| Notes |
- RESEARCH_NOTES:
1. Citation Information: "The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633," Volumes I-III:
"Robert Feake
Origin: London
Migration: 1630
First Residence: Watertown
Removes: Greenwich 1640, Watertown
Return Trips: 1647, returned to Watertown 1650
Occupation: Goldsmith. He served an apprenticeship with his father, James Feake, for eight years beginning 21 September 1615, but probably never practiced his craft in the New World [NYGBR 86:212]. Freeman: Requested 19 October 1630 (as "Mr. Robte. Feake") and admitted 18 May 1631 (as "Mr. Roberte Feakes") [MBCR 1:79, 366]. Education: His 1636 letter to John Winthrop Jr. shows a good education [WP 3:287]. His estate included a Bible [NYGBR 86:220]. Offices: Chosen lieutenant to Capt. Patrick, 4 September 1632 [MBCR 1:99]; deputy for Watertown to General Court, 14 May 1634, 4 March 1634/5, 6 May 1635, 3 March 1635/6, 25 May 1636, 8 September 1636 [MBCR 1:116, 135, 145, 164, 174, 178]; committee on fortifications, 3 September 1634 [MBCR 1:124]; committee on various boundary disputes, 4 March 1634/5 [MBCR 1:139]; appointed magistrate for quarter court, 25 May 1636 [MBCR 1:175]; committee to arbitrate "difference betwixt Boston & Waymothe at Mount Woollaston," 25 October 1636 [MBCR 1:181]. Chosen Watertown selectman, 10 October 1636, 10 December 1638, 6 December 1639 [WaTR 1:2, 5]. Estate: Granted eighty acres in the Great Dividend in Watertown, 25 July 1636 [WaBOP 4]; granted twenty-four acres in the Beaverbrook Plowlands, 28 February 1636/7 [WaBOP 7]; granted forty acres in the Remote Meadows, 26 June 1637 [WaBOP 8]; granted nine acres at the Town Plot, 9 April 1638 [WaBOP 11]. In the Watertown Inventory of Grants "Robert Feke" was shown to have received nine parcels of land: fourteen acre homestall [ten acres sold to Simon Stone]; fifteen acres upland [ten acres sold to Thomas Bright by 1640 (Lechford 286-87)]; six acres marsh [sold to Simon Stone]; eighty acres upland in the Great Dividend [to John Benjamin]; twenty-four acres plowland [to John Benjamin]; forty acres Remote Meadow [twenty-five acres sold to Edward Howe]; nine acres upland [Town Plot, to Nathan Fiske]; six acres upland [sold to Daniel Patrick]; and six acres meadow in Plain Meadow [to John Page] [WaBOP 71]. (Robert Feake had disposed of his Watertown property before the compilation of the Watertown land inventories; the indication of sales of land given here derives mostly from comparison of the grants made to Feake with the later holdings of others.) His house and farm lot at Dedham were held barely a year, he resigning them 21 September and 23 November 1638; Robert Feake attended only those early Dedham meetings which were actually held in Watertown, and never resided in Dedham [DeTR 3, 21-23, 25-26, 35, 49-50, 55, 57, 69, 167]. In 1640 he and Daniel Patrick purchased the site of Greenwich from the Indians, which fell for a time under Dutch authority. The act of submission was signed by Daniel Patrick and Elizabeth Feake, acting in the absence and illness of her husband [NYGBR 86:214]. Mr. Robert Feakes was supported by the town of Watertown from 17 October 1650 until his death [WaTR 1:27, 28, 40, 43, 59, 64, 71, 73, 76]. Birth: About 1602, son of James and Judith (Thomas) Feake [NYGBR 86:144-45]. Death: Watertown 1 February 1660/1 [WaVR 23]. Marriage: Between 2 November 1631 and 27 January 1631/2 Elizabeth (Fones) Winthrop, widow of Henry Winthrop (son of Governor John Winthrop). (See Comments below for their "divorce" and her "remarriage" to William Hallett.) Children [from NYGBR 86:220-21 unless otherwise stated]:
i Elizabeth, b. probably about 1633; m. by 1659 as his second wife John Underhill.
ii Hannah, b. probably Watertown June 1637; m. Flushing 7 May 1656 [NS] John Bowne as his first wife.
iii John, b. probably Watertown about 1639; m. Killingworth, Oyster Bay, 15 September 1673 Elizabeth Prior [NYGBR 87:107-8].
iv Robert, bp. New York Dutch Church 17 July 1642 [NS]; m. Sarah ___, who took administration of his estate 19 June 1669.
v Sarah, bp. New York Dutch Church 14 April 1647 [NS]; d. before 21 July 1648 when only four children of Robert Feake are cared for [WP 5:238].
Associations: Henry Feake of Lynn and Sandwich was apprenticed to James Feake, father of Robert Feake, for a term of nine years in 1606 and was Robert's distant cousin. Tobias Feake & Judith (Feake) Palmer were niece and nephew of Robert Feake, children of Robert's brother James Feake of London [NYGBR 86:209, 211-12; Lechford 228-29]. Comments: In his lengthy article on the Feake family (see Henry Feake for full citation), George E. McCracken went into great detail on Robert Feake, and particularly on the matter of his "divorce," arguing that the couple had in fact received only a legal separation, and that Elizabeth (Fones) (Winthrop) Feake was not free to remarry [NYGBR 86:212-21, 94:243-44]. In 1966 Donald Lines Jacobus reviewed the same problem, and came to the conclusion that Robert Feake and his wife did obtain a divorce from the Dutch government, that she had married William Hallett by August 1649, and that the marriage was performed by John Winthrop Jr., her former brother-in-law [NYGBR 97:131-34]. Feake was described as "... a man whose God-fearing heart was so absorbed with spiritual and heavenly things that he little thought of the things of this life, and took neither heed nor care of what was tendered to his external property" [NYGBR 86:214, citing court depositions as transcribed in NYGBR 11:12-24]. To others he was a distracted person who could not manage his estate, and whose lofty connections alone preserved him. Certainly his inability to control his property and his wife was a difficult burden for the Winthrops. His abrupt return to England in 1647 is not sufficiently explained. McCracken suggests that the Robert Feake pardoned by the House of Commons 4 March 1649/50 for some unstated crime might be Robert of Watertown [NYGBR 86:215]. In any event, he left considerable scandal behind him in New England. In a letter dated Stamford 14 April 1648, Thomas Lyon related to his "loving grandfather" John Winthrop the history of Mr. Feake and Elizabeth (Fones) Winthrop: '...when I married first I lived in the house with her because my father being distracted I might be a help to her. Whereupon seeing several carriages between the fellow she now hath to be her husband and she the people also took notice of it which was to her disgrace which grieved me very much ... and seeing what condition she were in I spake to her about it privately and after I discovered my dislike I see her carriage alter toward me ... Father concerning the condition she is in and the children and estate my father Feike going away suddenly, having taken no course about the children and estate only desired a friend of his and I in case we see them about making away the estate and to remove we should stay it ... She also hath confessed since she came there openly she is married to him is with child by him and she hath been at New Haven but could have no comfort nor hopes for present to live in the jurisdiction and what will become of her I know not [WP 5:213-14]. In a letter dated New Haven 21 July 1648, Theophilus Eaton told John Winthrop Jr.: '...I understand William Hallet etc. are come to your plantation at Nameag, their grievious miscarriage hath certainly given great offense to many. I wish their repentance were as clear and satisfying. It is possible that William Hallet and she that was Mr. Feake's his wife are married, though not only the lawfulness and validity of such a marriage, but the reality