J 2 POPULATION AND GROWTH. 



countrymen, found delightful entertainment in his allUicnl ami prolccting 

 home Here Benjamin L'Hommedieu met, wooed, won and married 

 Capt.' Sylvester's daughter Tatience. They had a large family, and he 

 lived to be ninety-two years of age. Their eldest son, who bore his 

 father's name, married for his second wife Martha Ikmrne, of Sandwich, 

 Mass. These were the parents of Ezra L'Hommedieu, who was born in 

 Southold, August 30, 1734, graduated at Yale College in 1754, and was 

 soon active in his profession as a lawyer. In 1765, he married Chanty 

 Floyd. She was a daughter of Nicoll Floyd, and a great-grand-daughter 

 of Richard Floyd, one of the first setders of the county and the founder of 

 the Floyd family in America. Her brother William became the celebrated 

 General Floyd, 'a member of the United States Congress during the Re\o- 

 lutionary war, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Senator of 

 the United States, a Presidential Elector, and very active and prominent 

 in the service of his country in many offices and relations for half a cen- 

 tury. He was born in the .same year as his brother-in-law, Mr. L'Hom- 

 medieu, and they were several years together in Congress at the same time, 

 and also together at the same time in other important civil offices. For 

 example, they were both in the State Senate from 1784 to 1788, in which 

 Gen. Floyd had been a member from its formation in 1777. They wxre 

 also both members of the Council of Appointments and of. the Constitu- 

 tional convenUon of 1801, as they had been at an (Earlier period in the 

 Provincial Convention. They were admirable representatives of the Welsh 

 and the French elements in the early population of our county. After the 

 death of the Hon. Ezra L'Hommedieu's wife, Charity Floyd, in 1785, he 

 married, in 1803, Catharine, daughter ot Nicoll Havens of Shelter Island. 

 They had no sons— three daughters. One of these, born in 1806, became 

 the wife of Samuel S. Gardiner, Esq., of Shelter Island, whose children in- 

 herited the Sylvester Manor. Mr. L'Hommedieu died in 181 1. 



There were also, in the formadve period of our histoiw worthy rcj); 

 resentatives of the Dutch people, and among these may be mentioned 

 those who bore the family names of Schellenger, Vorich, Klaus, Alberlsttn, 



and others. 



It would have been marvelous had there been here not even a few 

 representatives of the intelligent and enterprising countr>- to which the 

 roval house of the Stuarts properly belonged, as did also William Alexan- 

 der, Earl of Sterling, to whom was issued the first patent for the whole 

 territory of Long Island. Accordingly we find at an earl}- dale such 

 Scotch names as Ramsey, Simpson, Muirson, and others. 



But the people very generally were English Puritans and their de- 

 scendants, who had been settling and increasing here, both by immigra- 

 tion and birth, for a period of forty to fifty years before the formation of 

 the county. A few of them preferred the Episcopal Establishment of the 

 native country of themselves or their flithers; but far the greater part were 

 Presbyterians and Independents. If all did not desire the union of Church 

 and State as closely and fully as Christendom generally then desired it, 

 nearly all desired at least the union of Church and Town. They brought 

 with them the wonderful genius of the Anglo-Saxon race for organization; 

 much of the spirit and not a few of the customs of the ancient (;erman 

 village community and co-operation; and the priceless inheritance of the 

 Engtish common" law. But they brought with them also a full determina- 

 tion to maintain here a purer social and religious life, and freer and more 



