Johan Hendrick Gesner

Hendrick Gesner was of German Swiss origin and settled in New York in 1709. Johan Hendrick Gesner, 1681 -1745 . The first of the name of Gesner in this country, and the ancestor of the Hudson River and Nova Scotia Gesners, was Johan Hendrick Gesner, who, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, accompanied by his wife Anna Elizabeth and infant daughter Margaret, left the Palatinate of the Rhine, with many others who in that oppressed region had suffered through war and misrule, and came to London ; from whence he sailed by ship Lyon for America, arriving in New York, June 10-12 ,1710. Of the young emigrant ’ s birthplace and parentage we have no certain record. Possibly he was a son of that John Gesner who was a practitioner of the Imperial court which in the year 1693 was removed from Treve to Wetzler (note The winter of 1710 was spent in New York. In the spring he may have removed to Yonkers Fall (note Within a short while , however, he is found residing in the vicinity of Tappan, Rockland Co., New York, and at no great distance from Hackensack, N.J ., where he had acquaintances and friends. He was a miller by profession , though in the ship’ s papers his trade is described as that of a carpenter. He was a man of pious life, brought up in, and adhering to ,the Lutheran faith, and as the early Lutheran Church records show, more than once a sponsor on the occasion of some child’s baptism. On the 30th day of October, 1745,the elder Gesner made his will . By this will John Hendrick Gesner devised all his property ( excepting "one negro woman” to his wife Elizabeth during her lifetime, and provided that at her death it should go to his son John. The " one negro woman” was left to his daughter Gerittye ( Margaret ) , wife of Jacob Valentine who resided in Yonkers. Margaret however appears to have had some share of ownership in her father’ s mill on the Hackensack river, for his grandson Nicholas expressly states that " his father bought Margaret ’ s share ” for a Consideration."

The exact date of the elder Gesner’ s death is unknown. It must have occurred some time between the making of his will in 1745 and the date of its proving, July 16 1748. Nor are we sure of his burial place. His remains may rest in the family burial plot near those of his son and grandchildren. One may well regret that we have not more of the life-history of the plucky young Palatine, who, after sharing the misfortunes of his fatherland, went forth with his young wife and child to brave the perils of the sea and a strange land, where there were hardships to be endured which tried even the stoutest hearts in the days when New York City was a village and the interior of the Empire State a wilderness inhabited by savages.