and truth is by some questioned, because themselves and Toby Feakes sometimes deny it; but leaving that, I shall acquaint you ... with some passages about that estate. Mr. Feakes from Boston October 6, 1647 wrote to Stamford that he reserved the whole propriety of his estate, till he saw how God would deal with him in England, and desired he and the children might not be wronged etc., after which that estate being from the Dutch in danger of confiscation, they brought it to Stamford, and at their request, it was there seized, as wholly belonging to Mr. Feakes, though after they challenged part thereof as the proper estate of William Hallet, and she besides desired a share in what was due to Mr. Feakes. I was not willing they should be wronged in the least, ... and accordingly at their request, I wrote to Stamford. William Hallet after this brought a letter from your honored father, and told me, he met with some opposition at Stamford, whereupon I advised him to attend the Court of magistrates ... but I perceived in him an unwillingness thereunto.... It was ordered that ... if she settled at Watertown, Pequod, or within any of the English colonies, two of the children, with half Mr. Feakes his proper estate should be put into the power and trust of such English government ... with such respect to Mr. Feakes, as may be meet, and that the other half of the estate should be improved at Stamford for the use of Mr. Feakes and maintenance of the other two children. I hoped that this might have satisfied, but the next news was that William Hallet etc. in a secret underhand way, had taken the children, two cows, all the household goods, and what else I know not, and by water were gone away ... when they had all the estate in their hands, the children went (if not naked) very unsatisfyingly apparelled [WP 5:237-9].' John Winthrop Jr. interceded with Peter Stuyvesant in a letter in the beginning of 1648/9, asking him to manage what estate was left so that "Mrs. Feakes" and her children had a comfortable living [WP 5:298-99]. By the spring, Andrew Messenger was informing Winthrop that the estate at Greenwich was still unimproved [WP 5:323-24]. Winthrop wrote again in May to Stuyvesant, asking that he honor the agreement made between William Hallet with Mr. Feakes, Feakes having consented to it before going for England "knowing him [Hallet] to be industrious and careful" and also to allow Hallet back into Greenwich to improve the land there [WP 5:338-39]. Evidently Stuyvesant came through, for Elizabeth (now Hallett) wrote last from Hellgate 10 January 1652/3 saying to her cousin John Winthrop Jr.: 'Our habitation is by the whirlpool which the Dutchmen call the Hellgate where we have purchased a very good farm through the governor's means ... we live very comfortably according to our rank. In the spring the Indian killed four Dutchmen near to our house which made us think to have removed ... yet now the Indian are quiet and we think not yet to remove [WP 6:239].' The story of Elizabeth Fones (Winthrop) (Feake) Hallett was told in 1958 in an historical novel called "The Winthrop Woman" by Anya Seton."
2. FHL book 974.44/W5 H2t "Divided We Stand - Watertown, Massachusetts, 1630-1680," by Roger Thompson [Amherst], pp. 188-89:
"In July 1636 both he and his wife wrote similar letters to their brother-in-law John Winthrop Jr., whose first wife, Martha Fones, Elizabeth's sister, had died in 1634. Winthrop was preparing the settlement of Saybrook near the mouth of the Connecticut River. Feake referred to "distractions we have been in by reason we were altogether unsettled ... [but] we are resolved again for Connecticut and therefore I have now sent my man to mow grass there for to winter my cattle there ... I purpose God willing in the spring [of 1637] to come there with my wife and family." Elizabeth specified that their destination would be "Watertown," the original name for Wethersfield, in order to be near Winthrop; otherwise, "we had chosen Concord for to dwell in." God seemed to have other plans, however. The Pequot War broke out in Wethersfield in the spring of 1637, and Robert Feake's only experience of the Connecticut Valley was confined to his service as Patrick's lieutenant in the conflict.
In 1639 Feake's father died in London, and the Boston notary Thomas Lechford made out a letter of attorney to dispose of property on behalf of Lt. Robert Feake of Watertown, Gent.; Judith Palmer, his niece who lived at Yarmouth, Massachusetts; and her brother Tobias Feake, aged seventeen. In 1640, after toying with the idea of moving to Dedham, the Feakes left Massachusetts with Captain Patrick, a former Dutch guardsman, and settled near New Amsterdam at Greenwich, Connecticut. After persistent threats from local Native Americans and assertions of sovereignty by the Dutch governor, the fledgling plantation was forced to pledge allegiance to the Netherlands. Feake opposed submission but was overruled by Patrick and Elizabeth, who signed over Greenwich on 9 April 1642. This breach of fidelity seems to have undermined Feake's reason. He was judged "unfit to dispose a plantation," which his wife took over.
Elizabeth, in turn, seems to have lost her reputation, according to an April 1644 letter of her aunt Lucy Downing. She may have fallen under the unsavory influence of Patrick, a womanizer whose arrogance and untrustworthiness led to his murder in January 1644. This brutal blow dealt another shock to Robert's unhinged mind. In June 1646 there was a recruit to the Feake household: Thomas Lyon, who had married Robert Feake's stepdaughter, Martha Johanna Winthrop. He moved in "because my father [Feake] being distracted I might be a help" to his mother-in-law, who despite Robert's illness was pregnant with her sixth Child, Sarah. (Or perhaps it was because of Robert's illness?) About this time, there appeared on the scene William Hallett, who soon moved in with Elizabeth and took over the running of the Feake property. In March 1647 Robert suddenly made over his land and half his cash to his wife and Hallett and left Greenwich. On the same day that Elizabeth's child was baptized in New Amsterdam, 14 April 1647, the Feakes were divorced on the grounds of her adultery.
We next hear of Feake in Boston in 1647 bound for London, expressing apprehension about "how God would deal with him in England." In March of 1650 Robert Feake was issued with a pardon by the House of Commons, possibly for his taking an oath of allegiance to what had now become a hostile power. He was back in the new world by September 1650, but by then his mind had completely given way. His neighbors recalled him at this time as a man "whose God-fearing heart was so absorbed with spiritual and heavenly things, that he little thought of the things of this life and took neither heed nor care of what tended to his external property. We moreover considered him as a man so unsettled and troubled in his understanding and brain, that although he was, at times, better settled than at others, nevertheless in his last years and about the time he agreed with his wife respecting the division of their temporal property, he was not a man of any wisdom or capable of acting understandingly like any other man in a matter regarding his own benefit, profit and advantage. In like manner, we testify that he as yet on all occasions exhibited a more than ordinary respect towards ... his wife [Elizabeth], and that he in our opinion was easily to be seduced by her to do whatever she wished than what was wise and reasonable in the opinion of a man who was compos sui, and as we say his own man."
