Gay surname

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Gay Settlers in United States in the 19th Century

• I Gay, aged 34, who landed in New Orleans, La in 1830 10
• Francis Gay, who landed in Mobile County, Ala in 1840 10
• Mr. 1

  Alternatively, the name could have been derived from the Old French "gal" meaning "full of joy, lighthearted" 2

  Early Origins of the Gay family

  The surname Gay was first found in Surrey where Oswald le Gay was listed in the Pipe Rolls there in 1176.

  

  As a young girl she probably witnessed the brutal beatings that her grandfather handed out to his slaves. They were not Separatists in England as the Pilgrims had been, yet they established the Independent Congregational church in America".

  When young John Gay the Puritan
  To Massachusetts came
  He went to work right there and then
  To make himself a name.
  There were one thousand Puritan’s
  Some of them men of fame
  They brought their flocks and herds with them
  And stores of every name.
  They settled at old Watertown
  Boston and Charlestown too
  Unlike their friends of near renown,
  They came prepared to do.
  They marked their impress on the state
  They would a nation try
  To build a nation was their fate
  For they would “do or die”.
  John Gay, a worker in that band
  We know that he made good
  And his descendants in the land
  Are better understood.
  For scholars, statesman, ministers
  And business men galore
  Who claim him and his anscestors
  Are found from shore to shore.
  One grand old soldier from that band
  Did long in Quincy dwell
  No doubt there's many in the land
  Our records do not tell
  But tis a fact with justice done
  It often has been said
  That all the Gays have always won
  Respect with fame or bread.
  We cannot prove all Gays are kin
  For records fail to show
  But family ways are much the same
  We find, where'er we go.
  “Samuel Gay”
  Tis of Samuel Gay, of Virginia
  His lines of life we try to trace.
  Born of a hardy rugged race
  By industry won an honored place
  He was a true son of the soil
  He plowed his ground, chopped his wood
  And grew his crops as farmers should
  And took delight in doing good.
  He was just and true, brave and kind
  These maxims learned, he lived them too
  And never quit till tasks were done
  At seventy-seven Sam was gone
  Tis sometimes said that blood will tell
  Tho generations run
  Sam Gay’s kin have proved him well
  As ancestors begun.
  Samuel never served in any war
  But worked with might and main
  And grew the crops that have thus far
  Been thought the best for gain.
  He bore hardships that we feel
  We hardly need to know
  Like building fires with flint and steel
  Or with a string and bow.
  We do believe that blood did tell
  The way generations run
  God in his goodness willed us well
  It has since we begun.
  Exerts from the works of Wm.

  H. Gay, 1920
  Presented to the
  Library  of  Memorial  Continental  Hall  Rockport, Illinois by  Old  Belfrey  Chapter, February 1924

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