Dering family

Thomas Dering, born c. 1716, lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved to Shelter Island, New York, by 1763. He was a delegate to the Third Provisional Congress in New York from May through June in 1776. He served the congress again in White Plains in July, when they unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. He was elected a member of the Provincial Convention, which met in Fishkill in 1775 and 1777 to form a constitution for the State of New York. Dering moved his family to Connecticut for the duration of the Revolutionary War. He married Mary Sylvester in 1738; they had a daughter, Betty Dering, and two sons, Sylvester Dering and Henry Parker Dering. Thomas Dering died in 1785.

Sylvester Dering (1758-1820) took part in the Revolutionary war as a brigadier general in the Rhode Island state militia. He was a member of the State Assembly for Suffolk County from 1803 to 1804, and became the first vice-president of the Suffolk County Agricultural Society in 1818. He fell from his horse and died in 1820.

Henry Parker Dering (1734-1822), was born in Sag Harbor and graduated from Yale in 1784. In 1790 he was appointed the collector of the port of Sag-Harbor by General Washington, and in 1795, became the 1st Lieutenant of the Suffolk County Brigade. He married Anna Fosdick in 1793. They moved to Chatham, Connecticut, in 1800, returned to Sag Harbor in 1806, and then relocated to Washington in 1809. His youngest daughter, Anna C. Dering, married Mr. William R. Sleight. He also had a son, Lodowick Dering and a daughter, Francis.

Thomas Dering’s sister Sarah Dering Thomas married loyalist Nathaniel Ray Thomas (d. 1791). They had at least two children, Maria and Sally Thomas.

Ebenezer Sage was born in Chatham, Connecticut, on August 16, 1755, to David Sage and Sarah Stocking Sage. He graduated from Yale College in 1778, and in 1784 began practicing medicine in Easthampton, New York. Sage married Ruth Smith on January 30, 1790, and had at least two children: John Smith Sage (who married Eliza Gracie Dering) and Fanny Mary Sage. In 1801, Ebenezer Sage moved to Sag Harbor, New York, and served in congress as a Republican from March 4, 1809, to March 3, 1815, and was a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention of 1821. He died at Sag Harbor on January 20, 1834.

From the guide to the Dering family papers, 1755-1896, (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan)