Beeks line: Gilles de Mandeville 1626-1701 Immigrant

You may not be able to guess from the name that this is another ancestor from what is now The  Netherlands.  That's because it seems that there is no one "correct" way to write his name.  Some list him as Aegidius, some as Giles Jensen, some as Yellis, and I'm not sure that the Mandeville surname really "sticks", although he has parents and grandparents all the way back to 1525 who also have been given that surname. I'm going to call him Gilles because that's easier for me, but yet reminds me this is not an Englishman.

Gilles was born in 166 in Veluwe, Gelderland, the Netherlands in 1626, the son of Rev.Jan Michealse and Trintgen Wilma Van Harderwijk Mandeville.  Oh, he may have been born in France and baptized in Doesburk, Geldeland, the Netherlands.  I think he was likely born in the Netherlands, unless the information about his parent's birthplace is incorrect.  The first think we really know about Gilles is that he, his wife Elsje Pieterse Hendricks, and four children sailed on the "de Trouw", to New Amsterdam, supposedly traveling with Peter Stuyvesant. That makes a nice story, the Stuyvesant connection, but I'm not sure that Stuyvesant had gone anywhere so that he would have been returning in 1659.  (I could be wrong about that, of course, and it is likely that the families knew each other.  I just don't find anything that says Stuyvesant had gone to the Netherlands in 1658-59.  He seems to have been in New Amsterdam the whole time.)

He paid the way of himself and his family so he was not a poor man.  He is associated with several pieces of land at Long Island, atNew Amersfoort and New Amsterdam, and when the English took over the Dutch colony, he was on a tax list for New York in 1676.He also had a farm at Flatbush and 30 acres at Greenwich.  The main estate, the farm o Manhattan Island, was in what is now Greenwich Village.  Gilles and Elsje were members of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York.

In his will, written in September of 1696 and proven May 22, 1701, he left all of his estate during Elsje's widowhood.  His farm in Queens county, near Hempstead, with houses, barns,etc he left to his oldest son Hendrick,.  The farm at Greenwich was to be sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds divided among his six adult children.  The final execution probably didn't take long, as Elsje herself made her will the same date that Gilles' will was proven. 

Gilles appears to have been a hard-working man with a good business sense, and enough money to get started in his new life in the New Netherlands.  If he actually lived in all the places that he had land, he could almost be considered a real estate developer.  I wonder what he would think of his most lasting "development", Greenwich Village, and its property values now! 

The line of descent is:

Gilles de Mandeville-Elsje Hendricks
Gerritje Mandeville-Jan Pieterse Meet
Maretje Meete-Peter Demarest
Lea Demarest-Samuel David Demarest
Sarah Demarest-Benjamin Slot
William (Slot) Lock-Elizabeth Teague
Sally Lock-Jeremiah Folsom
Leah Folsom-Darlington Aldridge
Harvey Aldridge-Margaret Catherine Dunham
Cleo Aldridge-Wilbur Beeks
Mary Margaret Beeks-Cleveland Harshbarger
Their descendants