Thereafter "he became melancholy, and about fourteen days after was seriously ill, headstrong and crazy." While his wife, later romanticized as Anya Seton's "Winthrop Woman," made a questionable marriage with Hallett, sought refuge in New London, and then settled at Hellgate on Long Island, poor deranged Robert Feake somehow ended up in Watertown. There he was cared for until his death at the age of sixty in February 1663. By early 1660 his distress had become unmanageable, and Capt. Hugh Mason, chairman of the board of selectmen, and Deacon Ephraim child were deputed to "go to him, and use their discretion in words to the moderating of him in his disorder." He died in the care of Deacon Thatcher, next door to his original lot granted in 1630. The town petitioned the county court on 6 October 1663 for £8 from his estate to defray "entertainment" and £3.14.0 for Feake's funeral. Over the previous thirteen years £90 had been disbursed from town funds; they had not first spent all of Feake's assets because "if something [of his estate] had not been spared such as he might call his own, it would have been further destruction of his mind." The residue of his property consisted of "one suit and cloak and an old jacket, two old coats ... some other old clothes ... one Bible, three books... valued in all at ₤.9.2d."
3. The following partial excerpt concerning this individual is from the biography of Jeffrey Ferris in the "Great Migration" book. These are highly reliable summaries of early pre-1636 colonists and the entire biography can be read in Jeffrey's notes:
"Jeffrey Ferris...
Estate: ...On 25 November 1650, "William Hallet of Grenwich" sold to "Jeffere Ferris & his heirs, all his housing & lands in Grenwich, his whole right & title, & his wife's right also, in the lands purchased by Daniell Pattrick & Robert Feke in the New Netherlands, the parcels of lands that William Hallet doth own" are a house lot, "a piece of salt meadow of five acres more or less, also upland by the side of it on Elizabeth Neck, also the half of the land in the said Elizabeth Neck that is not already given out, both upland & meadow, also six acres of meadow, more or less, with a piece of upland by it ..., also a piece of upland in consideration of the ox pasture Goodman Sherwood did & should take in, ... also a piece of upland & meadow on Myanos Neck that was William Hallett his particular lot" [Greenwich LR 1:169]. (On 18 July 1640, Robert Feake and Daniel Patrick purchased from several Indians land that would become Greenwich; an annotation of unknown date to this deed states that "Keofrum hath sold all his right in the abovesaid neck unto Jeffere Ferris [Greenwich LR 1:455].)..."
4. FHL book 974.44/W5 H2t "Divided We Stand - Watertown, Massachusetts, 1630-1680," by Roger Thompson [Amherst], pp. 42-48:
"In 1634, the start of the second stage of town government, the Watertown records begin, and recapturing the running of town business becomes easier. In that year the town had three selectmen: Ensign William Jennison; Mr. Brian Pendleton, a merchant from London; and John Eddy, one of the Boxted congregation who had accompanied Phillips's Company to the new world. Richard Brown was first representative to the General Court, with Jennison and Lt. Robert Feake. When responsibility for land allocation was localized in 1636, the board of selectmen was expanded to eleven. It stayed at this level until 1639, when it rose to twelve, dropping back to nine in 1642. By the time the interrupted minutes restart in book 2 (1647), the board had steadied at seven. With few exceptions, it held to that number for the rest of the century.
The fourfold expansion of the board in 1636 may have been a move toward opening up leadership to a wider group. There certainly seems to have been a conscious attempt to involve new men in the board each year. For the year 1636 eight of the eleven "prudential men" were inevitably new, but next year six other new names appear, and the following year seven. After the elections for 1639, when four new men were chosen (including two subsequent record-breaking selectmen Hugh Mason and Thomas Hastings), experimentation tailed off. Twenty-eight householders had served on the town executive by the end of 1640; suitable candidates were probably running out.
Another factor, however, was behind changes of personnel after 1638. In that year the members of the eleven-man board had provoked popular outrage by granting themselves farms. Several were driven from office, and it took years to restore their reputations. The town had exerted its authority over its self-serving selectmen for the first, but not for the last, time.
Despite the liberal appearance of this rolling cycle of town leaders, there was, even by 1640, an inner group who were reelected again and again; Jennison, Pendleton, Richard Brown, the town surveyor Abraham Brown, Thomas Mayhew (first elected in 1637), the surgeon Simon Eyre, Elder Edward Howe, and Lt. Robert Feake. What these men had in common was status. All were entitled to the honorific "Mr.," and two were commissioned officers. Several had mercantile backgrounds: Jennison, trading with the Chesapeake and Bermuda (where he had previously lived); Pendleton and Feake, land speculators from London business families; and Mayhew, a Southampton trader and agent for London merchant Matthew Craddock, who had invested in Watertown mill and weir. Richard Brown had owned a wherry, or river barge, in London and lived in the commercial borough of Southwark on the south bank of the Thames. The merchants Mayhew, Feake, Pendleton, and Jennison were a decade younger than the remainder of the core group, who all were East Anglians aged over fifty.
The missing records between 1634 and 1647 prevent precision, but at some point in the mid-1640s, all of the early core group disappeared. This complete turnover had several causes. Some established selectmen died. Some fell ill. A scandal blighted one volatile career. On 7 March 1643 "Mr. Richard Brown being questioned for unmeet and filthy dalliances with Sarah now wife of Thomas Boylston, for want of full evidence, they were dismissed with an admonition." Brown was never again elected to the Watertown board.
The commonest reason for this wholesale change was that members of the first core group moved elsewhere. Eyre the surgeon moved to a larger clientele in Boston; merchants Busby, Clark, Payne, and Pendleton to growing ports and fisheries. Others sought fresh starts: Mayhew, near financial ruin, on Martha's Vineyard with its agricultural and fishing potential; and Patrick, discharged and sexually compromised in Watertown, to new settlement down the coast. The Feakes, already restless, went with him. Jennison, Biscoe, and Pastor Knowles joined the remigrators attracted by the exciting potential of the godly republic in England.
Apart from such personal reasons for departure, what most leavers shared was outsider status in the predominantly East Anglian town. All except Eyre (who kept his Watertown holdings when he moved across the Charles) and possibly Jennison came from what is known in the eastern counties as "away." They had not intermarried with the East Anglians. They might have had social status, wealth, broad horizons, and administrative experience, but they were strangers to the Suffolk-Essex core of Watertown residents.
The small core group who replaced them on the board were no strangers. The four men who were henceforward reelected time and again to town office were Suffolk men Thomas Hastings and Ephraim child and Essex men Hugh Mason and John Sherman. All first entered office between 1639 and 1642, and after their executive apprenticeship, one or another of them was usually the first-named selectman, presumably the year's chairman. They were not just selectmen either but held multiple offices. Mason and Sherman were militia officers, Hastings and child deacons. All brought specialist skills to the town's service.
