Date: Saturday, 6 February 1999 3:40 THE AMERICAN GENEALOGIST Whole Number 258 April 1990 Vol. 65, No. 2 DRAKE REDUX by Robert Charles Anderson, F.A.S.G. [EXTRACT PAGES 87-88] In my recent article expressing doubts about the parentage of John-1 Drake of Windsor, Conn., I made the suggestion that William and Acton Drake, sons of William and Philippa Drake of Ashe, co. Devon, were in fact one person who was born William and changed his name to Acton at some point in his life (TAG 63:193-206, esp. 200-1). Very soon after this article appeared in print I learned, from two different sources, that William and Acton were two distinct individuals. First, and most embarrassingly, the will of Philippa Drake, which appears in print, names both William and Acton, in the same line! She bequeathed to "my son Acton Drake and William Drake and my daughter Joan, now the wife of Robert Collyns, gent., a ring of gold with a death's head, each of value 26s, 8d" (Frank B. Gay, The Descendants of John Drake of Windsor, Connecticut [Rutland, VT., 1933] p. xv). This inability to read what is in print seems to be a persistent problem for those working on this family. Second, not long after the article was completed I commissioned Peter Towey, an English professional researcher, to examine this question for me, with interesting results. Two of the sons of William and Philippa, namely Thomas (the eldest) and William, graduated from Oxford University. Thomas had attended Exeter College, received his B.A. in 1612, and was of the Inner Temple in 1614. William had attended Wadham College, taking his B.A. in 1622, staying for an M.A. in 1625, and then becoming a fellow for the years 1632-37. The account in Alumni Oxonienses goes on to say that this William Drake was vicar of Bodmin in Cornwall, and also of Minver in he same county (Joseph Foster, Alumini Oxonienses...1500-1714 [Oxford 1891] 1:423). In the Moger abstracts of Exeter wills is the administration of William Drake, clerk, of Bodmin, dated 31 Oct 1661. Acton Drake had quite a different career, going into service with the Earl of Danby, Henry Danvers, whom he named in his will. Acton asked to be buried "in the north Isle of Dantesey Church in the Countie of Wiltes," this parish being the home of the Danvers family. The famous antiquarian John Aubry found in Dauntsey church the following inscription: "Acton Drake, Gent, gentleman of his Lo[r]ds[hip's] bedchamber, Ranger of the Forrest of Whichwode, in Com: Oxford, and one of his Lo[r]ds[hip's] Executors and faithful servant. Obiit 1642" (John Aubrey, Wilshire: The Topographical Collections of John Aubrey...corrected and enlarged by John Edward Jackson [London 1862] p. 228). The date of Acton Drake's will (1747, PCC 83 Gray) [END PAGE 87] is indisputable, so the date of the inscription must be an erroneous reading by Aubrey or by Jackson. Records survive of three sessions of the forest court of Wychwood, in 1635 and 1636. On 14 Sep 1635, Acton Drake Esq. appears holding the offices of forester of Shorthampton WAlk, Principal Ranger of the whole Forest and Riding Forester of the Forest (Vernon J. Watney, Cornbury and the Forest of Wychwood [London 1910] pp. 112, 225-28). The attraction of the hypothesis that William and Acton Drake were the same was that it made the Drake family wills consistent with one another, and comprehensive in naming all living siblings in each will. This position must clearly be abandoned. In return, though, we can state much more strongly the high social status of this family. Thomas and William both attended Oxford, William going on to the ministry, and Thomas briefly entering the law before taking over his father's estate. Acton, although he did not receive the same education as these two brothers, was given considerable responsibility as a member of the household of a royalist earl. These three brothers were well educated, were frequently referred to as "Gent.," and in general led lives typical of the higher county gentry of the times. One other piece of newly discovered evidence bears on the question of the social stratum to which John Drake of Windsor belonged. Among the manuscripts held by the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum in Springfield, Mass., are the account books kept by John Pynchon. In these account books are financial records for families all up and down the Connecticut River, in both Massachusetts and Connecticut. The first volume, which includes records from the 1650s, shows that John Pynchon maintained an account with John Drake Sr. of Windsor, and most interestingly, the contemporary index entry for the page on which this account appears refers to Goodman John Drake [my emphasis]. This points up more corcefully