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Francis Weekes (settler)

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Francis Weekes
Bornc. 1616
England
Died1689
Oyster Bay, Long Island
Known forFirst settler of Providence
SpouseElizabeth (unknown surname)
Children8

Francis Weekes (c. 1616 – 1689), also spelled Wickes, was a founding settler of Providence in what would become the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Life

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Weekes immigrated to England before 1635 and came to Providence as a minor with John Smith, the miller, from Dorchester, Massachusetts. Weekes, whom Roger Williams called a "poor young fellow," joined Williams and three others at a Seekonk River settlement in 1636 before crossing the river to found Providence, Rhode Island. In Providence he received a home lot on Towne Street and some meadow land. He signed the 1637 Compact and the 1640 Combination with his mark.[1][2][3][4][5]

Weekes left Providence by 1645 for New York.[2] In 1645 he was in the settlement established by anabaptist Deborah Moody at Gravesend, Long Island. In 1657 he was a selectman in Hempstead, Long Island. By 1661 the Weekes family settled in Oyster Bay, Long Island, where Francis owned a home, a home lot, and ten acres of farmland. By 1673 he moved to a home a half mile east of Oyster Bay.[6][1]

Weekes's will is dated June 25, 1687, and he died in 1689.[6][7]

Family

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Weekes married Elizabeth, whose last name is unknown, about 1640. They had eight children between 1641 and 1654: Samuel, John, Joseph, Elizabeth, Anna, Thomas, James, and Daniel. Their children were baptized in the Dutch Church in New Amsterdam, the oldest non-Anglican Protestant church in North America. His wife, Elizabeth, became a Quaker and was fined in 1658 in Hempstead, Long Island, for "meeting in the woods, where there were two Quakers—the one of them as named, the wife of Francis Weekes."[2][6][7]

References

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  1. ^ a b Kissam, Henry Snyder (1922). "Necrology, 1921". The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. 53: 142.
  2. ^ a b c Weekes, Alice Delano (1922). "Francis Weekes". The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. 53: 281–282.
  3. ^ Hopkins, Charles Wyman (1886). The home lots of the early settlers of the Providence Plantations : with notes and plats. Harold B. Lee Library. Providence, R. I. : Providence Press Co. pp. 3, 23.
  4. ^ Field, Edward (1902). State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the End of the Century: The sea force in war time. Mason Publishing Company. p. 33.
  5. ^ Bicknell, Thomas Williams (1920). The History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. American Historical Society. p. 145.
  6. ^ a b c Frost, Josephine C. (1925). "Ancestors of Frank Herbert Davol and his wife Phebe Downing Willits". onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu. New York: F.H. Hitchcock. pp. 190–191. Retrieved 2023-01-04.
  7. ^ a b Anderson, Robert C. (2011). The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635. Vol. 7. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. pp. 273–280.