The "board revolution" was complete in 1644, when two other regulars, Richard Beers and Michael Bairstow, were first elected selectmen. Beers was a leading militiaman whose origins are unknown. The Yorkshireman Bairstow had moved into Watertown in 1641 or 1642 as the new husband of the widow Carver, an East Anglian by affinity. Several other men joined the six regulars as occasional recruits to the board: Sergeant (and later Deacon) Henry Bright, Ensign Thomas Bartlett, Deacon Simon Stone, Charles Chadwick, and Deacon Samuel Thatcher. The origins of the last two are unknown; the first three were East Anglians.
The apparent continuities in government of the regulars between the 1640s and the 1670s and the pool of occasional recruits to the board have convinced several scholars that Watertown had come to be ruled by a tight and persistent East Anglian oligarchy. Setting aside the significant minority of selectmen not from East Anglia, this conclusion is still seriously misleading. Mason, Sherman, child, and Hastings did not have things entirely their own way. Outrage against cronyism in 1638 had been a warning shot. The upsets of the 1640s and 1650s, discussed elsewhere, demonstrated voter rejection of unresponsive executives; those of the 1660s left them in no doubt about who were the ultimate masters in the town.
In the early 1660s town government was become increasingly casual and incompetent. Elected officials were failing to do their jobs properly. The rot seems to have set in most seriously in 1662 and 1663. In January 1662 there was a routine town meeting at which officials were elected, including Ephraim child as town clerk. One selectmen's meeting is recorded in March, then there is a blank page and another misordered page. In January 1663 only five, instead of the normal seven, selectmen were elected: the usual gang of Mason, Beers, and Hastings, joined by William Bond, step-nephew of Ephraim Child, and Nathaniel Treadway. No town clerk was named, though child was close to death; there were no town accounts included in the most perfunctory annual records. The selectmen met only three times and were insolently rebuffed by a young man behind in his rates to the pastor. In December the accounts of the constable Roger Wellington were so unsatisfactory that Beers and Bond were deputed to "deal with him," presenting him to the grand jury if necessary. Something was rotten in the state of Watertown.
The town meeting of 4 February 1664 began the cleansing process. The choice of selectmen represented a virtual clean sweep. Mason, Beers, Hastings, and Bond were out, and nine men were elected in their place. Treadway alone was reelected. He was joined by Joseph Tainter. The two of them for the next three years were the shakers and movers of the town's executive. Their board colleagues were new or newly returned to favor. Tainter and Treadway were slightly younger than Mason and Hastings, but the average age of the new nine-man board was not a major factor of change...
Two years later, local sovereignty of the inhabitants was asserted with devastating directness: "Whereas the selectmen affirm that they are the town and their orders shall stand, we humbly [submit] that according to law title Township 75, 76, that the power of making orders belongs to the inhabitants that are there allowed to act, and where selectmen [are] chosen by the town to act in prudential affairs yet they are to act according to instructions given them in writing by the inhabitants, but in this case it is not so and therefore their orders will not stand by law and these [orders] are not to be submitted to."
Another snub was delivered in 1671 with the summoning of a special town meeting in December. The selectmen, including Mason, Tainter, and Treadway, by now elite figures themselves, had appointed a committee of leading figures - Mason, in the chair, Beers, Hastings (lately embroiled in a bruising and embarrassing paternity suit), Sherman, and Bond among them - to find a solution to the renewed problem of cattle herding. They drew up new regulations, but "these not agreeing to the satisfaction of the town," the meeting chose three outside arbiters instead. On difficult and contentious questions, the "establishment" of the town could not rely on its prestige and authority to impose its solution.
During the 1670s the names of the men regularly chosen by the town for a generation to administer the day-to-day business of this farming community are seen less frequently in the records or disappear. Michael Bairstow died in 1674, Captain Richard Beers, ambushed by Indians, in 1675, and Hugh Mason in 1678. John Sherman, usually very active about town business in the late 1660s, may have been "deselected" by his constituents, he may have gone off to sulk in his tent, or he may have suffered ill-health or injury. Deacon Thomas Hastings similarly slips into the shadows for much of the 1670s, eclipsed by the joint tragedies that struck his family around the turn of the decade. Nathaniel Treadway simply retired at the age of sixty-five in 1675, though his fellow terrier Joseph Tainter remained active up to 1680. He could induct and guide the new generation that was taking over, sons of the founders or adolescent arrivals coming into their prime. The town gave them a taste of office, and if the householders approved their performance, they returned them regularly to the board...
Selectmen needed energy and authority too. It can be no coincidence that so many regulars were either church or militia officers, or both. Indeed church and trained band may have provided their leaders with organized support. Status and wealth were usually important qualifications, though wealth was not essential and did not of itself guarantee office. Some regular choices were not that rich, and some rich townsmen were only rarely given responsibility. One of the richest, Thomas Hammond, never held any town office. He lacked that other vital prerequisite, age. He was a mere thirty-seven when he died, and his father was still alive."
5. "The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record," 86(1955):132-148, 209-221, "The Feake Family of Norfolk, London, and Colonial America," by George E. McCracken:
"Midway across the north coast of Norfolk lies the Hundred of North Greenhoe and in it, about three miles south of the sea, the parish, sometime manor, of Wighton in which the Feake family, as early as 1435, is found numerously settled. That this family reached prominence only after certain of its sons migrated to London in the sixteenth century and there became prosperous goldsmiths is evident from the complete absence of the surname from the "Visitations of Norfolk in 1563, 1589, and 1613" (Harleian Society, vol. 32), the "Visitations of Norfolk in 1664" (ibid. vol. 81; Norfolk Record Society, vols. 4-5), and Walter Rye's great work, "Norwich Families" (Norwich, 1913). The London branch of the family is represented in the records of colonial America by Henry Feake of Lynn, Sandwich, and Flushing (no. 46); by Henry's second cousin, Lieutenant Robert Feake of Watertown, Dedham, and Greenwich (no. 49); by Robert's niece Judith, wife successively, of William Palmer, Jeffrey Ferris, and John Bowers (no. 87); and by Judith's brother, Captain Tobias Feake, R.N., of Flushing (no. 88).
Since extensive and on the whole accurate accounts of the American careers of the three men were long ago printed by the late John J. Latting in "The Record," vol. II, beginning with page 12, we here turn our attention rather to the English ancestry of these four colonists which Mr. Latting was unable to identify, though he gathered some useful material on the subject.
