Thomas Butts

Thomas married Elizabeth Lawton 27 Oct 1729, Tiverton, RI. [Group Sheet]

1. Gideon Butts was born 24 Sep 1729, Dartmouth, Bristol County, MA.

Notes:

Moses & Alice were first cousins, his mother, Elizabeth, and her father, Thomas, being siblings. Moses & Alice and family lived at Little Compton.

Moses married Alice Lake Abt 1699. Alice (daughter of Thomas Lake and Sarah Post) was born 6 Dec 1677, Dartmouth, MA; died 3 Jul 1739. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

The following notes are adapted from John O. Austin's "Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island."

Thomas emigrated from Norfolk, England by 1662 to Portsmouth where he bought four acres from Richad Hart 16 Nov 1662. On 1 Oct 1666 he bought from Richard Bulgar two acres in Portsmouth for a cow and 10 s in wampum. On 20 Nov 1668 he deeded William Earle seven acres, and he bought from Richard Earle, of Dartmouth, a quarter of a purchaser's share of meadow, an eigth share of upland, etc. in Dartmouth. On 31 Oct 1682, in Little Compton, he and James Case were sent for, to be at the next court to give reason of their being and continuance at Punckateest without liberty to do so first obtained from the government. On 27 Oct 1685 Thomas was granted a division of land in Dartmouth, purchased of Woosamequin and Wamsutta.

The following notes are adapted from "The Butts Family of RI," by Francis B. Rutts, pub. 1891 & 1962, p. 9:

The name Thomas Butts first appears in Plymouth Co. records on 16 Nov 1662. There may also have been a Thomas Butts in Salem in 1652. His name is later found in several town records, including land transactions, in the years 1665, 1666, 1668, 1682, 1685, & 1696, in the towns of Portsmouth, Dartmouth, & Little Compton. He was admitted a freeman at Portsmouth 9 May 1660 (town records). In 1679 he was chosen surveyor of cattle. His will, dated 28 Dec 1702, was entered at Little Compton and proved 2 Feb 1703. It mentions his wife Elizabeth.

Thomas married Elizabeth Lake Abt 1664. Elizabeth (daughter of Henry LAKE and Alice Unknown) was born Abt 1641; died Aft 20 Jun 1709, Little Compton, RI. [Group Sheet]

Thomas — Sarah Post. Sarah died 1728. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

One genealogy has her name as Sarah Peet.

Notes:

I have roughly estimated Henry's year of birth.

COLKET, Merredith B.: Founders of Early American Families: Emigrants from Europe 1607-1657, 1975, published by the General Court of the Order of Founders and Patriots of America as a Contribution to the Bicentennial of the U.S.A., Cleveland, Ohio.
Page 170:
"LAKE, Henry: Dorchester, Mass., 1651; Portsmouth, RI, 1651; Dartmouth, Mass.; died after 21 Feb 1672/73. Wife executed for witchcraft. Sources: Wilbour's Little Compton, 1967; The American Genealogist, 12:17 (desc.) and 19:225 (note). Believed to have left numerous progeny."

DEMOS, John Putnam: Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England, 1982, Oxford University Press.
[ISBN 0-19-503378-7]
Page 71:
"It is significant, moreover, that many children of accused witches went on to useful even successful lives. Thus, ... David LAKE, the younger son of Alice (convicted and executed at Dorchester in 1651) was a leading man in the town of Little Compton, Rhode Island." [source indicated: G. Andrews Moriarty's The Early Rhode Island Lakes, in The American Genealogist, XII, 17-24.]

Pages 301-302:
"The process of dispersal is a little easier to follow for the family of Alice LAKE, convicted and executed at Dorchester in about 1650. Her husband Henry moved away at once; his name appears regularly in the records of Portsmouth, RI, beginning in April 1651. Meanwhile the four LAKE children, all less than ten years old, remained in Dorchester. One, probably the youngest, was 'bound out' by the town meeting to a local family for a 'consideration' of 26 pounds--and was dead within two years. The other three were also placed in (separate) Dorchester households. At this point their trail becomes badly obscured. (One was living as a servant to an uncle--still in Dorchester--in 1659.) Later, having reached adulthood, the same three were found in Rhode Island--and then in Plymouth Colony, where their father had removed by 1673. It appears, therefore, that the family was eventually reunited, some two decades after the event that had broken it apart."

Henry married Alice Unknown Abt 1640. Alice was born Abt 1617, England; died Abt 1651, Boston, MA. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

I have roughly estimated Alice's year of birth.

Alice, our ancestor, was executed for witchcraft in Boston in 1650. She was the wife of Henry Lake. There is some information about her online at other web sites. Innocent Lake is a descendant of hers. The story is that Alice had had a baby who died, and was so overcome with grief that she kept seeing her baby and was tormented by this. It was alleged that she was being visited by a demon, and must be a witch. Complicating this circumstance was the problem that losing her baby also brought to her great feelings of guilt, because apparently she had had relations with another man before marriage and felt that she was being punished for that in the loss of her child. Rather than receive the help she needed, either repentance and forgiveness, or other good counsel and support from other women, she was caught up in the whole witchcraft scare and as result executed.


The following notes are from Alice Marie Beard's web site [http://members.aol.com/alicebeard/lake.html]:
BURR, George L. [editor]: Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648-1706, 1914, Scribner's.
[Collection of old essays, collected and edited by Burr, a professor of medieval history at Cornell University.]
Quoting John HALE's "A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft," 1702, [one of Burr's selected narratives]:
Pages 408 & 409:
"Another that suffered on that account some time after, was a Dorchester Woman [in a note Burr makes it clear that Hale was speaking of Henry LAKE's wife]. And upon the day of her Execution Mr. THOMPSON, Minister at Brantry [Burr notes, Braintree, MA], and J.P. [Burr notes, probably John PHILLIPS of Dorchester according to Farmer**] her former Master took pains with her to bring her to repentance. And she utterly denyed her guilt of Witchcraft: yet justified God for bringing her to that punishment: for she had when a single woman played the harlot, and being with Child used means to destroy the fruit of her body to conceal her sin and shame, and although she did not effect it, yet she was a Murderer in the sight of God for her endeavours, and shewed great penitency for that sin; but owned nothing of the crime laid to her charge."
Page 409-410, note:
"In Hale's account there seems some confusion with the case of Mary Parsons." . . . "And two or three [women accused as witches] of Springfield, one of which confessed; and she said the occasion of her familiarity with Satan was this: She had lost a Child and was exceedingly discontented at it and longed; Oh that she might see her Child again! And at last the Devil in likeness of her Child came to her bed side and talked with her, and asked to come into the bed to her that night and several nights after, and so entred into covenant with Satan and became a Witch." . . . "This was the case of Mary Parsons and her husband Hugh, whom she accused (1651). See Drake, Annals of Witchcraft, pp.64-72, and especially the appended papers of Hugh Parson's case, pp.219-258. The originals of these papers are now in the New York Public Library. Others, from the Suffolk court file, are printed in the N.E. Hist. and Gen. Register," XXXV, 152-153.]
[**NOTE: Another researcher, Benjamin Lake Noyes, surmised that "J.P." was John POPE, husband of Alice POPE.]
Pages 408 & 409, note:
Burr quotes Nathaniel Mather as writing on Dec. 31, 1684, to his brother Increase talking about Alice LAKE; "H. LAKE's wife, of Dorchester, whom the devil drew in by appearing to her in the likenes, and acting the part of a child of hers then lately dead, on whom her heart was much set." BURR notes his source as "The Mather Papers."

http://www.alicemariebeard.com/genealogy/maternal/lake.htm