Fones Home

There’s more than one wild child in the family, I’m sure, but there’s one who really stands out:  Elizabeth Fones.  Elizabeth led quite a life—interesting enough for someone to write historical fiction based on it, The Winthrop Woman.

Elizabeth Fones, my 9x great-grandmother, was born January 21, 1610 in Groton Manor, England to Thomas Fones and Ann Winthrop.  Ann was the sister of John Winthrop, a strict Puritan who became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and who became Elizabeth's guardian after the deaths of both her parents.

Scandal number one:  Elizabeth married her first cousin, John Winthrop’s son Henry.  About a year after their marriage, Henry sailed to America, leaving Elizabeth behind because of her pregnancy--their daughter, Martha (my ancestor), was born while her father was at sea.  The day after he arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, Henry drowned in the North River.

In 1631 Elizabeth followed her uncle, by then Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, sailing with her daughter, Martha, to America. A year later Elizabeth married her second husband, Robert Feake.  Robert was already a large landowner and, subsequently, he and Elizabeth acquired additional land in Connecticut.  She is considered one of the founders of Greenwich, including what is today called Old Greenwich.  Scandal number two:  A woman with property in her own name was not considered proper by the mores of the times.  Sadly, in 1647, after experiencing persona crises, Feake went insane and abandoned his wife and five children.

Scandal number three: Elizabeth married William Hallett, without divorcing Feake.  In a transcribed letter in the Winthrop Papers, from John Haynes to John Winthrop, Jr. (Elizabeth’s brother-in-law):

Ther is cognisaunce taken by our Court, of somme partyes resident with yow, that are of ill fame, as one that was the wife sometimes of Mr. Feake and who it seemes did confesse her selfe an Adulteresse, (which is vppon record at the Dutch) and now pretends marriadge with another man, how trew, or legall is not well knowen. I am therfor to acquainte yow, that she with somme others are sent for by warrant to apeare att the Court heere to answeare accordinge to the tenure therof. 

Elizabeth and her new husband and family were forced to leave--to avoid a court hearing and possible death sentence--and moved to for the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, New York.  In September 1655, they survived an attack by Indians, but their house and farm were burned down.  Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake Hallett died in New York in 1673.

Seems like Elizabeth faced a lot of challenges, but it also looks like she could hold her own.  This is a Puritan I'll celebrate on Thanksgiving. 

Five Eights (Grandmothers, that is)

Now that I’m at the last of my 8x great-grandmothers (who’ve been identified), I decided to put them all in the same post. 

Pike

Hannah Pike (Pyke) was supposedly born around 1632 in England, married Maturin Ballou, and died in Providence, RI in 1715.  She was the daughter of English immigrant Robert Pike and Catherine (Unknown).   Robert and his future son-in-law, Maturin Ballou, were each granted 25 acres in Providence in 1646   and then admitted as a freeman in 1658.

Warren

Mary Warren, who married John Youngs, was the daughter of Thomas Warren of Southold, England.  Mary was married first to a Gardiner--her father’s will mentions his daughter’s daughter, Mary Gardiner, who would have been a child at the time of his death. 

I don’t know how uncommon it would have been for a woman to emigrate without her parents or a husband, so I suppose she might have been married in England and thus come to America with her husband, a Gardiner.  She was born around 1600 and died in 1678.

Boyse/Boyce

Joanna Boyce (Boyse), born in England to John Boyse and Joanna Stowe, likely came to America with her sister’s family or possibly as a newlywed with her husband, Peter Prudden.  Her birth, marriage, and death dates are undocumented.  She was not married yet in 1631 when she appears in her mother’s will (in England) and her first child was born in 1640 in Connecticut, and her will was written in 1681, so those dates provide a window when events occurred.  Despite the lack of records for those important dates, following her husband’s death in 1656, she is found in the Milford court records and they show she was a woman who knew how to manage her affairs and was not hesitant to claim what she felt was rightfully hers.

Bateman

Elizabeth Bateman was born around 1631 in England to William Bateman.  She married Henry Lyon in 1652 in Connecticut.

There are multiple William Batemans in the records of the period.  In one instance in 1630 there was an inquest for a William Bateman and a second William Bateman sat on the jury.  A William Bateman was made a freeman of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631 and a William Bateman of Concord was made a freeman in 1641.  It is thought these two are not the same individual because one person would not need freeman admittance twice.  I did see references to the fact that a William Bateman’s admittance was revoked in 1634, but indicated the reason was unknown.  If the admittance was revoked, there is the possibility it is one person.  There is some support for the revocation as I found in my research on the freeman’s oath:

At the General Court held at Boston, May 14, 1634: It was agreed and ordered, that the former oath of freemen shall be revoked, so far as it is dissonant from the oath of freemen hereunder written; and that those that received the former oath shall stand bound no further thereby, to any intent or purpose, than this new oath ties those that now take the same.

Maybe some intrepid researcher will decide this is an interesting avenue to pursue and uncover more details linking these two Batemans….

Winthrop

On the other hand, lots of details are known about the Winthrops, in fact so much is so readily available, I’ll just provide an overview here.

Martha Joanna Winthrop was born in England in 1630 to Henry Winthrop and Elizabeth Fones.  She was sickly, especially after her marriage to Thomas Lyons and then the birth of her only child, Mary, in 1649.  She died in Greenwich, CT in 1653.

Henry Winthrop died a few months after Martha was born.  He traveled to America, leaving his pregnant wife behind and drowned the day after he arrived in July 1630.  Martha and her mother Elizabeth, still in England, eventually immigrated to America where Martha’s grandfather, John Winthrop, was governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

I’m saving the good stuff for my next post—about Martha’s mother and the Fones line—when I start on my 9x great-grandmothers.

In like Flint

Alice Flint is the last of my 7x great-grandmothers who I’ve uncovered.  Her parents were William Flint and Alice (Unknown). I’ve seen references that she was born in England and some that indicate she was born in Salem, MA.  And the date ranges from 1636-1640.  I’ve found nothing that cites an original source.   [9/17/2011 8 PM:  True confession.  I just realized that my original posting of this had some misleading info that I have now deleted]

She married John Pickering around 1657, after the death of her first husband, Henry Bullock.  Alice appears in the Essex County court record in 1652, accused of wearing a silk hood; but, because she could prove she was worth £200, it was discharged.  In researching this, I found this article, umm...story, umm...historical fiction, or whatever, and was amused by the amount of detail in “hearsay”:

Published in Wide Awake magazine, Volume 27, June 1888:

Alice's father, William, was born around 1603 in Great Britain, possibly Wales, but again, the sources I found seemed to rely on family tradition for the birthplace, as opposed to documented material.  It is said he arrived in America in 1640 and he does actually appear in Salem records in 1642.  It seems there is much more known about William’s brother, Thomas, but in Pioneers of Massachusetts, I did find information that William was an overseer of fences and highways and a juryman.