The wills, parish registers, and other ancillary sources normally used for such a study as this, have in the present instance been augmented by framework derived from the following seventeenth-century pedigrees, none of which is at all complete, though they fit together with a minimum of inconsistency: (a) a pedigree made in 1623 for Edward Feake, son of William and grandson of James Feake of Wighton, published by Joseph Jackson Howard, ed., "Visitacon of Surry Made Ao. 1623, by Samuel Thompson, Windsor Herauld, and Augustyne Vincent, Rougcroix (London, no date), p.7; (b) the same pedigree with additions dating from 1667 taken from Harleian MS 1430, fol. 50, printed in the Surrey Archaeological Collections 6:310 f.; (c) a pedigree made in 1634 for John Feake, son of John, grandson of Simon, and great-grandson of the aforesaid James Feake of Wighton, contained in the Visitation of London in 1634 (Harleian Society 15:268); (d) a version of the preceding, dated 1664, taken by Mr. Latting from Harleian MS 1096, fol. 119, and, so far as we are aware, now in print only in "The Record,"11:13; (e) a partial pedigree continuing the two preceding, to be found in the "Visitation of Staffordshire 1663-4" (Staffordshire Record Society 5:126 f.); and (f) a variant of the last included in Gregory King's Staffordshire Pedigrees 1680-1700" (Harleian Society 63:85). See also John Ross Delafield, "Delafield the Family History" (privately printed, 1945), 2:540-6, appendix 16 on Feake; and Charles E. Banks, Manuscripts in the Rare Book Room, Library of Congress, folio vol. DG, p. 433. Considerable information has been generously made available by Messrs. John Insley Coddington and Clarence Almon Torrey; from the latter, especially, many items discovered by Colonel Banks but not included in the volume cited above...
Lieutenant Robert1 Feake, second son of James Feake (no. 32) by wife Judith Thomas, is mentioned as such in the wills of his maternal grandfather in 1610 and of his paternal grandmother in 1619, and he was apprenticed to his father, James Feake, citizen and goldsmith of London, for the term of eight years beginning on Sept. 21, 1615. This would suggest that he was born in 1602, perhaps even on Sept. 20 of that year. It is under his name that the Feake arms have recently been registered in the American Roll of Arms (New England Historical and Genealogical Register 107:269).
Colonel Banks ("The Winthrop Fleet of 1630," p. 69) says he came to America with that fleet, and, if he did not, he must have arrived soon afterwards, for he requested to be made freeman on Oct. 19, 1630, and was accepted May 18, 1631. John Winthrop's "Journal" (1:83, under date of Jan. 27, 1631/2) states that a certain hill - in that part of Watertown afterwards Waltham - was named for Robert Feake who had married the governor's daughter-in-law.
She was Elizabeth Fones, born Jan. 21, 1609/10 at Groton, England, daughter of the London apothecary, Thomas Fones, by his wife Ann Winthrop who was sister to Governor John' Winthrop, and she had married, first, on April 25, 1629, in England, her first cousin, Henry2 Winthrop, son of Governor John1 Winthrop by his wife Mary Forth (Muskett's "Suffolk Manorial Families "1:26, 87). Henry Winthrop did not accompany his father to America in 1629 but followed him on the Talbott, arriving at Salem on July 2, 1630. On the same day, seeing a small boat across a bay he attempted to swim over to it but, being seized by cramps was drowned in full sight of his friends, none of whom was able to swim. The young widow was still in England, having given birth on May 9, 1630, to a daughter who was christened with a double name, Martha Johanna, unusual for this period. Faced with the prospect of having ultimately to support his widowed daughter-in-law and her child, the thrifty governor naturally looked about for a suitable candidate to be her second husband, and when his eye lighted upon a young man of pious character, goodly estate, and great promise, the future governor William Coddington, he attempted to interest him in the widow. Shortly afterwards William Coddington went to England and visited the widow but he married, instead, another. Thus Elizabeth was still a widow when, on Nov. 2, 1631, she arrived in the Bay with her daughter as passengers on the ship Lyon. In less than three months, however, she had found her second husband, Robert Feake, and had married him.
Henry Winthrop's daughter Martha Johanna grew up in the Feake household and, though she was not of robust health, about 1647 she married one Thomas Lyon, b. ca. 1621, died at Greenwich, Conn., in 1690, on whom see the Lyon Memorial (Detroit, 1907, 2:28-37). Lyon's correspondence with the Winthrops is also printed in the "Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society" 2:6:1-20, and is highly important for the subsequent history of the Feakes. Thomas and Martha Johanna (Winthrop) Lyon had two children, the first of whom apparently died very young as we hear no more of it, but the second was a daughter Mary, born shortly before Sept. 2, 1649, aet. 6 months on Jan. 23, 1649/50. Mary married, first, Joseph Stedwell of Rye, and second, John Wilson of Bedford and Rye (D. L. Jacobus, "Families of Old Fairfield" 1:394 f.). The Stedwell children were Mary, Joseph, Martha, and Johanna; the Wilson Children: Martha Johanna, Roger, John Winthrop, Susanna, Samuel, and Thomas. Martha Johanna (Winthrop) Lyon died ca. 1654, and her widower married, second, Mary Hoyt, daughter of Simon Hoyt and had a family by her (Jacobus, op. cit. 1:294, 394).
Robert and Elizabeth Feake and their family may have lived for a time in Boston but soon moved to Watertown. Elizabeth's double relationship to the governor of the colony was naturally sufficient to insure that, if Robert had any abilities, he would get a chance to demonstrate them, so we are not surprised to discover that on Sept. 4, 1632, he was made lieutenant under Captain Daniel Patrick of Watertown, of whom we shall hear much at a later point ("Records of Massachusetts Bay" I:99), and on Sept. 3, 1634, was on a committee to prepare fortifications (ibid. 1:124). From 1634 to 1636 he was a member of the General Court and in the latter year is first clearly recorded at Watertown. His land there is listed as totalling 200 acres in nine parcels ("Watertown Records" 1:4, 7, 8, 11, 17, 19, 71). He was elected selectman of Watertown in 1636 and 1638 but not in 1637. Before the first term was out, he had apparently moved to Dedham where his name is the first on the Covenant ("Dedham Town Records" 1:3) and where he was present at four town council meetings between Aug. 29, 1636, and Jan. 28, 1636/7. His house and farm lot at Dedham are mentioned on Aug. 11, 1637, but he resigned the right to these on Sept. 21, 1638, and to all his Dedham property on Nov. 23, 1638. In 1639 he was back at Watertown, a gentleman, when he signed the power of attorney discussed in the sketch of his brother, but at this time he was doubtless preparing to move elsewhere, for his Watertown homestead is recorded as belonging next to Thomas Bright who sold it again to Colonel William Rainsborough as early as Dec. 17, 1640.
On July 18, 1640, Daniel Patrick and Robert Feake obtained from the Indians a deed conveying the site of Greenwich, Conn., and doubtless intended this to be an English settlement, but Greenwich was so close to the Dutch at New Amsterdam that these two Englishmen - Patrick, as will be seen, had married a Dutch wife in Holland ten years before - were forced to submit to the Dutch authority and became patroons of Greenwich. At what date Robert Feake first exhibited signs of the insanity which clouded his later years we do not know, but it is perhaps significant that the very act of submission to the Dutch, dated April 9, 1642, was signed by Patrick and, in the absence and illness of her husband, by Elizabeth Feake ("Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society" 2:6:1-20; "Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York" 2:144). It may well be that the illness was mental, even at this early date. Insanity had been present in the Feake family in the preceding generation. Robert's aunt, Mary (Feake) Barnham (no. 30) was a lunatic for at least twenty years, and it may be that Robert had inherited the taint. If so, these are the only two instances of mental illness discovered in the family.
