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Gardiners Island

The privately held island at the mouth of Gardiners Bay in Suffolk County, New York, erected into a manor in 1686, where William Kidd lodged a chest of treasure by permission in June 1699 and where the Earl of Bellomont recovered it before 26 July.

Also writtenManchonake / Manchonach / Manchonat (the Montaukett name, recorded in English sources; the gloss the place where many died is a tradition of uncertain philological standing); Isle of Wight (Lion Gardiner's own naming, used in the English patents from 1639); Gardiner's Island (English colonial administrative usage from the later seventeenth century, the form used in 1699); Lordship and Manor of Gardiner's Island (the formal style created by the Dongan patent of 1686); Gardiners Island (the modern form, without the apostrophe)

Gardiners Island lies at the mouth of Gardiners Bay, between the two eastern peninsulas of Long Island, about six miles by three, at about 41.097 north, 72.104 west. One family has held it since 1639. It has never been a town, port or colony. It is here for one episode in the summer of 1699: a pirate cache lodged, recovered, valued and carried into evidence.

The names it has worn

The Montaukett name reaches us as Manchonake, Manchonach or Manchonat, glossed in later writing as "the place where many died". That gloss is tradition rather than settled philology. Lion Gardiner named the island the Isle of Wight, the name the English patents use, and the working form in colonial correspondence is Gardiner's Island, which is how Bellomont's clerks wrote it in 1699. The founding deed is contested in its particulars. The date usually given is 3 May 1639, and the grantor is named as Yovawan, sachem of Pommanocc, with his wife the Aswaw sachem, for ten coats of trading cloth. Retellings add a black dog, powder, shot, blankets and rum, and give the sachem as Wyandanch or Poggaticut.1

A private manor without a port

Ten months after the deed, James Farrett, agent for the Earl of Stirling, confirmed Gardiner's right under the King's patent. That made the island a separate plantation, with liberty to make its own laws for church and civil government at a quitrent of five pounds a year. Governor Richard Nicolls renewed the privileges in 1665, and in 1686 Governor Thomas Dongan erected the Isle of Wight into the Lordship and Manor of Gardiner's Island. So in June 1699 the place lay inside the province of New York and was at the same moment a private manor answering to no local corporation. No customs house, no wharfage business, no merchant community. It was a stock and grain farm run for one man's account, and that man was John Gardiner, third proprietor.2

The approach did the rest. A vessel from the Atlantic comes in by Block Island Sound, so a master from the eastward could anchor here without passing New York. Cherry Harbour, beside the manor house, is the named anchorage, its capacity shown by later use: British squadrons lay in Gardiners Bay and used it in the Revolutionary war and again in 1812.

The labour question, stated plainly

David Gardiner, fourth proprietor of the island, made his will on 16 May 1751 and it was admitted to probate that July; it devises the island and disposes of his negro slaves, naming two of them. In the pirate decades themselves, roughly 1690 to 1725, John Gardiner swore in July 1699 that he took ashore and kept for Captain Kidd three enslaved people, two boys and a girl.3

June 1699

William Kidd came home from the Indian Ocean in a sloop taken up after he abandoned the Quedagh Merchant, working round the eastern end of Long Island to avoid New York and the crew waiting there. He anchored off the island and asked John Gardiner's leave to lodge goods ashore. A chest, a box of gold, boxes of silver, gold dust and jewels went into the ground at the spot remembered as Cherry Tree Field, and the bales stayed in store. All of it by daylight, at Kidd's request, with the owner's knowledge, and a record kept.4

The cloth of gold

The gifts to the household are the part the accounts cannot agree on: cloth of gold in some tellings, muslins and Bengals in others, for the proprietor's wife Mary Gardiner, with sugar in one and a clay pitcher of dried fruit in another, and pieces of Arabian gold to John Gardiner himself. Two near identical fragments survive, the East Hampton one about four and three eighths by two and a half inches, silk, cotton and metallic thread. It is framed in the Long Island Collection at East Hampton Library; the other is kept in a vault at Sylvester Manor.5

Thirty pounds for a sloop

Kidd was arrested at Boston on 6 July 1699 on the order of Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, one of the backers of his voyage. On the day of the committal Bellomont learned by accident that a man had offered thirty pounds sterling for a sloop to carry him to Gardiner's Island. He inferred a cache and sent to require Mr Gardiner in the King's name to deliver up such treasure as Kidd or any of his crew had lodged with him. Gardiner, whom Bellomont calls a very substantial man, came to Boston and gave the goods to an appointed committee before 26 July. The jewels, gold and silver were reckoned at about 4,500 pounds sterling, with six bales left on the island, one valued at about 2,000 pounds; the committee's account of 25 July 1699, carried on the arrest record, itemises them at 1,111 ounces troy of gold, 2,353 ounces of silver and 17 ounces of jewels.6

Larger figures circulate, neither of them supported: twenty thousand pounds sterling in one popular history, thirty thousand dollars in a family foundation's history. Bellomont's reckoning is the figure of the man who ordered the delivery and received it.