the disparity between the Drakes of Ashe and John Drake of Windsor. This latter man, as noted in my previous article, had all the earmarks of a good solid husbandman, and the evidence from the Pynchon account books only emphasize this. His landholdings were of an average size, he was not given any positions of responsibility in town or colony, and there is no evidence that he was literate, much less well-educated. All indications are that John Drake of Windsor came from a much lower social stratum that that of the Drakes of Ashe. Mr. Anderson is a genealogical researcher and writer. He lives at 5069 Cottonwood Lane, Salt Lake City, UT 84117. [NOTE: May or may not be his current address - resided there in 1990] [END ARTICLE - PAGE 88] Family and Heirs of Sir Francis Drake, 2 vols. (London, 1911), hereafter Eliott-Drake, 1:3-22, 52-53). Looking more closely at the family of William Drake of Wiscombe Park, we find that an additional four members of the family left wills. We note first that in his will of 1616 William had named three sons (Thomas, John and William) and two daughters (Amy and Joan). On 16 Jul 1647 his widow Philippa made her will (probated 5 Oct 1655), in which she named sons Thomas and William and daughters Joan, now wife of Robert Collyns, and Amy (PCC 399 Aylette). Then on 16 Dec 1647 Acton Drake of Short Hampton Lodge, Oxfordshire, made his will (probated 15 May 1651) in which he named "my brother Thomas Drake of Wiscombe" and sisters Collyns and Amy Drake (PCC 83 Grey). Next, Thomas Drake on 13 May 1661 prepared a will (probated 24 Sep 1661) in which he made bequests to his wife and several children, and also to sisters Amye Drake and John Collins; in addition, he referred to "my land called Highly, lately descended to me on the death of my brother Acton Drake" (PCC 137 May). Finally, on 24 Mar 1678 Amy Drake of Ottery St. Mary, co. Devon, made her will (probated 16 Jul 1680) naming sister Collins and cousins William Drake, Alexander Drake, Dennis Drake, Philippa Safyne, Dorothy Rose, Susan Rayment, and Robert Collins; brother Thomas Drake or sister Joan Collins (Archdeaconry of Exeter, as abstracted in Moger Collection, typescript at the Fam. Hist. Lib., Salt Lake City). Before proceeding to discussion of these wills, we must deal with the problem of Acton Drake. Kiepura notes that he m,ust belong to the family of William of Wiscombe, but that he is not named in the wills of his father or mother. I would propose a different solution: William Drake, the third son of William and Philippa, at some point in his adult life changed his name to Action. In his mother's will and earlier [END PAGE 200] we see only William; in his own will and later we see only Acton. Perhaps he married an heiress of an Acton family, or perhaps there was some other impetus; further research on this man would possibly resolve the question, and add strength to our analysis of this family. If we allow the assumption that William and Acton were one and the same, then the wills of this family are completely consistent with one another. The will of the father in 1616 names all five children. The remaining four wills, of 1647, 1647, 1661 and 1678, name all surviving siblings or children of siblings, except John. While there would be no difficulty in believing that one will of a member of the immediate family would ignore a son or brother who had removed to New England, I find it hard to accept that four members of the immediate family (mother, two brothers, sister), over a period of thirty years, would fail to provide some small legacy. The strong implication is that John Drake son of William had died between 1634 and 1647; and since John Drake of Windsor died in 1659, the two men could not then be identical. The second objection to the lineage is based on onomastic evidence. John Drake of Windsor had five children (whose years of birth are here estimated from their dates of marriage); Job, b. ca1621, m. 25 Jun 1646; John, b. ca1623, m. 30 Nov 1648; Jacob, b. ca1625, m. 12 Apr 1649; Elizabeth, b. ca1633, m. 9 Feb 1653; and Mary, b. ca1635, m. 17 Nov 1655 (Gay, pp. 5-14). Of these names, John, Elizabeth and Mary are among the most common in England, and are of little value as evidence of kinship. Job and Jacob are, however, considerably rarer. When we look at the Drakes of Ashe, we find no correlation whatever. The John Drake named in the will of Francis Drake had father William and mother Philippa, siblings Thomas, William (or Acton), Amy and Joan, and uncles Nicholas, Humphrey, Bernard, Robert and Henry (Vivian, pp. 292-93). None of these names is found in the family of John Drake of Windsor nor among his grandchildren. And Job and Jacob do not appear anywhere in the pedigree