Nathaniel Sylvester

Nathaniel Sylvester was born in 1610 in England.[1] His family lived in exile in Holland before he emigrated to British America during the English Civil War and Anglo-Dutch War.

In June 1651, with his brother, Constant, and partners Thomas Middleton and Thomas Rouse, he purchased the whole of Shelter Island first from a non-resident Englishman and then again the next year, from the Manhanset Indians, whose sachem, or chief, was called "Yoki." Nathaniel was the only one of the partners who lived on a Shelter Island, and he eventually bought out his partners’ shares. The Shelter Island enterprise involved barrel-making, using the stands of local white oak for shipping the West Indies tobacco, sugar, molasses and rum back to England. The family kept African slaves, along with employing Native Americans and others, to help run the plantation, the largest such operation in the north.

Between 6 July (date of marriage jointure) and 8 August 1653 (date of letter mentioning his changed condition because of marriage), he married Grizzell Brinley, daughter of Thomas Brinley, one of the Auditors General of the Revenues for Charles I, and later for Charles II. Grizzell was a younger sister of Anne Brinley, who in England had married Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island in January 1650. When the Coddingtons returned to Rhode Island in mid-1651, Grizzell came along as a ward of Coddington. Grizzell and Anne’s brother, Francis, would also join his sisters in the New World, fleeing Cromwell’s England, and establishing the American Brinleys in Newport, RI and Boston, Mass. Another Brinley sister, Mary, would marry Nathaniel's brother, Peter Sylvester. The Sylvesters were friends with Quaker founder George Fox, whom he entertained on at least one occasion on Shelter Island. They offered a place of refuge for several of the persecuted early Quakers in New England at a time when it was dangerous to do so.

He died in 1680.[1]

His grandson, Brinley Sylvester, replaced the existing home and built Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island in 1737, which remains standing and stayed in the family until 2006.[2] An 11th generation descendant, Eben Otsby, and his newphew, Bennet Konesni, turned it into a non-profit educational farm.

Shelter Island families descended from Sylvester include Dering, Sprague, L'Hommedieu, Havens and Hudson. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (32nd President of the United States) was Nathaniel and Grizzell Sylvester’s sixth great-grandson, through their eldest child Grizzell Sylvester Lloyd.

A contemporary archaeological dig, from 1999-2005, called the Sylvester Manor Project, a project overseen by the University of Massachusetts Boston, seeks to shed light on the Sylvester estate as it existed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

• History of Shelter Island
• Sylvester Manor Project