Memorandum and despatch

Kidd drew up his own memorandum of the treasure left on Gardiner's Island on 4 September 1699, and it survives at The National Archives as CO 5/860. Bellomont's despatch of 26 July 1699 to the Council of Trade and Plantations tells the recovery in his own words. A letter of 5 January 1699/1700 describes what the chests held: over two hundred bars of silver, an enamelled silver box inlaid with diamonds, a diamond ring, a casket of sixty-seven rubies.7

What the legend added

Every element of the buried treasure story a reader expects is missing from the only real case of it. No midnight burial, no map, no marked tree, no murdered sailor set to guard the hoard. What happened here was open, permitted and recorded, John Gardiner taking a chest, a box of gold, a bundle of quilts and four bales of goods ashore at Kidd's request. The later literature grew on it, and in the twentieth century the Kidd-Palmer charts were offered as his own treasure maps. Bellomont moved within hours of a rumour and turned the counter Kidd meant to trade for his life into the Crown's evidence against him.8

What the sources cannot yet give is the schedule itself. Bellomont valued the parcel in the round; the itemised list taken by the Boston committee has not been read, and the ounce totals circulating in popular accounts stay unverified until it is. The wording quoted from John Gardiner's own account, the damnified muslins and Bengals and the four pieces of Arabian gold, has not been traced to a named document, and the letter of 5 January 1699/1700 describing the chests is known only at second hand. The standing of the Kidd-Palmer charts, and whether anything of the deposit is still on the island, are not settled by the papers read. No period sounding for Cherry Harbour has been found, and no account has Kidd refitting at the island. Nor is there archaeology to fall back on: the island has been private since 1639 and no excavation has been published.

