1. William I "Willieum"Compton
Migrated to Gravesend NY before 1645. Gravesend is now part of Brooklyn, but is often referred to as being on Long Island. He was listed on the original list of 39 original English patentees in 1645. (This was New Netherlands at the time.] Per Gravesend town records [Blalock], on November 24, 1657, Nicholas Stillwell sold lot 29, with house and barn, to William Compton for 400 pounds of good tobacco to be delivered next April 1. He also wa involved in additional land transactions in 1658 and 1659. In 1652, he stated in a deposition that he was 30 years old. He was sworn in as constable on June 29, 1677.
The Gravesend, New York, William lived with the Dutch and was referred to as Weilleum. Gravesend was an early English settlement in an area in modern Brooklyn adjacent to Coney Island. It is a mere hop, skip and a jump to Sandy Hook, New Jersey and Monmouth County. (Sandy Hook is also known as one of the haunts of Captain Kidd.)
It is reported but not confirmed that William was the son of Spencer Compton, which would attach him to the royal line. See Compton Wynyates for that genealogy, as well as Blalock, as follows.
The following pedigree has been derived from an excerpt of William Bingham Compton, The History of Compton Wyngates, London, 1930 (obtained from Catherine Thorsen of Colorado); William Marquis of Northamption [notated in pencil in the original in the Library of Congress as William George Spencer Scott Compton], Compton Wynyates, Humphreys Pub. (London), 1904 (cited as Wynyates); Delton Blalock, British and American Comptons, 1984; a genealogy by James H. L. Lawler on the Internet (which makes the American William I connection with the English line); and, Comptonology [a journal edited by C.V. Compton which ran from the late 1930's through the early 1950's], inter alia V.1, No. 1; p. 74, V. 4, No. 1, p. 148, V. 4, No. 7, pp. 179-80. [A note on Comptonology: Early in the journal, Compton went to a sequential page numbering sequence, thus some citations may be to the page only.]
Comptons are an ancient family, traceable to the Anglo-Saxon Alwyne, circa (ca.) 1042, a contemporary to King Edward the Confessor, in the times before surnames. "Compton" means a settlement (town) in or on a hill. Alwyne's son Turchill (or Turchid), Saxon Earl of Warwick at the time of the Norman conquest (1066), did not assist the English King Harold (contrary to his father, who "fought valiantly" against the invading forces according to Comptonology), thereby earning the gratitude of William the Conqueror. (See also Wynyates for a narrative of this early history. Lord Compton cites Collins, whom I have been unable to locate.) He was therefore allowed to retain his lordship and many landholdings, and an inspection of the Domesday Book is replete with Compton estates. Turchill became one of the early English to have a surname "de Eardene" (presumably from his residence at Arden). His son Osbert had several sons, including Philip (ca. 1200), who were the first in the line to take the surname de Compton. Philip was followed in the line by Thomas, Philip, Robert, Robert, Thomas, Edmund, William, Robert, Edmund, William (where the Wm. Bingham Compton document ends, ca. 1482), son Compton (possibly Peter, b. ca. 1500), Henry, William, Spencer, to our first American William, b. 1622 in Gravesend, New York. The researcher can compare the Bingham Compton document to Wyngates and observe the close (but not completely consistent) parallels in the genealogies.
There is an ancestral (portions dating back to the 12th century) castle in Warwick, England, called Compton Wynyates [sometimes referred to as Wyngates], or "Compton in the Hole" (for its topography), which has been modified over the years and circumstances. The castle is the principal subject of Compton Wynyates.