of the Drakes of Ashe. Furthermore, since he was remembered in the wills of two more distant members of the family, one would expect the names Francis or Richard to appear, if indeed the identification is correct. The evidence of names gives no reason whatever to believe that John Drake of Windsor was the sanme as the man named in the will of Francis Drake. The third problem arises when we try to find this John Drake in the New England records of the 1630s. If John Drake of Windsor is the son of William Drake of Wiscombe Park, we have certain expectations about him which should be reflected in Massachusetts records. Regardless of what his origins were, in 1630 he would have been the head of a family of five, including himself, his wife, and three sons, and he would have been about thirty-five years old. And if he [END PAGE 201] were from a cadet line of the Drakes of Ashe, he would have been well above the mean in social position among New England immigrants. As such, he would have been eligible for land grants in any Massachusetts town in which he might have lived. He had been resident in Massachusetts in the 1630s, the most likely place to find him would have been Dorchester. The largest group of immigrants from Devonshire and neighboring counties were the passengers of the Mary and John, a part of the Winthrop Fleet of 1630. This group was gathered by the Reverend John White of Dorchester, co. Dorset; and there is an easily demonstrated connection between this man and Francis Drake of the 1634 will. Francis Drake of Esher, co. Surrey, had three wives, the third of whom was the widow of Josias White, elder brother of Reverend John White. Josias White had died in 1622, and the second wife of Francis Drake died sometime after giving birth to her only child in 1625 (Richard Drake pp. 119-20; Francis Rose-Troup, John White, the Patriarch of Dorchester... [New York 1930] pp. 406, 412-13]. Although we do not have a marriage date of Francis Drake and Josias White's widow, Anne (Barlow) White, they could have been married by 1630; and even if they weren't married by that date, their eventual union indicates that Francis Drake and John White were already ell known to one another, most likely because the former had had as his private chaplain in the 1620s Thomas Hooker, one of the most famous of the Puritan ministers of the time, and certainly well known to John White. The earliest record we have for John Drake in Windsor is 26 Jan 1640/1, when he received his first grants of land (Windsor, CT LR 1:45). But what evidence do we have for his presence in New England prior to that date? There are only three records: (1) On 19 Oct 1630, 108 men placed their names on a list of men wishing to be made free in Massachusetts Bay Colony, and John Drake was on that list; (2) On 13 Mar 1633[/4] Francis Drake named his cousin who was then in New England; and (3) On a list of the earliest proprietors of Taunton in Plymouth Colony the name John Drake appears and this list probably dates from 1638 or 1639 (Alanson Borden, ed., Our County and Its People: A Descriptive and biographical Record of Bristol Co, Massachusetts [n.p. 1899) p. 219). At the General Court held in Massachusetts Bay in May of 1631, 118 men were made free, but this list was considerably different from the list of men who had asked six months earlier to be made free; in fact, only seventy names were common to both lists. Thus, there were thirty-eight men who made the request in Oct 1630, but were not made free in May 1631. John Drake was one of these, and a closer look at the other thirty-seven who shared his fate will tell us something about John Drake. (The information below was developed mainly from Savage, Pope, the published Massachusetts Bay court records, and published town records.) [END PAGE 202] a Two died soon (Richard Garrett and Ralph Glover) b Two went back to England and never returned (Thomas Southcott and George Ludlow) c Eighteen delayed only briefly attaining freeman status, being made free at various dates down to 1634, and also appearing in other town and colony records in the early and middle 1630s d Five appear in no other New England record, and must therefore be accounted as having died soon or returned to old England. John Drake of Windsor, if he is to be the same as the man asking to be made free in 1630, would fall within the fourth group, of those never made free, but still known to be in New England at a later date. But those ten men share another characteristic which John Drake does not; they all, like the eighteen who soon went on to become freemen, appear regularly in town and colony records in the years immediately following 1630. For example, James Pemberton appears as a