What the evidence does not settle

Kidd's Gardiners Island deposit date

  • A Gardiner receipt is dated 7 July, delivery reported 26 July

Kidd's gifts to the Gardiner household

  • The exact wording concerning muslins, Bengals and Arabian goldUnverified

Slaveholding on Gardiners Island

  • Slaveholding on the island in 1690 to 1725 is undocumentedLikely

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. The island's recorded names run from the Montaukett Manchonake, Manchonach or Manchonat, whose gloss as the place where many died is a tradition of uncertain philological standing rather than a settled translation, through Lion Gardiner's Isle of Wight, the name used in the English patents, to Gardiner's Island, the working form in colonial correspondence and the form used in 1699; the founding deed of 3 May 1639 is contested in its particulars, naming the grantor as Yovawan, sachem of Pommanocc, with his wife the Aswaw sachem, for ten coats of trading cloth, while popular retellings add or substitute a black dog, powder, shot, blankets and rum and give the sachem as Wyandanch or Poggaticut. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Indian deed and family papers in a nineteenth century printing, with a colonial narrative: Indian deed of Gardiner's Island, dated "the third day of the moneth, called, by the English, May in the yeare by them of their Lord written one thousand six hundred thirty and nyne", copied from the original draft by Thomas Lechford, lawyer in Boston, in Thomas Lechford's Note Book (Cambridge, 1885), p. 207, and printed with Lion Gardiner's own memorandum and a letter of J. Hammond Trumbull of 15 August 1883 in Curtiss C. Gardiner, Lion Gardiner and his Descendants (St Louis, 1890), read in the Internet Archive copy (archive.org/details/liongardinerhisd00gard). The deed: "Knowe all men by these presents, that we Yovawan Sachem of Pommanocc and Aswaw Sachem his wife ffor ten coates of trading cloath to us before the making hereof payd and delivered by Lion Gardiner... doe hereby for us and our heires & successors grant, bargaine & sell unto the said Lion Gardiner all that our Island called Manchonat". Lion Gardiner's memorandum: "then I went to an island of my owne which I had bought and purchased of the Indians, called by them Manchonake, by us the Isle of Weight". The editor: the Indian name is "written : Monchonac, Monchonack, Manchonac, Manchonat, Manchonack, Manchonake", the island "called by them Manchonac, signifying, by tradition, 'a place where many had died'"; and of the black dog, gun, powder, shot, rum and Dutch blankets, "a tradition not well founded"; Gardiner afterwards "procured a grant of the same island, called by the English Isle of Wight, from an agent of Earl of Stirling". Trumbull: "The uniform tradition of the purchase from Waiandance is, as you will see, unfounded", Yovawan being perhaps "the elder brother of Waiandance, who was called by the English, Poggatacut". For the working form of 1699, the Narrative of John Gardiner sworn at Boston in July 1699, Public Record Office C.O. 5:860, no. 64 XXI, printed as document 79 in J. F. Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents (1923), headed "The Narrative of John Gardner of Gardners-Island, alias Isle of Wight".
  2. Gardiners Island was a private freehold rather than a town, port or colony: a deed of 3 May 1639 was confirmed under the King's patent by James Farrett, agent for the Earl of Stirling, in March 1639/40, making the island a separate plantation with liberty to make its own laws for church and civil government at a quitrent of five pounds sterling a year; Governor Richard Nicolls renewed the privileges to David Gardiner in 1665 and Governor Thomas Dongan erected the island into the Lordship and Manor of Gardiner's Island in 1686, so that in June 1699 it lay inside the province of New York while answering to no local corporation, with no customs house, no wharfage business and no merchant community, and was worked as a stock and grain farm for its proprietor, John Gardiner, third of the line. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Family history and library lecture text resting on transcribed patents, with the state paper calendar: Lion Gardiner: Long Island's Founding Father, East Hampton Library lecture text, 1998; Robert David Lion Gardiner, Gardiner's Island, 1933; with the position in 1699 from Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol 17 (1699), entry 680 and the proprietor's identity from SEQUITUR, A Piece of the Gold Blanket
  3. Gardiner slaveholding is directly attested by the will of David Gardiner of the Isle of Wight, fourth proprietor of Gardiner's Island, made 16 May 1751 and admitted to probate on 17 July 1751, which devises the island and disposes of his negro slaves, naming two of them; earlier than that, for the pirate decades themselves, roughly 1690 to 1725, no probate list, inventory or account naming enslaved people held on the island by the Gardiners has been examined for this archive, though John Gardiner's sworn narrative of July 1699 records that he took ashore and kept there for Captain Kidd three enslaved people, two boys and a girl. The wider assertions about colonial New York, about the proprietor's supply boats being manned by enslaved people in the Revolutionary war, and about the freed Gardiner slaves going to Freetown after 1827, rest on later accounts and have not been checked against any document here. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Probate record in a nineteenth century printing, with a colonial narrative: Will of David Gardiner of the Isle of Wight, in the County of Suffolk, in the Province of New York, gentleman, dated 16 May 1751 and "admitted to probate on the 17th day of July, in the year 1751", printed in Curtiss C. Gardiner, Lion Gardiner and his Descendants (St Louis, 1890), read in the Internet Archive copy (archive.org/details/liongardinerhisd00gard). He devises to his son John "my Island, lying in the County of Suffolk, in the Province of New York, commonly called and known by the name of Gardiner's Island"; gives his wife "one negro wench as she shall make choice of out of all my negro slaves"; and gives his son Abraham "one negro slave named Coseo, and also one negro slave named Will". For 1699, the Narrative of John Gardiner, Public Record Office C.O. 5:860, no. 64 XXI, printed as document 79 in J. F. Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents (1923): Kidd "desired the Narrator to carry three Negroes, two boys and a girle, ashore, to keep till he the said Kidd or his Order should call for them, which the Narrator accordingly did"; the same is calendared in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol 17 (1699), no. 680 XI, where Kidd "delivered to Mr. Gardner two bales of goods, two negro boys and a negro girl".
