Thomas Powell (American landowner)

Thomas Powell (1641–1721/22) was a landowner in the middle section of Long Island in the Province of New York during the colonial period of American history.

He secured the land transaction known as the Bethpage Purchase with local native tribes on Long Island.

[1][b] Court records from 1662 for the Town of Huntington, New York, indicate that thomas Powell indentured servant in the Jonas Halifax Wood home living with them nine years.

In 1682, Powell declined to serve again as constable, because the job required the officer to swear to levy and collect rates for the Church of England, and he had, by then, become a Quaker.

A Puritan minister named John Davenport led his flock from exile in the Netherlands back to England and finally to America in the spring of 1637.

The group arrived in Boston on the ship Hector on June 26, but decided to strike out on their own, based on their impression that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was lax in its religious observances.

In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans left Massachusetts under the leadership of Davenport and the London merchant Theophilus Eaton, and sailed into their new haven.

The Quinnipiac Native Americans, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, had sold their land to Eaton and the settlers in return for protection.

The Dutch did grant an English settlement in Hempstead (now in Nassau), but drove settlers from Oyster Bay as part of a boundary dispute.

[5] The Bethpage Purchase was a 1687 land transaction in which Powell bought more than 15 square miles (39 km2) (about 10,000 acres) in central Long Island, New York for £140 (English pounds sterling) from local Native Americans in the United States tribes, including the Marsapeque, Matinecoc, and Sacatogue.

Almost eight years later, on October 18, 1695, Mawmee (alias Serewanos), William Chepy, Seurushung, and Wamussum made their marks on the sheepskin deed for the purchase.

The deed, which recognizes Powell had already been in possession of part of the land for more than seven years, is recorded in the Queens County Clerks office, and in it, the Native Americans reserved the right to pick berries and hunt on the property sold.

[9] By 1700, very little of Long Island had not been purchased from the Native Americans by the English colonists, and townships controlled whatever land had not already been distributed.

[2] One of two houses Powell built in the area (circa 1700) still stands on Merritts Road in Farmingdale, just north of the Bethpage-Hempstead Turnpike.