proprietor of Charlestown in 1633, and in the same year his wife was made a member of the Charlestown church. Similiar records could be brought forward for the other nine. This list of thirty-seven names can be looked at in another way, since we would expect to find John Drake in Dorchester from 1630 until his appearance in Taunton in 1638 or 1639. Among the thirty-seven are five who did reside in Dorchester (Christopher Gibson, John Holman, William Hulbird, John Phillips and Henry Wolcott). Of these, all but Gibson and Holman became freemen in 1632, 1633 or 1634. But all five are found in the oldest Dorchester town recods, which begin early in 1633. William Hulbird, for example, is found on the frist surviving page of the early town records, under date of 16 Jan 1632 [/3] (Boston Record Commissioners Reprot Vol. 4, Dorchester Town Records, hereafter Dorchester TR, p.1; see also p.9, 15). Henry Wolcott is seen on 3 Apr 1633 (Dorchester TR p.1), and is also found in the Colony court records on 3 May 1631. John Phillips first apears in the town records on 24 May 1634 (Dorchester TR pp. 6, 7, 10, 13, 15); John Holman is mentioned in the Colony court records on 3 Oct 1632, and in the Dorchester records on 1 Sep 1634 (Dorchester TR pp. 7, 10, 15). Finally Christopher Gibson makes his first appearance in Dorchester records on 10 Feb 1634/4 (Dorchester TR p.10, 15). Not only does each of these men appear in the town or colony records by 1635, but each appears more than once. This point cannot be stressed too much. An adult male with a family cannot fail to appear in the records of a town like Dorchester if he lived there continuously from 1630 to 1639. Christopher Gibson and John Holman are most like John Drake in that they were on the October 1630 list, were never [END PAGE 203] made free, and lived in Dorchester. A single man, landless, serving out an indenture, may avoid appearance in the records for a decade, but not a man with a family and with a known social position above the average before he came to New England. And the fourth objection to the lineage grows out of this known social position. The John Drake named in the 1634 will of Francis Drake should have been a man of considerable prominence in New England. Although the will of his father indicates that could have been only a temporary embarassment (or possibly even a legal fiction to escape taxes or creditors), for Wiscombe Park was back in the hands of Thomas, elder brother to this John, as early as 1641, as we see from the will of Nicholas Drake, brother of William of Wiscombe Park, and uncle to Thomas and John (PCC 72 Evelyn). Furthermore, John's younger brother William/Acton had acquired substantial land in Oxford by 1647, and in 1678 John's unmarried sister left hundreds of pounds in legacies to her surviving relatives. Furthermore, John Drake, if he resided with his great-uncle Richard and then with his cousin Francis, would have become acquainted with some of the leading figures in late Tudor and early Stuart England. John was born very close to the time Sir Francis Drake the Navigator died, but he would certainly have heard stories of the great man's exploits, and would have met others with similiar careers. If he did in fact reside in this household in Surrey, he could conceivably have been present when Queen Elizabeth came to dine, and he would have met many of the Queen's ministers and servants. This John Drake would have been a well-educated man, and he would have been entitled to the honorific of "Mr." How does this comport with what we know of John Drake of Windsor? There is no instance in which John Drake is called "Mr." during his lifetime. He does have this title attached to his name in a late list of Taunton proprietors, dating from 1675, which shows that the share of "Mr. John Drake" had passed into other hands; but this record was made long after his death, and even longer after his departure from Taunton, and more likely reflects the respect paid to the dead than any status he held many years earlier (Borden p. 236). Also, his grants of land and the size of his estate at death were in no way exceptional, and were just what one might expect of any solid yoeman or husbandman. (Reading through the earliest grants of land in Windsor, we find that most of the homelots were ten to fifteen acres, and JohnDrake had sixteen. Only a few men, such as Thomas Stoughton and William Gaylord, had appreciably larger homelots. John Drake's inventory showed a total estate of 324/13/00; a recent study of colonial Connecticut economics shows that this is very close to the average [Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut (Princeton 1985) p. 66].) Lastly, JohnDrake did not sign his name