Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1906-03-09
DR.. Theodore Cav,

William w. Gay, in a memoir of the
late DR.. Theodore Gay, written for the
Franklin, N Y. Historical Society says:
Theodore Gay was born on the first
day of April, 1912, in the town of Bird
port, in Addison county Vt, then a
frontier settlement, and to-day only a
hamlet on the shore of Lake Champlain.
His father was Martin Gay, a physician
and farmer, who had followed the
stream of migration northward when the
colonizing spirit of Connecticut spurred
her sons into new lands, and had estab-
li-hed himself in Vermont in the latter
part of the eighteenth century. There
he raised large family, and practised
his profession of medicine until old age.
The Gays are among the oldest of New
England families. The first of the name
to come to this country, John Gay, ar
rived in 1870 in John Winthrop's colony,
and settled, first at Watertown under
the leadership of Saltenstall. Five years
later he became one of the original
proprietors of Dedham, Mass, that
plantation first called Contentment,
which had the distinguishing honor of
declining to prosecute Quakers, and for
whose enlightment and uplifting the
virtuous authorities of Boston used to
send Quakers to be whipped, and reviled
at its gates There for succeeding gene
rations John Gays defendants have
lived. Into the hands of one of these
Dedham Gays fell land in Killingly,
Conn, until then the property of family
of Lees who afterward settled at Canton,
n. Y, and to Ills son. Lusher, bearing
the name of a maternal ancestor who
was of the family of that Bunker who
owned Bunker's Hill, he conveyed this
land by iced of gift about 1887. This
Lusher, grandfather of DIR. Gay. born in
17l6. removed thither on becoming of
age, and there settled with his bride. In
his old age he wrote himself down in his
will as 81, Lusher Gay, husbandman."
but he was in his day a man of local
consequence. He was chosen deacon of
his church when to be a deacon, or even
bell-ringer, in the established church
was to be conspicuous in the community;
for as told by Miss Ellen Larned in her
History of Windham County, Brooklyn
Conn, wishing, after the French and
Indian War, to honor especially the
young man who had, of all her citizens.
most distinguished himself in that con-
tiict, made Col. Israel Putnam sexton of
her church, solemnly entrusting him
with the keys of her temple, and EN-
powering him to ring one of the two
church bells existing in the county. In
Thompson, then a parish of Killingly,
many years later to be erected into an
independent township, Martin Gay,
father of Theodore, was born, the
youngest son and twelfth child of Deacon
Lusher. He came too late into the world
TO share actively in the glories and hard
ships of the Revolution, but his father at
the age of sixty shouldered a musket
upon the occasion of some Tory alarm,
and five brothers of the young Martin
wore the Continental uniform, of whom
three gave their lives to their country
early in the war. The old home of the
family in Thompson was in its possession
until 1885. In the home of the historian
of Windham county, descendant of
the Colonial and Revolutionary deacon,
are still preserved many curious and
interesting relics of his life.'