Testimony was later given in court by John Bishop, Richard Lawe, and Francis Bell (quoted in extenso by Mr. Latting), that Robert Feake "was a man whose God-fearing heart was so absorbed with spiritual and heavenly things that he little thought of the things of this life, and took neither heed nor care of what was tendered to his external property," and so allowed his wife to dominate him. Bishop also added that Feake had lived with him and during this period went to Greenwich and there made an agreement contrary to what Bishop and his wife thought reasonable. It may well be that his mental instability was a partial cause of his wife's looking elsewhere for manly protection, or the fact that his wife did not take her marital vows very seriously may have contributed to his mental downfall: at this late date we cannot be sure which. Certain it is that for many years before his death Robert was unable to manage his own affairs and that he made some sort of arrangement with William Hallett to care for them, though we have not been able to lay our hands on the instrument which made the arrangement effective. There is, however, on record a letter in which John2 Winthrop expressed his satisfaction with the way in which Hallett discharged these duties, but it would be too much to say that this letter expresses any approval of the relationship between Hallett and Elizabeth, as some have tried to maintain that it does.
Secondary sources also claim that during the lifetime of Daniel Patrick, who was assassinated by a soldier at Greenwich in 1644, that worthy had conducted an illicit love affair with Elizabeth Feake. The source usually cited is Winthrop's "Journal" but my friend, G. Andrews Moriarty [page faded] unexpurgated edition of the Journal, informs me that though Patrick's "folly" is recorded, there is no mention of Elizabeth Feake as the partner. The old governor would, naturally, have been loath to record any fault of his niece and erstwhile daughter-in-law, though he was quite willing to set down in gross detail the follies of others.
In any case, Robert Feake would appear to have returned to the Boston area and in 1647 he went back to England, for what reason does not appear, though the departure was undertaken suddenly. On March 4, 1649/50, the House of Commons took action pardoning a Robert Feake for some unstated offense ("The Record"11:16), and our Robert Feake is the only man of the name known to us who could be involved. We can only guess that the reason for the pardon was that as he was patroon of a Dutch town some question had been raised as to his loyalty to the British crown or to the Commonwealth which had by then usurped the authority of the crown, and that this vote of the House cleared him.
When Thomas Lyon married Martha Johanna Winthrop about this time, he seems to have expected, as one of the delights brought by matrimony, to get the right to serve as manager of the estate of her stepfather and was deeply disappointed when Hallett supplanted him. Thus, on April 14, 1648, he wrote to his wife's grandfather, Governor John1 Winthrop, a remarkable letter (see the correspondence cited above) in which he unburdened himself about the unhappy situation then existing in the Feake household. He refers to "my father being distracted" [i.e., Feake's mental difficulties], "my father Feake going away sodingly," and boldly accuses his mother-in-law of adultery: "she openly confesses that she is married to him [William Hallett] and is with child." However much we may impute to Thomas Lyon unworthy motives in making this accusation, or explain his attitude as only an acute case of the natural antipathy which some men feel towards their mothers-in-law, it is certain that Elizabeth must have been pregnant at the time, for she gave birth, probably towards the end of 1648/9, to a child thereafter known as William Hallett. The child's name precludes the possibility that in Elizabeth's defense any one might suggest that this was Robert Feake's Child, conceived before Robert's departure from Greenwich at an unknown date. The child was admittedly Hallett's, not Feake's. Moreover, included in the Lyon correspondence cited above, there is a letter dated Feb. 12, 1649 [i.e., 1648/9], addressed to her cousin and erstwhile brother-in-law, Governor John2 Winthrop, which is signed by Elizabeth as Elizabeth Hallett, and also letters from Hallett to the same person whom he calls kinsman, thereby abundantly making it clear that William Hallett and Elizabeth claimed to be husband and wife, this, though her second and also currently legal husband, Robert Feake, was certainly not dead at the time.
For reasons quite understandable it has been claimed by descendants of William Hallett that a legal divorce had been granted to Elizabeth from Robert Feake and that Elizabeth had then married, as, it would be, her third husband, William Hallett. We have searched for primary records to support this claim in the extant archives of the three jurisdictions where the couple resided, namely, New Netherland [faded page] one secondary source which even purports to cite a primary source. The primary source cited is a document still extant at the State Library in Albany, namely, New York Colonial Manuscripts, volume 4, page 365. This exists in the original Dutch form and also in an English translation made in the nineteenth century by the late Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan, "New York Colonial Manuscripts" (translation), volume 4, page 365, and is of two pages in the English version. We have taken the trouble to obtain photostats of both versions. The English translation begins with the following words: "Whereas Elizabeth Feax has for adultery been legally divorced from her former husband Robert Feax, before our arrival, by the preceding Director General and Council..." At first sight these words would appear to prove that a divorce had been granted to Robert Feake from his wife Elizabeth on the grounds of adultery, this before the departure of Governor William Kieft from New Netherland. Inasmuch, however, as the sentence is taken from a translation made about two centuries after the fact, we must appeal to the original document itself. In this case the Dutch original is not only extant but is better preserved than the English translation, and is written in a fine, clear hand which presents no difficulties to an experienced reader. The words translated by "legally divorced" are "wettelyck gescheyden." The adverb gives no trouble and has been correctly translated but at least it can be said that the participle, if not wrongly rendered by Dr. O'Callaghan, can be rendered differently. We consult K. Ten Bruggencate's "Engelsch Woordenboek," 12th edition revised by A. Broers (Groningen, etc., preface dated 1932), which contains both an English-Dutch and a Dutch-English section in separate volumes. Part I, page 207, lists the English word "divorce" and gives the Dutch equivalent of the noun as "(echt)scheiden" and for the verb "scheiden." The latter word, of which we have the participle in the phrase under discussion, really means, as reference to the same dictionary, Part II, page 685, shows, "separate" in any sense but when used of married people can mean "divorce." That is, it so means in the twentieth century and probably so meant in the nineteenth when O'Callaghan worked. Did it also mean this in the seventeenth century? Or was it used in this document in the more general and at any rate original sense, i.e., "separate." Note that the scrivener found it necessary to add the word "wettelyck." This court proceeding is called a legal one. Now all divorces are legal in that a court proceeding must precede dissolution of a marriage. Not all separations, however, are legal. We think it certainly possible that what happened to the Feakes was a court proceeding whereby they were legally separated but not divorced. Care was taken by the court to protect Feake's property in his own interest and that of his children, but that did not mean that either party to this marriage was now free to marry again.
