Robert David Lion Gardiner, lord of Gardiners Island
Hyfler/Rosner
at 93
August 23, 2004, 6:13 PM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) _ Robert David Lion Gardiner, the 16th lord of
the manor of Gardiners Island, a private island east of Long
Island, died at his home in East Hampton on Monday morning,
a family spokeswoman said. He was 93.
Gardiner's title came from a hereditary royal land grant
dating back more than 360 years to England's King Charles I,
who gave the island to Lion Gardiner, Gardiner's ancestor,
in 1639 as a reward for defeating the Pequots.
The island was a pirate stopover in the 17th and 18th
centuries and provided a home to the buried treasure of
pirates like Capt. William Kidd.
Gardiners Island is 7 miles long and 3 miles across and
includes more than 1,000 acres of forest and 1,000 more of
meadow and wetlands. It's the largest privately owned island
in the country, Gardiner family spokeswoman Jeanne Toomey
said.
Gardiner had no children and spent more than 20 years
battling with a niece, Alexandra Gardiner Creel, and her
husband, who shared access to the island with him and stand
to inherit it. The dispute was about the island's future and
conditions of a family trust, which owns the island.
Gardiner feared his niece would sell the island to
developers upon his death, although she has said she intends
to preserve it.
Gardiner also was the former owner of Sagtikos Manor, a
17th-century estate that had been in the family since 1758
and was used by British troops during the Revolutionary War.
Suffolk County bought the sprawling mansion from Gardiner in
2002 for $1.5 million.
Gardiner is survived by his wife, Eunice Gardiner.
Hyfler/Rosner
Last 'Lord of the Manor'
Robert David Lion Gardiner, 93 died yesterday; Brought
history to life on island his family bought from Montauketts
in 1639; ownership passes to niece he fought in court for
years
BY STEVE WICK AND BILL BLEYER
STAFF WRITERS
August 24, 2004
He called himself the 13th Lord of the Manor, as if he were
the member of a long-lost American wing of English
aristocracy. His family's remarkable saga spanned nearly 400
years of Long Island history, beginning with an ancestor's
arrival in the 17th century, and Robert David Lion Gardiner
knew every chapter of it.
The family story began with Lion Gardiner, an English
mercenary and fort builder, who acquired a 3,300-acre island
from the Montaukett Indians in 1639 off the north shoreline
of what is today East Hampton that he bestowed with the
family name.
Yesterday, 13 generations later, Robert David Lion Gardiner,
age 93, died in his home on Main Street in East Hampton. An
imperious man who could talk endlessly, and proudly, about
his history, Gardiner was the last member of his family to
call himself "lord of the manor," a reference to the land
grant ratified by King Charles I of England after Lion
Gardiner acquired the island from the Montaukett Indians. It
is still in family hands today.
Ten years ago, Gardiner -- who was childless -- set out to
find a Gardiner heir to whom he could bestow the island and
continue the family line. He said if he found the right
person -- male, a Gardiner and very wealthy, he said -- he
would name him the 14th Lord of the Manor. That effort
produced little more than ridicule. Years of court fights
between Gardiner and his niece, Alexandra Creel Goelet of
Manhattan, left the island jointly operated by both parties.
With Gardiner's death, it fully passes to the niece,
according to previously filed court documents. She could not
be reached for comment yesterday.
"He represented a long chain of Gardiner descendants, and
the fact that his family held on to that island through all
the generations is remarkable," said John Strong, a retired
history professor at Southampton College. "His family's
history was unique in America, there's no question about
that."
A family friend who asked not to be identified said through
last summer Gardiner, whose health had been failing, had
given guided tours of Gardiners Island, where he proudly
pointed out the carpenter's shed built by Lion Gardiner, the
wooded spot where Captain Kidd buried treasure, and the
cemetery where the family's slaves were interred.
The friend said Gardiner's wife, Eunice, lives primarily in
Florida and had been visiting her husband intermittently.
