Ledyard's Parents

KNOWING MUCH ABOUT the early history of the College, and especially Eleazar Wheelock and his Indians, Professor James Dow McCallum has run across and kindly given us an interesting historical item. This concerns John Ledyard, famous voyageur who floated his hand-hewn canoe down the Connecticut and thus left Hanover for a life of far-wandering over the globe. The following bit of romance, as far as Mr. McCallum knows, has not been published in any account of Ledyard.

His mother, Abigail Hempstead, and his father, John Ledyard, had been obliged to elope. She was eighteen years old, the daughter of Robert Hempstead, of Southold, Long Island, who was the son of Joshua Hempstead, a substantial man of all trades—carpenter, mason, farmer, attorney, justice of the peace, overseer, peacemaker—in New London. Why did her parents oppose the marriage? Since John Ledyard was the eldest son of a well-to-do citizen of Groton, no objection could be raised on financial grounds. She was young, but not too young. Perhaps the reason is to be found in the close consanquinity of the couple, they being first cousins. At any rate, her future father-in-law, Joshua Hempstead, recorded in his diary (published by the New London County Historical Society, 1901) under May 5, 1750: "My son Robert is come fro So-hold in quest of his daughter Abigail who is come away privetly with John Ledyard of Groton (her mothers sisters son) because her parents refused to give her to him to wife and he stayed all day and lodged with me at night." On the next day, Sunday: "My son Robert was at meeting, and in the eve went to see if his daughter was come." On Monday: "att Mr. Winthrops to take the evidence of the Revd Mr. Samll Seabury and church minister at Hempsted." On Wednesday: "Son Robert went away for home early in the morn and met Danll Youngs Brown with Jno Ledgyard Junr and his daughter Abigail in a boat a coming home. Maryed last Sunday (May 6) att Seatuaket. Got a lycence of Doctor Mawason who had blanks (to dispose of) from the Govr."

John Ledyard, the traveler, was the first-born of this marriage.