If it be argued that we are wrong in our interpretation and that O'Callaghan's rendering of the phrase is perfectly correct, we wish to point out a fact which corroborates our interpretation. Let us assume that a divorce was really granted and that the marriage was completely dissolved. Then the former wife was in a position to marry again, yet she did not do so, despite the fact that she was twice put under severe persecution for adultery, as we shall see. If a divorce has been granted, and one of the parties is then accused of adultery, the easiest way out of the difficulty is for the accused person to point to the fact that he or she has been married again, subsequent to the divorce. Whether William and Elizabeth ever were married at all we do not know, but it is absolutely certain that on both March 9, 1649 [i.e., 1648/9] and on May 17, 1649, they had not yet been married to each other, since documents bearing those dates, shortly to be quoted in full, show them as persecuted by, respectively, the Dutch and the Connecticut authorities for continued adultery. If Robert and Elizabeth had been legally divorced in the full modern sense and then William and Elizabeth had been married, no one but a lunatic would fail to appeal to these two facts in order to cause the persecution to cease. Yet they did not make such an appeal but in each instance resorted to flight from the persecuting jurisdiction. We conclude, therefore, that Elizabeth was not free to marry. We have not overlooked the possibility that under the canon law existing in the Reformed Dutch Church in New Netherland, a divorce may have been permitted without granting to the guilty party, certainly in this case Elizabeth, the right to marry again, and should anyone who reads this be expert in the Reformed Dutch canon law, we should be most happy to be informed of the facts. Even so, we are confident that Elizabeth was not free to remarry and that no divorce in the modern sense had taken place.
We now transcribe Dr. O'Callaghan's translation, revised by us in the light of the foregoing:
"Whereas Elizabeth Feax has for adultery been legally separated from her former husband Robbert Feax, before our arrival, by the preceding Director General and Council, and since that time continued to live, cohabit and keep company with her pal and adulterer in a carnal manner, as the witnesses declare, contrary to all good laws and our published order, and endeavored with him to alienate, sell and to transfer the lands, cattle, furniture and other property of her former husband Robbert Feex, left to his four children, even to others who reside beyond our government, whereby the children finally impoverished, would become a charge either on the Company, or on this Commonalty. This cannot be either suffered or tolerated, in a good and well regulated government. Therefore we do hereby, as well for the maintenance of justice as for the protection of the still minor children, and fatherless orphans, declare the above named Elizabeth Feax unqualified and incapable of disposing, alienating, transferring or selling any property, whether of her former husband, or belonging to the children; and although deserving of much severer castigation and punishment, yet through special favor & for private reasons us thereunto moving, we consent to her living and residing at Greenwich, within our government with the children, under such Curators as we have already appointed, or hereafter for the future may appoint, to be supported out of funds that have been left and yet on the condition that she remain herself apart from him on pain of bodily punishment as we do hereby sentence and condemn William Hallet, the adulterer, to remain banished out of this our jurisdiction and entrusted government, and do depart therefrom within one month from date, and not to molest or trouble anyone within our government on pain of corporal punishment; furthermore condemning his pretended property to be forfeit for the benefit and advantage of the child begotten on her, on condition that travelling expences be allowed him at the discretion of the director and council, and that he, moreover, pay the costs of this suit. Thus done in Council in Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland, the 9th March 1649" [i.e., 1648/9].
The only answer the unhappy couple made to the order was to flee from Dutch territory to the jurisdiction of Connecticut, where at New London, John2 Winthrop then was.
Here, despite the powerful protection of the great name of Winthrop, the long arm of Connecticut justice attempted to reach them. Under date of May 17, 1649, the "Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut" 1:186 contain the following:
"Whereas, It is now come to the certeine intelligence of this Courte, that one Hallitt, with one that was Mr. Pheax his wife, are now come into and hues in the Plantation of Pequett [New London], and (as is concieued) hath committed in other places, so hues at this present, in that fowle sin of adultery, wch is odious to God and man, and therefore this Courte cannott but take notice of it; It is therefore ordered, that there bee a warrant directed to the Constable of the same Towne, to aprhend the said partyes, and to bring them vpp to the next perticular Courte in Hartford, wch will bee vppon the first Thursday of the next month; and the Governor is desired to write to Mr. Wenthrope and acquaint him with it." The records of the Particular Court contain no further reference to this case: instead of answering the charges and producing evidence that what was presumed to be adultery was no adultery at all, a divorce and third marriage having taken place, the couple fled to Long Island, this time on Cousin Feake's boat. This cousin was really Robert Feake's nephew Tobias Feake (no. 88), and he was a resident of Flushing where, afterwards if not already, he was schout. We have found no evidence of how William Hallett and his "wife" Elizabeth finally made their peace with the authorities. It may be that Tobias Feake was sufficiently important in the affairs of Flushing to protect them and make some sort of arrangement with the Dutch to prevent further persecution, but if so, we have found no trace. It may be that, as Mr. Torrey has suggested, William Hallett and Elizabeth were actually married after Robert Feake's death in order to legitimatize their two children, but at the time of the flight from New London nearly twelve years of Robert Feake's unhappy life remained.
If it be argued that, despite the failure of the two culprits to produce evidence of the divorce in court on two separate occasions, such a divorce had taken place in New Haven Colony, near Greenwich, we may quote a letter written to John2 Winthrop by Governor Theophilus Eaton on July 21, 1648: "It is possible that William Hallett and she that was Mr Feakes his wife, are marryed; though not only the lawfullness and validitie of such a marriage but the reallity and truth is by some questioned" ("Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society" 4:6:368). Governor Eaton obviously knew of no legal divorce.
There is also on record ("Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York" 4:116 f.) a letter written to Director General Stuyvesant by Robert Heusted, Richard Crabb, Thomas Sherwood, and John Coo, dated Sept. 18, 1649, new stille, in which allusion is frequent to this unhappy triangle as Mr. Feke, Mr. Hallet, Mrs. Feke, and Mrs. Hallet. The reader unacquainted with the facts might suppose that four persons are meant, instead of three. The nineteenth-century editor of this volume was doubtless squeamish about some of the statements in the letter for he appears to have made excisions, as the use of asterisks shows.
To the documents already cited in which Elizabeth signs as Elizabeth Hallett, we must now add one of a different character. There is on record in Greenwich Town Records 1:168 a deed dated Nov. 25, 1650 (cited in "Lyon Memorial" 3:275) in which William Hallett of Greenwich in New Netherland for 3 score and 10 pounds sells to Jeffere Ferris as his own and wife's right also ye lands purchased by Daniel Patrick and Robert Feke in New Netherland, and this is signed by William Hallet and Elizabeth Hallet. This is not a private letter but a public document and it was recorded by the town clerk of Greenwich who must have been in position to know the validity of the Halletts' claim to be owners of the property sold, even if not well acquainted also with the family history then only two or three years past. Moreover, as the grantor was William Hallet of Greenwich in New Netherland, not of Flushing, the pair must, by 1650, have returned to Greenwich.
Finally, much later, on Nov. 10, 1659, but still during the lifetime of Robert Feake, his nephew Tobias Feake instituted action against William Hallett concerning a debt of his uncle, to be paid by William Hallet, and Solomon LaChair, the notary, recorded this in his Notarial Papers ("Holland Society Year Book" 1900, p.140): "Said Robbert Feeke had been living at Greenwich near Stanfort and his wife [sic] had married William Hallet." The careful notary knew the facts and used the proper word advisedly.