Eunice Gardiner was not available for comment.
The friend said a memorial would be held at St. Luke's
Episcopal Church in East Hampton, which has a Gardiner wing
donated by the family. She said he would be buried in the
South End Cemetery on Main Street, where Lion Gardiner is
buried along with many other family members, including
Robert Gardiner's parents.
The Gardiners were the first white family to acquire land on
Long Island. After acquiring Gardiners Island in 1639 -- the
first purchase by a European on Long Island -- Lion Gardiner
negotiated deals with other Indians for huge tracts along
the broad width of Suffolk County, from what is today
Smithtown south to Islip Town. In family lore, Lion Gardiner
was a fair partner with the Indians, helping the Montaukett
chief Wyandanch retrieve his daughter after she was
kidnapped by Narragansetts and taken to the New England
mainland.
In 1699 a descendant of Lion Gardiner helped the pirate
William Kidd hide treasure on the island, a spot marked by a
pile of boulders that Robert Gardiner was fond of pointing
out to visitors on tours of the island.
Included in his tours were visits to the family home on Main
Street in East Hampton, where he showed visitors the
portrait of his wife painted by Salvador Dali, and the
family plot in the South End cemetery. His visitors rode
around the island on the backs of trucks while Gardiner
provided commentary over a loudspeaker in an accent that was
somewhere between British and New York.
Along with the spot where Kidd buried his treasure, Gardiner
pointed out the acres of untouched oak forest and the
Colonial-era windmill.
Always the patrician host who seemed like a duck out of
water among mere Long Islanders, he would criticize those
who asked questions he didn't like, and drop names of
English gentry and members of the royal family with whom
he'd recently dined. He once ran as a Democrat for a
congressional seat when Republican Otis Pike threatened to
turn Gardiner's Island into a park.
His business world was rather small. He managed a small
family real estate empire and he lived off his family's
millions. He had a reputation for being cranky and
overbearing and acting like an annoyed dilettante.
Richard Welch, editor of the Long Island Forum, a journal of
local history, said Gardiner's passing was "the end of an
era because one person who controlled the island for so long
is gone." He said he met Gardiner twice, the first time when
he took a tour of the island with Gardiner in 1975.
"He greeted everyone like he was the 18th-century lord of
the manor," Welch said. "He was a great Long Island figure
and eccentric. He was a real character."
In 1997, Gardiner brought Robert Cooper -- a descendant of
the Indians who sold the island to Lion Gardiner -- to the
island for a personal tour. Both men, in whose veins flowed
the Long Island story, relaxed and told stories. When the
tour ended, Gardiner told Cooper he was welcome anytime he
wanted to visit. Cooper could not be reached yesterday.
Hyfler/Rosner
Robert D.L. Gardiner, 93, Lord of His Own Island, Dies
By ROBERT F. WORTH
Robert David Lion Gardiner, the last heir to bear the name
of the family that has owned Gardiner's Island, off the
coast of Long Island, for nearly four centuries, died
yesterday at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 93.
His death was announced by Jeanne Toomey, a friend and
former press representative.
Mr. Gardiner called himself ''the 16th Lord of the Manor''
and saw himself as a custodian of his family's history on
what is said to be the largest privately owned island in the
world. Although the Gardiners' wealth and social position
was overshadowed by that of the tycoons and Hollywood
celebrities who colonized Long Island over the last century,
he delighted in reminding them of who had arrived first.
''The Fords, the du Ponts, the Rockefellers, they are
nouveaux riches,'' Mr. Gardiner told an interviewer in the
mid-1990's.
Mr. Gardiner lived in East Hampton, in an opulent family
house with its own long history, but his heart was rooted in
Gardiner's Island, in the bay off Long Island's south fork.
The island's 3,350 acres includes 27 miles of coastline,
forests and streams, and buildings dating from the 17th
century.
