1182–1183.  Robert Feake was born in London, England, about 1602, and died in Watertown, Massachusetts Bay Colony, on February 1, 1660/1. Elizabeth Fones was born in Groton, England, on Sunday, January 21, 1609/10, and died in _____ before 1669. They were married in Massachusetts about 1632. She took the name Elizabeth Feake. He is the son of James and Judith (Thomas) Feake. She is the daughter of Thomas and Ann (Winthrop) Fones. They had five children:

Elizabeth Fones was married first to Henry Winthrop, second to Robert Feake

The Great Migration Begins has the following entry on 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]:
  1. ELIZABETH, b. probably about 1633; m. by 1659 as his second wife JOHN UNDERHILL.
  2. HANNAH, b. probably Watertown June 1637; m. Flushing 7 May 1656 [NS] John Bowne as his first wife.
  3. JOHN, b. probably Watertown about 1639; m. Killingworth, Oyster Bay, 15 September 1673 Elizabeth Prior [NYGBR 87:107-8].
  4. ROBERT, bp. New York Dutch Church 17 July 1642 [NS]; m. Sarah _____, who took administration of his estate 19 June 1669.
  5. 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.

• Feake Family of Colonial America
• Genealogies of Long Island Families
• New York Genealogical and Biographical Records
• [Ancestry of Timothy Titus Robbins assembled by Gayle Ellingsworth]
• Anderson, Robert Charles;The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620–1633, vol I–III found on the web site of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society. Citations within the item include:
  • [NYGBR]: New York Genealogical and Biographical Record
  • [MBCR]: Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England 1628–1686, Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., 5 volumes in 6 (Boston 1853–1854)
  • [WP]: Winthrop Papers, 1498–1654, 6 volumes, various editors (Boston 1925–1992) Watertown Records Comprising the First and Second Books of Town Proceedings ... (Watertown 1894)
  • [WaBOP]: Lands, Grants, Divisions, Allotments, Possessions and Proprietors' Book, Section Two in Watertown Records Comprising the First and Second Books of Town Proceedings ... (Watertown 1894)
  • [Lechford]: Notebook Kept by Thomas Lechford, Esq., Lawyer, in Boston, Massachusetts Bay, from June 27, 1638, to July 29, 1641, Edward Everett Hale, Jr., ed. (Cambridge 1885; rpt. Camden, Maine, 1988).
  • [DeTR]: The Early Records of the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts. 1636–1659 ... being Volume Three of the Printed Records of the Town, Don Gleason Hill, ed. (Dedham 1892)
  • [WaVR]: Records of Births, Deaths and Marriages—First Book and Supplement, Section Three in Watertown Records Comprising the First and Second Books of Town Proceedings ... (Watertown 1894)