Bayard was born in 1761 to Catharine McEvers (1732–1814) and William Bayard Sr. (c. 1727–1804), who was elected as a delegate to the 1765 Stamp Act Congress, and was assigned to the committee that drafted language opposing taxation without representation. When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, his father remained loyal to the crown, assisting the British troops that occupied New York City in 1776.[2] Although Bayard Jr. remained in New York after the war, other members of the family had fled, and many of the family's properties were confiscated. His siblings included Samuel Vetch Bayard (1757–1832) and Mary Bayard (1779–1849).[3]
Bayard was a member of the prominent Bayard family of French Huguenot ancestry who descended from Balthazar Bayard, a French Protestant, who had taken refuge in the Dutch Republic where the Huguenots found sanctuary from their religious persecution in France. The first Bayards in the New World arrived in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam with the newly appointed Governor-General Peter Stuyvesant. In the early 18th century, the Bayards became among the largest landowners in the New York-New Jersey area. Bayard was also a descendant of Stephanus Van Cortlandt and the Schuyler family.
He was chairman of a meeting in December 1815 that drafted the petition for the Erie Canal[6] and chairman of the celebration planning for the canal's completion in 1825.[7] From 1801 until 1821, Bayard served as a vestryman at Trinity Church. In 1824, he was chairman of the committee to receive General Lafayette in 1824.[5]
Alexander Hamilton
He was a close friend to Alexander Hamilton and it was to Bayard's Greenwich Village home located just below the present Gansevoort Street,[8] where the mortally wounded Hamilton was taken after his famous duel with Aaron Burr.[9] Hamilton died in Bayard's home the next day.[1]
Personal life
Coat of Arms of William Bayard, Jr.
In 1783, Bayard married Elizabeth Cornell (d. 1854), daughter of Loyalist Samuel Cornell and Susannah Mabson, and a descendant of Thomas Cornell (c. 1595 – c. 1655). Elizabeth's father died in 1781 in British-controlled New York, having moved there from North Carolina after 1777 after refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance to the new United States. Samuel Cornell had transferred a share of his North Carolina property to Elizabeth; in 1779, however, the North Carolina Legislature voted to retroactively seize all property of Loyalists back to 1776. In November 1784, Mrs. Bayard unsuccessfully sued to have her property returned to her.[10]
William Jr. and Elizabeth had seven children, including:[3]
Susan Bayard (1787–1814), who married Benjamin Woolsey Rogers (1775–1859), son of Moses Rogers, a wealthy New York merchant who owned Shippan Point, and Sarah Woolsey, and a distant cousin descended from Thomas Cornell
William Bayard (1788–1875), who married Catherine Hammond[3]
Maria Bayard (1789–1875), who also married Duncan Pearsall Campbell (1781–1861)
Eliza Justine Bayard (b. 1793), who married Joseph Blackwell[12][1]
Robert Bayard (1797–1878), who married Elizabeth McEvers[3]
Bayard's granddaughter, Eliza Bayard Rogers (1811–1835), through his daughter Susan Bayard Rogers, married William Paterson Van Rensselaer (1805–1872), son of Stephen Van Rensselaer III, on May 13, 1833, in New York City. William P. Van Rensselaer was a half-brother to Stephen Van Rensselaer IV, the husband of Bayard's youngest daughter, Harriet E. Bayard. William and Eliza had one son together, William P. Van Rensselaer Jr. (1834–1854), before Eliza's death in 1835. On April 4, 1839, Van Rensselaer remarried to Eliza's sister, Sarah Rogers, with whom he had the rest of his children.[14]
^Shaw, Ronald E. Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal, 1792–1854. University Press of Kentucky, 2013. p. 183
^"Memoir of De Witt Clinton, with an Appendix Containing Numerous Documents Illustrative of the Principal Events of His Life by David Hosack, De Witt Clinton." The North American Review. 29.65 (1829): 496–521. Web. 18 Apr. 2015. p. 511
