The Gedneys were among the original settlers of Salem, Massachusetts. The family patriarch, John Gedney (originally of Norwich), sailed in 1636 out of Yarmouth, England on the Mary Anne. One of his sons, Bartholomew, was one of the judges who presided over the infamous witch trials. [1] Bartholomew's brother, Eleazor (Eleazar) built the Gedney House. which still stands in Salem, around 1665.
Salem is a historic coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, located in the North Shore region. Settled in 1626, and built on a peninsula of land, Salem was one of the most significant seaports in early American history.
Bartholomew Gedney was a merchant, physician, military officer, and native of Salem, Massachusetts. He is best known as one of the magistrates in the Salem witchcraft trials.
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused, 19 of whom were found guilty and executed by hanging. One other man, Giles Corey, was crushed to death for refusing to plead, and at least five people died in jail. It was the deadliest witch hunt in the history of colonial North America.
During the 18th century, the family moved to Westchester County, New York, settling at Mamaroneck and White Plains. [2]
Westchester County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. It is the second-most populous county on the mainland of New York, after the Bronx, and the most populous county in the state north of New York City. According to the 2010 Census, the county had a population of 949,113, estimated to have increased by 3.3% to 980,244 by 2017. Situated in the Hudson Valley, Westchester covers an area of 450 square miles (1,200 km2), consisting of six cities, 19 towns, and 23 villages. Established in 1683, Westchester was named after the city of Chester, England. The county seat is the city of White Plains, while the most populous municipality in the county is the city of Yonkers, with an estimated 200,807 residents in 2016.
White Plains is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. An inner suburb of New York City, it is the county seat and commercial hub of Westchester, a densely populated suburban county that is home to approximately one million people. White Plains is located in south-central Westchester, with its downtown 25 miles (40 km) north of Midtown Manhattan.
The American War of Independence was particularly hard on relatives of the Gedney family. Bartholomew Gedney (1640 – 1698) of Massachusetts, a magistrate at the Salem Witch Trials, was a great-great grandfather of Thomas Fairfax (1762 – 1846), 9th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. The 9th Lord's predecessor, Thomas Fairfax (1732 – 1802), 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, was forced to forfeit his land in what is now Fairfax, Virginia. Ironically, the 6th Lord Fairfax's father had hired George Washington to survey this land (giving the general a familiarity with the area that must have proven useful during the war if not in the disposition of the spoils after the war). The family had another important connection with George Washington (1732 - 1799), 1st President of the USA. - Hannah Fairfax (b.c. 1739), sister of the 8th Lord Fairax, was married to Col. Warner Washington, a cousin of George Washington. [3]
Fairfax, colloquially known as Fairfax Courthouse, Downtown Fairfax, or Fairfax City, and officially named the City of Fairfax, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2010 census the population was 22,565, which had risen to an estimated 24,574 as of 2018.
George Washington was an American political leader, military general, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. He led Patriot forces to victory in the nation's War for Independence. He presided at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 which established the U.S. Constitution and a federal government. Washington has been called the "Father of His Country" for his manifold leadership in the formative days of the new nation.
The land of Joshua Gedney, in Dutchess County along the Hudson River, was similarly seized and auctioned, eventually ended up in the hands of the Vanderbilts and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Today it forms part of the Vanderbilt-Roosevelt Historic Park. Joshua Gedney and his brother Joseph were forced to change their names to Gidney and to flee from New York to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in 1783.
The Hudson River is a 315-mile (507 km) river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York in the United States. The river originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York, flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the Upper New York Bay between New York City and Jersey City. It eventually drains into the Atlantic Ocean at New York Harbor. The river serves as a political boundary between the states of New Jersey and New York at its southern end. Further north, it marks local boundaries between several New York counties. The lower half of the river is a tidal estuary, deeper than the body of water into which it flows, occupying the Hudson Fjord, an inlet which formed during the most recent period of North American glaciation, estimated at 26,000 to 13,300 years ago. Tidal waters influence the Hudson's flow from as far north as the city of Troy.
Gidney is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
The City of New York, usually called either New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2018 population of 8,398,748 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 19,979,477 people in its 2018 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 22,679,948 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
