Denison & Related Families
Denison - An ancient English surname, means the son of Denis. Since Denis was
the patron saint of France, it suggests that the first English Denison landed
with William the Conqueror. However, long, long before 1066 the name Denisca,
signifying Danish, appears in the old Anglo-Saxon Hundred Rolls. So possibly the
first Denison leaped ashore from the dragon prow of a Viking longship. Norman
soldier or Danish pirate, somewhere in the past there must have been a strong
proponent ancestor; a bold, brave man, a big man with sandy red hair, blue eyes
under bushy brows, a large, high-bridged nose and a jutting jaw. George
DENISON, the founder of the family in America, was just such a man. Even
today the family recognizes this description of him as the true Denison type.
The lineage of Captain George Denison had been traced back to his grandfather, John DENISON, who lived in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, England, born about 1530 and dying of the plague on December 4, 1582. George Denison came over to this country in 1631 on the “Lion”, settling in Roxbury, Massachusetts, with his father, William DENISON, his brothers Daniel and Edward, and the Rev. John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians. George was 13 years of age, and doubtless received much of his mental and moral training from Rev. Eliot who was a tutor in his father’s family.
William Denison was a merchant, a man of liberal education and a large influence. He was also a deacon in the 1st Church in Roxbury. His wife, Agnes (Willie) DENISON joined him in Roxbury in 1632, and lived for only thirteen more years. William died in 1653, an old man.
The former Agnes Willie was the granddaughter of John WILLIE, the earliest known ancestor of the Willie family of Thorley, England.
George Denison, in 1640 married Bridget THOMPSON. She was the daughter of John THOMPSON and Alice FREEMAN of Preston, Northamptonshire, England, whose widow, Alice, had come to America with Elizabeth.
There survives today a courtship letter in verse from George to Bridget, and we show it here, not only as an interesting relic of the olden time, but a sample of the methods of courtship in 1640. Captain George Denison’s courtship letter to Bridget Thompson:
It is an ordinance, my dear, divine,
Which God unto the sons of men makes shine,
Even marriage, to that whereof I speak,
And unto you therein my mind I break.
In Paradise, oft Adam God did tell,
To be alone for man would not be well -
He in His wisdom, therefore, thought it right
To bring a woman into Adam’s sight;
A helper that for him might be most meet,
To comfort him by her doing discreet.
I of that stock am sprung - I mean from him -
And also of that tree I am a limb.
A branch, tho’ young, yet I do think it good
That God’s great vow by man be not withstood;
Alone I am, a helper I would find,
That might give satisfaction to my mind.
The party that doth satisfy the same
is Miss Bridget Thompson by her name;
God having drawn my affections unto thee,
My heart’s desire is - that thine may be to me.
This with my blottings, tho’ they trouble you,
yet pass them by, because I know not how -
Though they at this time should much better be,
For love it is, that first has been to thee.
And I would with that they much better were,
Therefore, I pray, accept them as they are,
So hoping my desire I shall obtain,
Your own true love,
George Denison, by name.
A. D. 1640
Three years later Bridget died, leaving two daughters, Sarah and Hanna, who lived to be the heads of families in Stonington, Connecticut. Very soon after her death, he returned to England, enlisted under Cromwell in the army of the Parliament, won distinction, was wounded at Naseby. He then went to Cork, Ireland, doubtless to be near his cousin John, and stayed in the home of a well-to-do leather merchant, John BORODELL, where his daughter Ann Borodell nursed him. This led to his marriage to Ann, and his early return to Roxbury, chosen Captain, and was called, “a young soldier lately come out of the wars in England.”
The young couple was royally welcomed. The governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, noted in his diary “the return of the young captain out of the wars in England” and he became quite a local hero. His bride charmed everyone. She was tall with brown hair and blue eyes, very pretty. But more than that, she was so kind and gracious, so true a gentlewoman that the neighbors called her “Lady Ann.”
After not being chosen to lead the Train Band, the local militia company in which every Massachusetts male from 16 to 60 was obliged to serve, he moved his wife, their two children, John and Ann, and the two little girls by his first wife, Sarah and Hannah, to the new settlement at New London in Connecticut.
