Ensign Thomas Lee, II

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jan 13 2025, 19:12:44 UTC

brief biography and family

From an unidentified source:

Ensign Thomas Lee II was born in 1639 and baptized September 29, 1644 in Rusper, Sussex County, England. He was the son of Thomas Lee I and his wife Phoebe Brown Lee. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lee and their three children Jane, Sarah, and Thomas II left England in 1645 for America together with Phoebe’s father William Brown. The senior Thomas Lee died of small pox during the crossing. The widow Phoebe married two more times. First to Greenleaf Larabee and was the mother of five children: Greenfield, John, Elizabeth, Joseph, and Sarah Larabee. Sarah, the half sister of Thomas II, was the grandmother of the diarist Joshua Hempstead. Phoebe married again to a man named Cornish and had two more children, James Cornish and a stillborn. She died in childbirth at Northampton, Massachusetts in 1664. William Brown, his daughter the widow Phoebe Lee, and her children arrived in Saybrook in 1645. According to Glimpses of Saybrook in Colonial Days, by Harriet Chapman Chesebrough “Their afflicted and distressed condition commended to the sympathies of those at the fort and Thomas II was particularly cared for by Matthew Griswold, and followed him to Lyme, where in later years he became a prominent citizen and received on arriving his majority a grant of land on the East side of the river”. A Saybrook 1650 division of land lists Thomas Lee (then about age 11) as a grantee. No documentation of the grant details has been found. A close relationship between the Lee and the Griswold families continued throughout the colonial period. About 1670 Thomas Lee II married Sarah Kirtland, daughter of Nathaniel Kirtland of Lynn, Massachusetts. It is probable that the first stage of the Lee house was built at this time.

notes

In Essays on the Lee Family by Wilbur Beckwith, East Lyme Town Historian (downloaded 2011 from eastlymehistoricalsociety.org), Thomas Lee is styled "Ensign Thomas Lee II, the First Lee in America."

The East Lyme Historical Society maintains the home of this Thomas Lee as a museum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lee_House

comments

Surname has also been reported to be Laigh.

Date and place of birth have also been (erroneously?) reported to be 1639 at Rusper, Horsham, Sussex, England <attestation unknown, conflicts with his Find A Grave memorial>.

Date and place of birth have also been (erroneously?) reported to be May 30, 1705 at Old Lyme, New London County, Connecticut, British Colonial America <attestation unknown, conflicts with his Find A Grave memorial>.

links

• http://www.eastlymehistoricalsociety.org/index_files/Page337.htm
• http://www.discovereastlyme.com/things_lee.php
• http://www.galenfrysinger.com/connecticut_east_lyme.htm