Robert Feake

     Robert Feake was born on 20 September 1602, in London, England.¹ He married Elizabeth Ann Fones, daughter of Thomas Fones and Ann Winthrop, circa 31 January 1631/32. Robert and Elizabeth had five children. Robert Feake died on 1 February 1659/60 at age 57.

He was well educated and had apprenticed for eight years (1615-1623) to his father James in the goldsmith trade, and would probably have lived a successful and happy life if he had stayed in London, but he chose to try his luck in America and came in the Winthrop fleet of 1630, to settle in Watertown, Massachusetts. He was a just an ordinary man , perhaps a little on the weak side, not forceful enough to deal with the very strong characters he had to live among.

He was admitted freeman 18 May 1631, as Mr. Roberte Feakes, and must have appeared to Governor Winthrop to be a good candidate for the husband of his widowed daughter-in-law, in any case they were married within a few months of her arrival in the Boston area. Being now such a close relation of the Governor, Robert received special attention and was chosen lieutenant to Captain Daniel Patrick 4 September 1632. This was a very, very strange appointment and probably his undoing, Captain Patrick shared the defense of the Colony with Captain John Underhill; he was a rough spoken and rough mannered professional soldier, and could easily walk over the mild ex- goldsmith. Robert was elected three times to the Couirt of Deputies, and then things began to change. Captain Patrick persuaded him to buy some land on the extreme frontier, in Greenwich, in 1640. This land was taken over by the Dutch in 1642, the act of submission being signed by Patrick and Elizabeth Feake, because Robert was ill and beginning to get more and more erratic; a man called William Hallett, was put in charge of the Feake affairs in Greenwich. George McCracken, a genealogist, writing about the Feake family in the NYGBReview , put it this way: "It may well be that his mental instability was a partial cause for 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 (LIF)." Daniel Patrick was assassinated in 1644. Elizabeth left her husband for William Hallett, and Feake went back to England in 1647 where he was pardoned by the House of Commons in March of 1650 for an "unstated offense." He did not return until about 1654, single, to settle again at Watertown where he died in 1661, alone, a pauper, taken care of by the town.²