| Notes |
- Emigrated from (probably) Heston, Middlesex to Maryland 1652 with his wife, four children, and two servants. Died in London during a business trip back there. He was literate, and Roman Catholic. He held minor offices such as manor court juror and he was referred to as "Mr."
His Maryland plantation is the subject of a book-length study, Robert Cole's World: Agriculture & Society in Early Maryland by Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena S. Walsh (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
He called his fellow Maryland immigrant Benjamin Gill "kinsman" and was an executor of Gill's estate. Gill's wife Mary (Ann Maria) was a daughter of the recusant Oliver Mainwaring (d. 1631) and his royally-descended wife Margaret Torbock. Joan or Jane Mainwaring, a sister of Mary's, appears to have married a Thomas Cole in Heston, Middlesex; this has led to a hypothesis (here, here, and here) that the settler was a son of that Joan and Thomas, but there appears to be no proof that this was the case. And yet we note that Robert Cole's grandson Edward Cole married Ann Neale, a great-granddaughter of Benjamin Gill and Mary Mainwaring.
Carr, Menard, and Walsh (citation details below) believe that his parents were William and Joan/Jane Cole of Heston. A Robert Cole is recorded as baptised 15 Nov 1629 at St. Margaret, Westminster, son of William Cole. Another Robert Cole, also the son of a William, is recorded baptised in London, at St. Giles without Cripplegate, on 28 Aug 1629. Mary Ellen Donnelly (citation details below) believes his parents were Thomas Cole of Lampton, Middlesex, baptized 15 Dec 1594, and Jane Hanckes of Middlesex.
The burial of a Robert Cole is also in the Greater London Burial Index on findmypast.com, buried 17 Aug 1662 in the parish of St. Leonard in Heston, believed to be where our Robert came from. The findmypast entry includes under "relationship" the tantalizing phrase "Son of…", complete with ellipsis, but it's only a transcription. An actual image of the handwritten burial record can be found here on ancestry.com. It says "Augusti 17 Sepultus Robert Cole filius", then a blank space, then "Cole" followed by characters that are, in the photograph, too blurred to interpret. It looks to us like the problem is with blurriness in the photograph, and that these characters might actually be readable in a better image. On 11 Jun 2021 we wrote to the London Metropolitan Archives, where we believe the original of this parish register resides, to inquire about having this page pulled and rephotographed, or at least examined.
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1628 - Aft 1662 (> 34 years)
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