Henry Feake ca 1590 to 1657-58, of London, Sandwich and Long Island

Henry Feake was born about 1590, probably in London, the son of John and Cicely (Reeve) Feake (NYGBR 86:209).

He married in January 1615/16, Jane Woolstone, at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, Surrey, England. (Marriage license date 22 January 1615/16). He is my 10^th great-grandfather on my grandmother Milly (Booth) Rollins’ side of the family. I have not yet researched Jane Woolstone’s ancestry.

St. Saviour's Surrey Southwark

 

He was from London and a goldsmith by trade. He immigrated to the Massachusetts in 1633, first settling at Lynn. He had a child born London in June 1633 and was a freeman in Lynn in 1634, so may have come on the Griffin in 1633.

Henry had nine children with Jane (London church records from NYGBR 86:209-10) but only three outlived their parents:

Unnamed child, born about 1617, died young

Jane, born 1618, died young

Edward, born 1619, died 1620

Jane, born 1621, no further record found

Judith, born 1622, died 1623

Mary, born 1623, no further record

Stillborn child, 1630

John, born 1631

Elizabeth, born 1633

I descend from Elizabeth whom I wrote about here.. After all the loss Jane and Henry suffered, their youngest recorded child, Elizabeth, lived to age 87.

Henry was one of the original settlers of Sandwich, Mass, the oldest town on Cape Cod. On 3 April 1637, the Plymouth Court granted permission of the ten men of Saugus to settle at Sandwich (then Shawme).

"It is also agreed by the Court that those tenn men of Saugust, viz Edmund Freeman, Henry Feake, Thomas Dexter, Edward Dillingham, William Wood, John Carman, Richard Chadwell, William Almey, Thomas Tupper & George Knott shall have liberty to view a place to sitt down & have sufficient lands for three score famylies, upon the conditions propounded to them by the Governor and Mr. Winslowe."

Plaque at Sandwich Town Hall

It appears that Henry didn’t move to Sandwich until 1639 as he served on an Essex jury in 1638. On 25 Sept 1639 "Mr. Henry Feake, of Sandwich," assigned to John Barnes of Plymouth the remainder of the term of his servant Edmond Edwards.

Requested admission as Plymouth freeman 4 June 1639 (PCR 1:126); although there is no subsequent record of the admission of Henry Feake, a "Mr. John Feake, of Sandwich" was made freeman on 7 June 1642 (PCR 2:40). There was no adult John Feake at Sandwich at this time, and so this record must be for Henry.

Henry Feake served on a Plymouth grand jury in 1642. He was a Sandwich Deputy to the Plymouth General Court in 1643 and 1644.  He was listed in the Sandwich portion of 1643 Plymouth list of men able to bear arms.

On 16 April 1640 Henry Feake was appointed to a committee to resolve a dispute over Sandwich meadow lands, and in the resulting resolution he was awarded 20 acres of meadow, with another acre given to "Mr. Feak's house.”

On 20 May 1640 "Henry Feake of Sandwich, gent." granted to "my loving brother George Feak of Wightin," Norfolk, gent., "my new house" with "all the upland and meadow ground wich appertains and belongs unto me excepting two acres of upland (and) one acre of meadow.”

Jane died before 1657. Henry married, second, by 1657, widow Joanna Wheeler whose maiden name isn’t known.

Henry died between 24 Sep 1657 (date of will) and 02 Apr 1658 (date of judgment), probably in Newtown (now Elmhurst), Long Island, New York. He had moved there by 1656 (Lovell writes he moved in 1652). He was one of the parishioners who followed Rev William Leverich to settle there.

On 2 April 1658 "judgment in the case of the heirs of Johanna Wheeler vs. the heirs of Henry Feaks, husband of said Wheeler; annuls the will of Feaks, and directs that the property of both the deceased persons be inventoried and appraised, and after paying their debts, be equally divided among their surviving children" (Calendar of  Historical Manuscripts in the office of the Secretary of State, Albany, NY Part 1, Dutch Manuscripts 1630-1664, ed. Edmund B. O'Callaghan (1865) p 194, citing 8:801 of the Dutch Manuscripts). This document was partially burned in the 1911 fire in Albany, but reveals that Feake had three children by a previous marriage and Wheeler had two children by a previous husband. The annulled will of Feake was apparently dated 24 Sept 1657 (NYGBR 86:209).

From above we see that Henry Feake was survived by three children, one of whom would be daughter Elizabeth who married John Dillingham. Unless there were children born but unrecorded after the family arrived in New England in 1633, the second and third must be tow of these three children: John, Jane, Mary.

On 1 March 1670/1 "John Feake of Wighton, Norfolk, gent., son and heir of George Feake, late of Wighton aforesaid, gent., deceased" sold to Robert Harper of Sandwich "all those the houses, lands, tenements, meadows, pastures, uplands, hereditaments of him the said John Feake and late of George Feake his said father deceased, which did sometimes belong and appertain to one Henry Feake, brother of the said George Feake."

Sources:

Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, 1995

The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, various issues

RA Lovell, Jr., Sandwich, A Cape Cod Town, 1984

Eugene Stratton, Plymouth Colony, Its History and People 1620-1691, 1986

Simeon L., Deyo, editor, History of Barnstable County, Massachusetts, 1890

Barbara Gill, Cape Cod Genealogical Society Bulletin, Spring 2005, The Ten Men From Saugus