At once he took a prominent part in the affairs of this frontier community. He was elected captain of their Train Band. The local records are filled with his activities - census taker and tax assessor, on the building committee of the church, partner in a business project to drain some marshlands, inspector of the port, and deputy to the General Court at Hartford.
The Captain’s land was a dozen miles east of New London in the heart of the old Pequot Indian country. Across the Mystic River from the charred ruins of the Pequot fort, over the hill skirting the east bank, a smaller stream tumbles down a ledge and winds through a broad meadow to the sea. The Indians called it Pequotsepos, the little river of the Pequots. This pleasant valley was George Denison’s land. Here, in 1654, on a rocky knoll overlooking the meadows, he built a rough lean-to of poles and thick slabs of bark, little better than a square, slant-roofed wigwam with a stone fireplace and chimney at one end. Forever cognizant of the possibility of Indian attacks, he surrounded this rude home with a stout stockade, enclosing a spring and a couple of acres of land.
Massachusetts had laid claim to this territory and the case was now up for decision before the Commissioners of the United Colonies, and Captain Denison proposed that they turn to the Bay Colony for permission to “gather” their own church and organize their own local government.
The Commissioners of the United Colonies settled this boundary dispute by giving the territory east of the Mystic River to Massachusetts, and the Captain became the most important figure during the Massachusetts jurisdiction. He was principal town officer, also town clerk, and one of the judicial committee of three to try small cases. Because there was no local minister he was given the unusual right to perform marriages. Four years later the boundary was moved west to the Pawcatuck River, automatically restoring Stonington to Connecticut.
The authorities in Connecticut welcomed back all the inhabitants except Captain Denison. He had been the ringleader in Massachusetts, so they not only refused him civil rights but fined him £20 for “illegally” performing marriages. These odious distinctions made the Captain boiling mad. He refused to pay the fine and brazenly performed two marriages, one of them of his own daughter. They then raised his fine to £100, a vast sum in those days. The Captain was an important figure, with many friends, and accordingly after two years the Connecticut General Court remitted its un-collectable fine, and forgave him.
After a while, it seems all was forgiven, and the Commissioners of the United Colonies called upon Captain Denison’s services. They appointed him and their interpreter-general Thomas Stanton, to set aside 8,000 acres as a home for the scattered remnants of the Pequot tribe, the first Indian reservation in North America. Throughout this era he sided with the Pequots’ interest and stood up for their rights.
He also fought many battles against the powerful Narragansett tribe using dragoons, mounted soldiers armed each with a musket and a sword, along with Pequot and Mohegan allies. George Denison was one of the great heroes of that desperate struggle. He was honored with resolutions and rewarded with large land grants by the Colony of Connecticut, and the Town of Stonington. Oneco, the Mohegan chief who led his Indian allies, gave the Captain a great feast and presented him with 2,000 acres of tribal lands. Even the Governor of Massachusetts declared “the services of Captain Denison will deserve never to be forgotten.”
He was without doubt the first citizen of Stonington. Almost continuously he was elected to represent the town at the General Court, until the second session of 1694 during which he died on active duty in Hartford and was buried there. In his will, written on January 24, 1693/94, the land was given to his children and grandchildren, thus it split up much of the homestead. The old home called Pequotsepos Manor burned in 1717 on the eve of the wedding of George Denison 3rd , the grandson who had inherited it and the adjoining 200 acres of the original land grant. He rebuilt west of the original site, salvaging some of the big charred oak beams from the frame of the older building.
His grandson George DENISON married Mary WETHERELL the daughter of Grace BREWSTER, who was the granddaughter of William BREWSTER, the leader of the Mayflower expedition. Mary's father Daniel WETHERELL had come from Maidstone, Kent, England along with his father.
Borodell Denison was the third child of Captain George Denison. With Borodell Denison’s marriage to Jonathan LATIMER I on April 6, 1721 in Connecticut, our ancestors now include one of the great family names of England.
(Source: "A Record of the Descendants of Capt. George Dennison, of Stonington, Conn.", prepared by John Denison Baldwin and William Clift, Worcester, 1881.)
(Source: "Denison Genealogy, Ancestors and Descendants of Captain George Denison," by E. Glenn Denison, Stonington, Connecticut.)