CHICHESTER, SYLVANUS (or SILVANUS) (1739-1828). Associator, Huntington, New York. According to his family tree posted on Ancestry.com, Sylvanus was born on May 1, 1739, in Huntington, New York to Ebenezer (1712-1750), a shoemaker, and Ruth née Whitman (1709-1750) Chichester. On June 24, 1739, he was christened at the First Church of Huntington. His family tree on Ancestry records the birth of brothers, Ebenezer (1741-1823), and Mordecai (1743-), in Huntington. He also had an older sister, Ruth (1735-1825). Both of his parents died in 1750, his mother in January and his father in November. No mention is made as to who raised the young children. The Geneanet Family Tree Index confirms Sylvanus’s birth year but lists the birth date as May 12; parents, marriage date and children are the same as on Ancestry. His biography is also found on the ancestorsfamilysearch website which states that Chichester was a city in Sussex, England, likely the origin of the family name; that site oddly names his father as Jeremiah. The family tree is also recorded in U.S. Family History Books and in the Lloyd family book which notes that he was named as a grandson of James Lloyd. A letter by John Lloyd to his father, Henry Lloyd, on March 23, 1761, notes that Silvanus Chichester gave him a saddle, bridle, and onion seed, as part of effort to raise money and men for “this Somers Service.”
A public member post on Ancestry indicates that he is mentioned in the will of his grandfather, James Chichester’s (no date given). That posting states:
I leave my grandson, Sylvanus Chichester, my house and homestead, and lands where I now live. But my daughter Abigail is to have the use of one of my rooms, and a privilege in the leanto and cellar, and a part of my garden, while unmarried. I also leave to my grandson, Sylvanus Chichester, 10 acres of land lying above Timothy Conkling’s house.
On April 9, 1767, Sylvanus Chichester married Catherine Nostrand (born 1749) in Huntington. The couple were the parents of Abigail (1769-1826); Ebenezer (1774-1823); and Gilbert (1787-1852). Abigail was born in Long Island City and Ebenezer in Huntington.
According to Frederic Gregory Mather in his scholarly text, The Refugees of 1776 Long Island to Connecticut (1913), Sylvanus was an associator, a signatory to the Articles of Association in Huntington; his status as an associator was also noted in the Lloyd family papers and in U.S., Family History Books. On May 8, 1775, 403 men, most of them Huntington residents (a few were from Islip), “shocked by the bloody Scene” that had occurred just weeks before at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, where patriot Minutemen and British regulars had engaged in a bloody armed struggle, put their signatures on Huntington’s Articles of Association. Only 37 Huntington residents, either Loyalists or those wanting to stay out of the fray, refused to sign. The Articles noted that the signers affirmed their “Love to our Country,” agreed “to whatever Measures may be recommended by the Continental Congress; or resolved upon by our Provincial Convention, for the Purpose of preserving our Constitution, and opposition to the Execution of the several arbitrary, and oppressive Acts of the British Parliament,” and prayed for “a Reconciliation between Great-Britain and America.” The actions of these associators were seen by both patriots and the British as a step towards rebellion. The fact that these men signed these Articles, placing themselves in danger of British retaliation, including imprisonment, seizure of their property, and exile from Long Island, is proof of their patriotic service.
During the British occupation of Huntington after the Battle of Long Island (Battle of Brooklyn) on August 27, 1776, the Huntington Town Records reported that 36 Boards were taken from Sylvanus by the Queens Rangers valued at 3 shillings each in January 1779.
At the time of the 1800 census, Silvanus (sic) was living in Huntington and heading a household comprised of five: one free white male, aged 10-15; one free white male, aged 16-thru 25; one free white male over 45; one free white female, aged 16 thru 25; and one free white female over 45. U.S. Tax Assessment Rolls of Real and Personal Estates, 1799-1804, report that in 1801 in Huntington, Sylvanus had $600 in real estate and $100 in personal estate, and paid $1.07 in taxes, placing him at the low end of his contemporaries. The 1810 census reports that Silvenus’s(sic) household in Huntington had three members: one free white male, aged 10 thru 15; one free white male over 45; and one free white female over 45.
On July 28, 2026, Jeff Richman and Jerry Meekins, searching for the graves of the patriots who are interred at Huntington’s Old Burying Ground, located Sylvanus Chichester’s final resting place by following the sequence of inscriptions recorded there by Josephine Frost in 1911 in Cemetery Inscriptions from Huntington, Long Island. That sequence showed the nearby graves of James Chichester, then Hannah Chichester, then Sylvanus Chichester. Syvlanus’s gravestone is in pieces, but the very end of his inscription, as recorded by Frost, is still visible and confirms this find: it reads “3 days” for Sylvanus’s age of 89 years and 3 days at his death.
Because Sylvanus died intestate (without a will), John Scott, the son-in-law of Silvanus (sic) and husband of Abigail, was appointed administrator of Chichester’s estate on June 25, 1828, and had the responsibility of settling his estate.