  4. In June 1699 William Kidd, homeward from the Indian Ocean in a sloop taken up after he abandoned the Quedagh Merchant, worked round the eastern end of Long Island to avoid New York and anchored off Gardiners Island, where he asked John Gardiner's leave to lodge goods ashore and a chest, a box of gold, boxes of silver, gold dust and jewels were placed in the ground at the spot remembered as Cherry Tree Field, while bales of merchandise were left in store; the deposit was made by daylight, at Kidd's own request, with the owner's knowledge and with a record kept. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period narrative resting on the Bellomont correspondence: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol 17 (1699), entry 680; Robert David Lion Gardiner, Gardiner's Island, 1933
  5. Kidd made gifts to the Gardiner household on the same visit, the accounts differing on the particulars between cloth of gold and muslins and Bengals for Mary Gardiner, with sugar in some tellings and a clay pitcher of dried fruit in others, and pieces of Arabian gold to the proprietor, and two near identical fragments of the textile survive, the East Hampton one about four and three eighths by two and a half inches of silk, cotton and metallic thread, framed in the Long Island Collection at East Hampton Library, the other kept in a vault at Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Surviving objects with family provenance, and modern scholarship on them: Captain Kidd cloth of gold fragment, East Hampton Library, Long Island Collection; the companion fragment at Sylvester Manor; SEQUITUR, Boston University, A Piece of the Gold Blanket: Gardiner's Island, Captain William Kidd, and the Gifting of Family History, 2024
  6. Kidd was arrested at Boston on 6 July 1699 on the order of Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, who had himself been a backer of the voyage, and on the day of the committal Bellomont learned by accident that a man had offered thirty pounds sterling for a sloop to carry him to Gardiner's Island, inferred a cache, and sent to require Mr Gardiner in the King's name to come forthwith and deliver up such treasure as Kidd or any of his crew had lodged with him; Gardiner, whom Bellomont calls a very substantial man, came to Boston and delivered the goods to a committee appointed to receive them before 26 July 1699, the parcel of jewels, gold and silver being reckoned at about 4,500 pounds sterling with six bales left on the island besides, one of them valued at about 2,000 pounds. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Reference calendar of primary state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, Volume 17 (1699), entry 680: Bellomont to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Boston, 26 July 1699, with enclosures
  7. Captain William Kidd's own memorandum of the treasure left on Gardiner's Island, dated 4 September 1699, survives in the Colonial Office correspondence at The National Archives, Kew, as CO 5/860, and Bellomont's despatch of 26 July 1699 to the Council of Trade and Plantations, which narrates the recovery in his own words, is calendared in the Colonial State Papers for that year; a further letter of 5 January 1699/1700 describing the chest contents, including over two hundred bars of silver, an enamelled silver box inlaid with diamonds, a diamond ring and a casket of sixty-seven rubies, is carried by this archive at second hand. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. State paper and reference calendar of primary: Captain William Kidd's memorandum of treasure left on Gardiner's Island, The National Archives, CO 5/860; Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol 17 (1699), entry 680; the description of the chests from CO 5/1043 as quoted by Adam Matthew Digital
  8. Kidd's deposit on Gardiners Island was made openly and by arrangement, John Gardiner taking a chest, a box of gold, a bundle of quilts and four bales of goods ashore at Kidd's request and swearing that he knew nothing of Kidd's being proclaimed a pirate; when Kidd was gaoled at Boston the Earl of Bellomont required Gardiner in the King's name to bring in the parcel of gold and the other parcels, and Gardiner brought the treasure away without delay and it was delivered into the hands of the committee appointed at Boston to hold Kidd's goods, its value guessed at about 4,500 pounds with six bales left behind to follow. What became of the treasure after Boston, whether anything of the deposit remains on the island, the nineteenth century literary apparatus of the buried treasure story, and the status of the Kidd-Palmer charts are not settled by the papers read here. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. State papers and a sworn narrative: Governor the Earl of Bellomont to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Boston, 26 July 1699, with its enclosures, Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol 17 (1699), no. 680, 680 VII and 680 XXI, British History Online, and the same letter and narrative printed as documents 82 and 79 in J. F. Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents (1923). Bellomont to Mr Gardiner, Boston, 8 July 1699: "I have secured Capt. Kidd in gaol. I require you in His Majesty's name immediately to bring to me the parcel of gold and other parcels he left with you." Bellomont to the Board: "Gardiner who is a very substantial man brought away the treasure without delay, and by my direction delivered it into the hands of the Committee", the parcel guessed to "be worth (Gold, Silver and Jewels) 4500 L.", and "The six bales Gardiner could not bring, but I have ordered him to send them by a Sloop". Narrative of John Gardiner, July 1699: Kidd "desired this Narrator to take on shore with him and keep for him, the said Kidd, and Order, a Chest, and a box of gold and a bundle of Quilts and Four Bayles of Goods", and the narrator "saith, he knew nothing of Kidds being proclaimed a Pyrate, and if he had, he durst not have acted otherwise than he has done, having no force to oppose them".