It has been in the family ever since his ancestor, the
English settler Lion Gardiner, bought it from the Montaukett
Indians in 1639 for ''one large dog, one gun, some powder
and shot, some rum and several blankets, worth in all about
Five Pounds sterling.''
He also obtained a charter from King Charles I of England.
Captain Kidd once buried treasure there, and the family
withstood several attacks by pirates. Someone accused of
being a witch once lived on the island, as did Julia
Gardiner, who became the wife of President John Tyler and
was known in her youth as ''the rose of Long Island.''
Although the island is strictly off limits to the public,
Mr. Gardiner took occasional groups of visitors there in his
boat, the Laughing Lady, often surprising them by talking
about Colonial-era events as though they had happened the
day before.
For the last three decades Mr. Gardiner feuded with his
niece, Alexandra Gardiner Creel Goelet, who owned the island
jointly with him. He often accused Mrs. Goelet and her
husband, Robert G. Goelet, of plotting to sell or develop
the island after his death, a charge they vehemently denied.
Mr. Gardiner, who married in 1961 but had no children, tried
unsuccessfully during the 1980's to adopt a distant relative
as his heir, to whom he could bequeath his share of the
island.
Robert David Lion Gardiner was born in New York on Feb. 25,
1911, and attended St. George's School in Newport, R.I. He
graduated from Columbia University in 1934 and attended New
York University Law School. In World War II he served as a
Navy lieutenant and saw action in the South Pacific.
After the war he worked on Wall Street at the Empire Trust
Company. His father had died when he was young, and he lived
in Manhattan with his mother until he was in his late 40's.
In 1961 he married Eunice Bailey Oakes, a British former
model many years his junior, at St. Thomas Church on Fifth
Avenue in Manhattan. Eighteen ushers in top hats and tails
took part in the ceremony. Mrs. Gardiner survives him.
Mr. Gardiner once estimated his personal wealth at $135
million; his assets included a 42-acre shopping center in
Islip. He served for many years on the Suffolk County
Planning Board, and ran unsuccessfully as a Democratic
candidate for the State Senate in 1960.
Mr. Gardiner and his sister Alexandra Gardiner Creel
inherited the island from their aunt, Sarah Diodati
Gardiner, on her death in 1953. It had nearly passed out of
family hands two decades earlier, after a spendthrift cousin
was unable to maintain it. The elder Miss Gardiner bought it
in 1937 for $400,000, just before it was to be put up for
sale at public auction.
Mr. Gardiner's aunt left a trust fund to pay for the
island's upkeep, but by the late 1970's it had run out of
money. Mr. Gardiner had already quarreled with his sister
and her daughter over the island, and when his niece's
husband, Robert Goelet, began paying the rising costs, Mr.
Gardiner refused to pay half. He said at the time that he
was trying to force the island into receivership by New York
State, which he hoped would take care of it as a historic
site. But his relatives went to court, and in 1980 Judge
Marie Lambert of State Surrogate Court barred Mr. Gardiner
from visiting the island.
Mr. Gardiner appealed the decision, and in 1992 a state
appeals court ruled that as an heir he could not be denied
the use of the island. He began visiting it regularly again,
always avoiding the Goelets, with whom he continued to feud,
and still refusing to help pay the estimated $1.8 million
yearly costs for the island's upkeep.
His sister died in 1990. Mr. Gardiner's feud with his niece
was far from the family's only quarrel over the island,
which Mrs. Goelet's father had called ''the sandbar of
sorrow.'' Over the years, there had been several legal
confrontations over its ownership, according to Joseph
Attinito, Mr. Gardiner's lawyer. Now Mrs. Goelet is expected
to become the owner of the island. She has two children.
Although Mr. Gardiner had hoped to be buried on the island
in a tomb like his grandfather's, inspired by that of a
Roman emperor, Mr. Attinito said he would be buried near his
parents in an East Hampton cemetery.