Nielsen Hayden genealogy

Robert Cole

Robert Cole

Male 1628 - Aft 1662  (> 34 years)

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  • Photos
    Robert Cole's World: Agriculture & Society in Early Maryland.
    Robert Cole's World: Agriculture & Society in Early Maryland.
    By Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena Walsh. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

    Book description from Amazon.com:

    In 1652 Robert Cole, an English Catholic, moved with his family and servants to St. Mary's County, Maryland. Using this family's story as a case study, the authors of Robert Cole's World provide an intimate portrait of the social and economic life of a middling planter in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, including work routines and agricultural techniques, the upbringing of children, neighborhood relationships and community formation, and the role of religion.

    The Cole Plantation account, a record that details what the plantation produced, consumed, purchased, and sold over a twelve-year period, is the only known surviving document of its kind for seventeenth-century British America. Along with Cole's will, it serves as the framework around which the authors build their analysis. Drawing on these and other records, they present Cole as an exemplar of the ordinary planter whose success created the capital base for the slave-based plantation society of the eighteenth century.

  • Name Robert Cole 
    Birth 1628  Middlesex, England Find all individuals with events at this location  [1, 2, 3
    Gender Male 
    Death Aft 2 Apr 1662  England Find all individuals with events at this location  [4, 5
    Alternate death 1663  [6, 7
    Alternate death Bef Sep 1663  [8
    Person ID I11265  Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of PNH
    Last Modified 17 Sep 2023 

    Father William Cole   d. Between 1633 and Apr 1634 
    Mother Jone,   b. of Heston, Middlesex, England Find all individuals with events at this locationd. Aft 2 Apr 1662 
    Family ID F1500  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Rebecca   d. Abt Mar 1662 
    Marriage Between 1649 and 1652  [1, 9
    Children 
     1. Robert Cole,   b. 15 Oct 1652, St. Clement's Hundred, St. Mary's County, Maryland Find all individuals with events at this locationd. Bef 30 Apr 1695 (Age < 42 years)
     2. Mary Cole,   b. 26 Jan 1653, St. Mary's County, Maryland Find all individuals with events at this location
     3. William Cole,   b. 23 Jun 1655
    +4. Edward Cole,   b. 9 Nov 1657, St. Clement's Hundred, St. Mary's County, Maryland Find all individuals with events at this locationd. Between 18 Apr 1717 and 20 Dec 1717, St. Mary's County, Maryland Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 59 years)
     5. Elizabeth Cole,   b. 2 Mar 1659
    Family ID F5354  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
    Last Modified 13 Sep 2023 

  • Notes 
    • He emigrated from (probably) Heston, Middlesex to Maryland 1652 with his wife, four children, and two servants. He 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 from 1658 on he was sometimes 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, may have been the Joan/Jane who 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 (d. 1762) married Ann Neale, a great-granddaughter of Benjamin Gill and Mary Mainwaring -- and also that the second wife of Edward Cole (1657-1717), son of this Robert and father of the aforementioned Edward, was Elizabeth Slye, a granddaughter of the royally-descended Maryland immigrant Thomas Gerard. All of which fuels a certain suspicion that, even if Robert and his son Edward called themselves "yeomen", the family had non-trivial connections to fellow Roman Catholics of higher social rank.

      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 fact that Robert Cole's will mentions his "couzen" Henry Hanks lends some credence to this latter theory.

      There is a 1662 burial in the records of the parish of St. Leonard's in Heston (now part of the London borough of Hounslow) which may well refer to the burial of our Robert Cole. Incorrectly recorded in several places as dated 16 August 1662, it is actually dated 17 August of that year. It reads "Augusti 17 sepultus Robertus Cole filius", followed on the same line by a long blank spot and then some very hard-to-read further letters. The first chunk probably says "Cole" and the rest, while very hard to make out on its own, matches closely in overall shape with other inscriptions on the same ledger that say "di Hounslow". So it looks like what the inscription says is "On August 17, Robert Cole, son of _____ Cole of Hounslow, was buried."

      Ultimately, though, this adds little to our knowledge of the indentity of the father of the emigrant Robert Cole, except that he may well have been from Hounslow. Heston, associated in several ways with our Robert Cole, is part of Hounslow. The William and Jane Cole asserted by Carr, Menard, and Walsh as his parents were of Heston, and certainly our Robert referred in his will to "my Loving mother Mrs Jone Cole of heston in the County of Middlesex." Two Jone Coles, both identified as widows, are assessed for three or four hearths in the Heston hearth tax records of 1664. Additionally, the Thomas Cole claimed by others as Robert's father was probably from Lampton, which has been part of Hounslow at least some of the time over the centuries. And "Jana wife of Thomas Cole of Heston yeoman" appears on the same recusant roll (#20--E377/31, 1622-23) as "Benjamin Gill of St. Andrew Holborn, Middlesex, chandler" and "Mary his wife."

  • Sources 
    1. [S248] Robert Cole's World: Agriculture & Society in Early Maryland by Lois Green Carr, Russell B. Menard, and Lorena S. Walsh. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

    2. [S247] Maryland State Archives, Biographical Files of 17th and 18th Century Marylanders, by Dr. Lois Green Carr., year only.

    3. [S258] Hayden/Rapier and Allied Families: Colonial Maryland, Kentucky, U.S.A. by Mary Louise Donnelly. Ennis, Texas: MLD Genealogy Company, 1991.

    4. [S248] Robert Cole's World: Agriculture & Society in Early Maryland by Lois Green Carr, Russell B. Menard, and Lorena S. Walsh. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991., year and country only.

    5. [S1108] To Maryland from Overseas by Harry Wright Newman. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2002.

    6. [S247] Maryland State Archives, Biographical Files of 17th and 18th Century Marylanders, by Dr. Lois Green Carr.

    7. [S5935] Ancestral Records and Portraits: A Compilation from the Archives of Chapter I., The Colonial Dames of America. 2 vols., New York, 1910.

    8. [S3404] Rory T. Conley, "Robert Cole's Religion: The Religious Practice of Maryland's First Catholics." Chronicles of St. Mary’s: Quarterly Magazine of the St. Mary's County Historical Society, Winter 2010.

    9. [S138] St. Mary's Families, compiled by Linda Reno. Original site is gone. Mirrors: Marriages 1638-1820. Migration from Maryland 1780-1820. Tract Map: 1705.