when he came to make his will, but made only a mark. This could, of [END PAGE 204] course, merely mean that he was at that time too feeble to sign his name. However, an attempt to find his signature elsewhere has found no example of his handiwork. He did not witness any of the wills abstracted by Manwaring; a survey of petitions in the Connecticut Archives (carried out by Melinde Lutz Sanborn) found no example of his signature. Summary and Suggestions I have outlined four lines of reasoning which cast doubt on the identification of the John Drake named in Francis Drake's will as John Drake of Windsor: 1 John Drake is not named oin the wills of four immediate family members or his family from 1647 to 1678. 2 There is no overlap of the names used by the Drakes of Ashe and by the family of John Drake of Windsor. 3 If the two men are identical, then he should have left traces in New England records between 1630 and 1639, and he did not. 4 John Drake of Windsor does not have the social status that one would expect of a scion of the Drakes of Ashe who may lived for some time in the household of a prominent servant of Queen Elizabeth and King James. While none of these reason is alone sufficient to reject the proposed identification, taken together I find them very strong medicine indeed. These arguments do not constitute disproof, and there remains a slender possibility that this lineage is correct, since there are no chronological difficulties, and the likelihood remains that John Drake of Windsor did come from Devonshire, or from somewhere else in the West Country. But the proposed parentage for John Drake of Windsor should no longer be considered sound, and the burden of proof will be on those who wish to retain this connection. The most likely solution is that the John Drake named in the will of Francis Drake died shortly after his arrival in New England, and may even have been dead at the time his cousin wrote his will. Working upon this assumption, what do we know about John Drake of Windsor that would help in finding his parentage? First, given his presence in Taunton and then in Windsor, we can be reasonably certain that he came from the counties of Devon, Dorset or Somerset. Second, we would expect to find him in a solid yoeman family, and not among the Drakes of Ashe; there were many other Drake families in these counties, including the family which produced Sir Francis. Sir Anthony Wagner notes that in the seventeenth century the surname Drake "is found in more than 115 parishes" in Devon (Drake in England, rev. ed. [Concord NH 1970] p. 17). Third, we are looking for a man born in the 1590s. Fourth, the names Job and Jacob are strong clues. [END PAGE 205] Given this framework, we can begin to look in English records for this man. Remarkably, because twentieth century researchers have been so mesmerized by the connection to William Drake of Wiscombe Park, no one has ever undertaken any parish register research. Wiscombe Park is in the parish of South Leigh, whose parish registers for the seventeenth century are no longer extant. But there are dozens of likely registers which can be searched, many of which have not yet been abstracted for the IGI. And even though the probate records for Devonshire have been lost, there are large collections of pre-war abstracts which may be searched for clues. More generally, a full scale search of all Drake families in this area may be nnecessary to solve the problem. Finally, some narrower explorations might be undertaken on the Drakes of Ashe in order to strengthen or clarify some of the arguments made above. Acton Drake held land in Oxfordshire and was buried in Wiltshire, according to Vivian. Records for this man should be pursued, to see if he really was the same as William. Verifying this suggestion would make sounder conclusion that all other surviving siblings were named in the wills quoted above, and therefore increase the likelihood that John Drake was not named because he was no longer living. Also, the three marriages for Francis Drake of Esher should be investigated, to see just when he made the marriage to the widow of Josias White, and therefore, to determine just how early we can say with assurance that Francis Drake and Reverend John White were known to one another. The time has come to befin a fifth phase in the history of the lineage of John Drake of Windsor. My thanks to David L. Greene, FASG, Charles M. Hansen, FASG and Neil D. Thompson, FASG, for reading early drafts of this article and providing useful comments. 5069 Cottonwood Lane, Salt Lake City, UT 84117 [NOTE: Author's address in 1990; may or may not be valid at this date] [END LAST PAGE - 206] [A TRUE EXTRACT FROM THE ORIGINAL TAG ARTICLE]