He was of aristocratic and distinguished descent, tracing his ancestry to the ancient Pell family of Walter Willingsley and Dyinblesbye, in Lincolnshire. A branch of this Lincolnshire family removed into the County of Norfolk, of which was John Pell, gentleman, lord of the Manor of Shouldham Priory and Brookhall (died April 4, 155G). One of his descendants was the Rev. John Pell, of Southwyck (born about 1553), who married Mary Holland, a lady of royal blood. Thomas Pell, the purchaser of the Westchester tract, was their eldest son. As a young man in England he was gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles I., and it is supposed that his sympathies were always on the side of the royalist cause. It is uncertain at what period he emigrated to America, but Bolton finds that as early as 1G30 he was associated with Roger Ludlow, a member of the Rev. John Warhani's company, who settled first at DorIn 1G35, with chester, Mass., and later removed to Windsor, Conn.

SETTLEMENT

WESTCHESTER

TOWN

Ludlow and ten families, he commenced the plantation at Fairfield, Conn, (called by the Indians Unquowa). In 10-17 he traded to the Delaware and Virginia. Being summoned in 1648 to take the oath of allegiance to New Haven, he refused, for the reason that he had already subscribed to it in England, "and should not take it hero." For his contumacious conduct he was fined, and, refusing to pay the fine, " was again summoned before the authorities, and again amerced." Thus his early career in Connecticut was attended by circumstances which, on their face, were hardly favorable to his subsequent selection by the government of that colony as an agent for carrying out designs that they may have had regarding the absorption of Dutch lands. It is altogether presumable that in buying the Westchester tract from the Indians in 1654 he acted in a strictly private capacity, although the settlers who went there may have been stimulated to do so by the colonial authorities.