On William Hallett, see Delafield, op. cit., 2:484, appendix 3 and chart; also pp. 960-2. The chart shows that Elizabeth Fones bore to William Hallett two sons, the first: William (1647-1729) who married Sarah Wooley (born 1650). William's birth date conflicts with the baptismal date of the last Feake child in that year. Moreover, by Lyon's testimony, Elizabeth was pregnant on April 14, 1648, so we date the birth of this William in the fall of 1648. The other son Samuel appears on the chart with the dates 1686-1724 but the correct date of birth, as shown later in the volume, is 1652, as Samuel died on Dec. 27, 1724, in his 73rd year (Riker, "Annals of Newtown," p.405).
Elizabeth (Fones) (Winthrop) (Feake) Hallett must have died before 1669, for by that year William Hallett had a wife Susanna, perhaps born Booth, and certainly the widow previously of William Thorne ("Second Annual Report of the New York State Historian," 393, 403). On their matrimonial troubles see "Third Annual Report of the New York State Historian" 2:182, 252-4, 257, 323, 403; "The Record,"53:18. His third wife was named Katharine and the fourth was Rebecca, widow of John Baylies or Bayliss of Jamaica, and this fourth marriage took place before Oct. 5, 1693, when they signed a power of attorney (Suffolk County, New York, Deeds A-98). He died in 1706.
Robert Feake, upon his return from England, may have lived again for a time in Greenwich but in any case, he ultimately went back to Watertown where he died on Feb. 1, 1660/i1, according to the Watertown Records - the date has been given variously by several writers, and it is barely possible that the year is too early by one or two years, as the final accounting was late in 1663 (see below). At his death he had been living on the town for over five years and perhaps longer. On Jan. 9, 1659/60, the good selectmen of Watertown wearied of paying for the care of their once distinguished guest, whom the clerk still invariably recorded with respect as Mr. Feak, despite his pathetic state, and appointed "Capt masan & Ephraim child to get him to moderate in his disorder" ("Watertown Records" 1:64), but psychiatry was as yet unknown in New England and doubtless the committee failed in its mission. Samuel Thacher was paid for his care the following sums: £4/10 on Oct. 31, 1655, £7/16 on March 10, 1657/8, and again on Jan. 8, 1660/1 the same sum, the final item being as follows: "Samuel Thatcher the 29/10/63 [i.e., Dec. 29, 1663] for all charges about Mr. Feakes both Liueing and dead and vpon assigneing of Mr. Feaks Estate [which, though very small, included a Bible] to him only 1/1/0 excepted hee Doth remaine Debtor to the Towne 16-9d" (ibid. 43, 59, 71, 73, 76). A pathetic ending for one who began life as the son and grandson of wealthy London goldsmiths.
Lawrence Buckley Thomas, "The Thomas Book" (1896), p. 556, attributes the sons Robert and John to a wife earlier than Elizabeth Fones, but there is no evidence for such a marriage and clear proof that they were children of Elizabeth. In "The New England Historical and Genealogical Register" 17:112 is a chart of the Field family compiled by Osgood Field which wrongly attributes the daughters Hannah and Elizabeth to that family, and this is copied by Frederick C. Pierce, "The Field Genealogy" (Chicago, 1901) I:91. See also Delafield, op. cit. 2:650; Mary Powell Bunker, Long Island Genealogies (Albany, 1895) pp. 202 f.; Milton Rubincam, "New England Historical and Genealogical Register" 103:246 f. Children: 5:
i. Elizabeth2, b. Ca. 1633, probably at Watertown, Mass.; first child in Latting's list, fourth in the 1667 pedigree; m., as second wife, Capt. John1 Underhill, noted Indian fighter, b. ca. 1597, d. Sept. 21, 1672, son of John and Honor or Lenora (Pawley) Underhill, on whom see Josephine C. Frost, "Underhill Genealogy" (1932), especially Feake-Hallett notes (1:45); "Dictionary of National Biography" 20:31; "Dictionary of American Biography" 19:110 f.; Mary Powell Bunker, op. cit. 296-8. He married, first, Dec. 12, 1628, Helena de Hooch, who died in 1658, having had at least one son and two daughters. Elizabeth died ca. 1675, at which time administration was granted to John2 Underhill, her stepson, on Nov. 4, 1675, in the estate of his father Capt. John Underhill of Killingworth, Oyster Bay, Long Island ("Collections of the New York Historical Society," Wills, 1:31). The second marriage is proved in "The Record," 31:85. The births of the five children of Elizabeth by John Underhill are listed ibid. 3:185 f.... [KP: Article lists five children born 1659-1672.]
ii. Hannah2, b. June 1637, probably at Watertown, Mass., second child in Latting's list, third in the 1667 pedigree; m. May 7, 1656, as first wife, John2 Bowne (Thomas'), b. at Matlock, co. Derby, May 9, 1627, d. at Flushing, Long Island, Dec. 20, 1695. They became Quakers and Hannah died, while on a religious visit to England, at the house of John and Mary Elson in London, Jan. 31, 1677/8, buried Feb. 2, 1677/8. John married (2) on Feb. 2, 1679/80, Hannah Bickerstaff, from Tupton, co. Derby, who died June 7, 1690; (3) on June 26, 1693, Mary Cock, b. Jan. 1, 1655/6, living 1696, daughter of James and Sarah (___) Cock. On John Bowne see John Cox, Jr., "John Bowne, Pioneer of Freedom: Dictionary of American Biography" 2:523; Josephine C. Frost, "Frost Genealogy" (1912), p. 22 Mary Powell Bunker, op. cit. pp.184 f. John Bowne's sixteen children are listed in "The Record,"3:185, of which we list here only those by Hannah Feake... [KP: Lists 8 children b. 1656/7-1673.]
iii. John2, b. ca. 1639 at Watertown, Mass., d. May 1724, Oyster Bay.
iv. Robert2, b. probably 1642 at Greenwich, Conn.; fourth in Latting's list, first in the 1667 pedigree, then said to be aet. 22 which is an error as he was baptised at the New York Dutch Church, July 17, 1642; probably the Robert Fecks of Flushing, intestate, admin. to widow Sarah, June 19, 1669 ("Collections of the New York Historical Society": Wills 1:10). If he had issue, none is known.
v. Sarah2, bap. New York Dutch Church, April 14, 1647, not in 1667 pedigree; d. before July 21, 1648, on which date Governor Theophilus Eaton, writing to John2 Winthrop, remarks that the four children of her parents had been separated, two placed with one family, the other two elsewhere ("Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society," 4:6, 348, 353)."
SOURCES_MISC:
1. FHL book 929.273-K727kf: "Knapp's N' Kin, The Ancestral Lines of Frederick H Knapp and Others," compiled by: Frederick H Knapp, Rt. #2, Box 438C, AB Hwy, Richland, Missouri, 65556; 1987; Revised/Updated 1991. It notes the following sources, none of which I have yet reviewed:
-NYG&HR, Vol. 11, by J.J. Latting.
-NYG&HR, Vol. 86, by Geo. McCracken.
-NYG&HR, Vol. 87, by Geo. McCracken.
-NYG&HR, Vol. 47 (1893).
-TAG, Vol. 27, by J.L. Jacobus.
-Anc. Heads of NE Fam., by Holmes.
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Chris & Julie Petersen's Genealogy
1602 - 1661 (58 years)