As Weinreb sees it, “The Jay women are the women who made this a fashionable area. She is sitting in the library along with Allan Weinreb, the Homestead’s Interpretive Programs assistant and curator. (Peter Augustus Jay’s descendants lived in Rye, in the magnificent Greek Revival mansion he built in 1838 to replace The Locusts, the house John Jay grew up in.) It’s now the John Jay Homestead State Historic Site, but “the family always called it Bedford House,” says Reich.Įleanor Jay Iselin, center, on the steps of Bedford House with her daughter Dorothy (right) and her granddaughter Barbara, and Barbara’s son Oliver, in 1953. They were descendants of William Jay, the younger son.
Seven generations of Jays lived in that house. In 1782, at Benjamin Franklin’s request, John Jay departed for Paris to help broker the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War. They left their young son, Peter Augustus, behind with relatives, for his safety. Five years later, when John was named Minister to Spain, she traveled with him to Europe on seas patrolled by British frigates. The daughter of New Jersey’s first elected governor, William Livingston, she married John Jay, then a lawyer, in 1774. It begins with Sarah Van Brugh Livingston Jay. “They weren’t the ones at the Continental Congress, at the table voting, yet they had to have faith to see this whole thing through. “I have a huge sense of wonder at the women of this family,” says Reich. Now the John Jay Homestead, the property has been a state historic site since 1959.īut for Purchase resident Nonie Reich, a seventh-generation descendant of John and Sarah Jay, it’s their wives she most admires, particularly their sacrifices and courage in the face of unrelenting loss. Seven generations of Jays called Bedford House home. His sons and grandsons were abolitionists, diplomats, philanthropists, social movers and shakers. The family have their own stories to tell.īorn in New York City in 1745 and raised in Rye, the grandson of a Dutch patroon’s daughter and a French Huguenot who fled religious persecution to settle on the shores of the New World, John Jay would make history as a Founding Father, a diplomat, the second governor of New York, and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Jays BedfordĪ Founding Father’s legacy may live on in history books, but the women of Here are the stories of four First Families, as seen through the eyes and memories of the descendants who still live here. Their legacies are all around us, if we know where to look.
The families who cobbled our county together from Native American land were Dutch settlers, English aristocrats, and French Protestants seeking religious freedom. We see their names on street signs, in schools, and at train stations. These are the clans who settled our history-rich county-but where are they now?
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