two daughters, through the second of whom, 

 Susanne, who married another Besley (or Eayley) come the family of 

 that name, in whose succession were Mother Seton, the founder of the 

 Sisters of Charity in this country, and the late Archbishop Bayley, of 

 Baltimore. 



Of the muiriage or descendants of Esther, nothing is known to me.j" 

 The diiscent of the family name comes through Pierre,| who lived in 

 New Jersey, and married, first, Margaret Pintard, and three years later, 

 Valeria Eattou, of Eattonville, N. J. The first left no children, the 

 second five, — William, John Eatton, Margaret, Thomas and Peter. Wil- 

 liam married, but died childless. Thomas and Peter did not marry. 

 Margaret married Rev. Jedediah Chapman, one of the founders of the 

 Presbyterian Church in this country. So again the male descent and 



emigrated." — Family records by Prof. LeConte Stevens. It may be added that 

 tlie name of Pierre Valleau appears on the New Rochelle list from the earliest 

 period. 



* A romantic story is told of this son in Major LeConte's manuscript to the 

 effect that he made a. visit to his mother's relatives in the West Indies, and was 

 there betrothed to a Miss Dugand. Before the time of the proposed marriage busi- 

 ness took him to New York for a few months, and he then returned to claim his 

 bride. On landing at St. Pierre's and enquiring about his betrothed, who lived 

 some miles out of the city, he was told she had married, whereupon he at once 

 re-embarked on a vessel just sailing for New York, determined to marry without 

 delay the first lady who should show any regard for his attentions. In a few days 

 he met Miss Beslie, and soon married her. lie afterwards learned that it was 

 another Miss Dugand, and not his betrothed, of whose marriage he had heard. 



I See Ajjpeudix. 



I " Dr. Peter LeConte . . . settled in New Jersey, becoming a resident of Mon- 

 mouth County as early as 1734. In Middlctown he practiced medicine for many 

 years, and there is a tradition that he sometimes preached as a minister." — Family 

 records by Prof. LeConte Stevens. 



