These ballfields honor Daniel Allerton (1818-1877) an early Bronx settler who purchased and farmed this area with his wife Hustace. Allerton was a descendent of Isaac Allerton (1586-1659), the fifth signer of the Mayflower Compact.
Isaac Allerton arrived in America on the Mayflower in 1620 but his travels began in 1608 when he moved from London, England to Leiden, Holland and found work as a tailor. He soon joined John Robinson’s Separatist congregation, a group of religious dissenters who arrived from England in 1609, and married congregation member Mary Norris two years later. Shortly after his marriage, Allerton began planning and equipping the Separatist expedition to the “New World.” He, his wife, and three of their four children departed on the Speedwell but transferred to the Mayflower when the former ship proved unseaworthy. In 1620, the Virginia-bound Separatists landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts due to rough seas that had pushed them off course.
The Mayflower Compact ensured the establishment of a civil government, the rule of law, and that governance would be carried out by mutual consent in the newly founded colony. Allerton served as assistant Governor between 1621 and 1624, negotiated with the local Wampanoag Native Americans, secured the Plymouth Colony’s charter from England, and discussed common problems with representatives of the nearby Massachusetts Bay Colony. Allerton imported tobacco from Virginia and stored goods in a building on the site of the current Quincy Market in Boston, Massachusetts. Presidents Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) are descendents of Isaac Allerton and there is an Allerton family plot in the Woodlawn Cemetery.
The Allerton Ballfields are located near the New York Botanical Garden along Dr. Theodore Kazimiroff Boulevard, which becomes Allerton Avenue west of Bronx Park East. In 1914 the City of New York constructed Allerton Avenue on what was previously the Hammersley family estate, a property mapped in 1856. Allerton Avenue between Lurting and Tenbroeck Avenues was originally known as Thomas Haddon’s Saw Mill Lane after a 1720 mill used to cut trees into lumber. The stretch of Allerton Avenue between Bronx Park and Crugar Avenue was previously known as Bleecker Street. Allerton Ballfields feature a comfort station and three ballfields with backstops and dugouts.
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