| Note* | | The first Connecticut Bentley that we have definite record of was William Bentley whom my mother referred to as William , the Yoeman, or William of Lebanon, to distinguish him from another william of about the same age who was a Cordwainer and who lived at Kingston, Rhode Island, just across the Connecticut border. We surmise that William , the Yoeman, was the son of an earlier William, who sailed from Gravesend, England to Boston on May 27,1671 on board the Arbella,and who settled at Dorchester, just south of Boston. That William (the Immigrant) enlisted on August 20,1675 during King Philip's War in a company from Dorchester along with Henry Elliot, who later became an officer. They fought in the Narragansetts, and it is a fair assumption that they shared inthe grants of former Indian land which a grateful local government made to men from Massachusetts who had come to their assistance. We do not what happened to this earliest William or whether his son was William, the Yoeman of Lebanon, or William , the Cordwainer of Kingston from letter to Dr. William B.A. Bentley from his father Edward S. Bentley dated January 12, 1955. |