Nielsen Hayden genealogy
Robert Wheaton

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Name Robert Wheaton [1] Gender Male Death Between 7 Feb 1689 and 24 Feb 1696 Rehoboth, Bristol, Massachusetts [2]
Alternate death Bef 11 Jan 1696 Rehoboth, Bristol, Massachusetts [3]
Person ID I27653 Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others Last Modified 12 Aug 2021
Family Alice Bowen, b. Abt 1620 d. Between 11 Jan 1696 and 31 May 1699, Rehoboth, Bristol, Massachusetts (Age ~ 76 years)
Marriage Abt 1640 [1, 2, 3] Children + 1. Bethiah Wheaton, b. 20 May 1652, Rehoboth, Bristol, Massachusetts d. 16 Apr 1709, Rehoboth, Bristol, Massachusetts
(Age 56 years)
Family ID F16504 Group Sheet | Family Chart Last Modified 12 Aug 2021
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Notes - Said to have been born around 1605, he was at Salem by 16 Jan 1637, when the town rejected him as an inhabitant. Despite that, the town granted him ten acres in 1638 and twenty more in 1644. By Feb 1647 he was at Rehoboth.
He advanced the town money for King Phillip's War. He was a next-door neighbor of his brother-in-law Robert Fuller, but they disputed their common boundary for thirty years.
An 1851 obituary of his descendant Levi Wheaton in the The New England Historical and Genealogical Register (5:476) says that according to Levi, "the first Wheaton in N. Eng. ... came from Swansea in Wales". Savage (4:495) noted this, saying "A tradition that the first of this name in our country was of Rehoboth, and and came from Swansea in Wales ... may have nearer resemblance to truth than is always found in such elements of history." He may indeed have been from Wales; on the other hand, an unusually detailed note in the vital records of Providence, entered 31 Aug 1775 by his great-grandson Nathanial4 Wheaton (Daniel3, Ephraim2, Robert1), describes him thus: "Robert Wheaton first of the Name of Wheaton that came over from England to Salem in New England AD 1636 about 30 years of Age and there married Elce Bowen daughter of Richard Bowen from thence Removed to Rehoboth AD 1645 and there lived and Died AD 1696 about 90 years of Age." Richard LeBaron Bowen, Jr. (citation details below) observes that "[w]hile not necessarily authoritative (since it was written one hundred and forty years after the fact), this record shows that the family then believed that Robert1 Wheaton came from England to Salem in 1636. The rest of the information in the account is remarkably accurate."
- Said to have been born around 1605, he was at Salem by 16 Jan 1637, when the town rejected him as an inhabitant. Despite that, the town granted him ten acres in 1638 and twenty more in 1644. By Feb 1647 he was at Rehoboth.
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Sources - [S3020] Richard LeBaron Bowen, Jr., "The Ancestry, Wives, and Children of Richard Bowen1 of Weymouth and Rehoboth, Massachusetts, with Notes on His Sons-in-Law Robert1 Wheaton and Robert1 Fuller and on Griffith Bowen1 of Roxbury, Massachusetts." The American Genealogist 76:263, 2001.
- [S4089] Richard Bowen (1594?-1675), of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, and His Descendants, volume 1, by William B. Saxbe, Jr. Hope, Rhode Island: Rhode Island Genealogical Society, 2011.
- [S5881] Ancestral Lines, Fourth Edition: 232 Families in England, Wales, the Netherlands, Germany, New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania by Carl Boyer III. Santa Clarita, California, 2015.
- [S3020] Richard LeBaron Bowen, Jr., "The Ancestry, Wives, and Children of Richard Bowen1 of Weymouth and Rehoboth, Massachusetts, with Notes on His Sons-in-Law Robert1 Wheaton and Robert1 Fuller and on Griffith Bowen1 of Roxbury, Massachusetts." The American Genealogist 76:263, 2001.