Eleventh Generation

1858. Henry LAKE was born on 14 August 1611 in Chidwell, Liverpool, Lancashire, England. He died after 21 October 1678 at the age of 67 in Dartmouth, MA. Henry came to New England in the group from Lancashire led by Rev. Richard Mather (grandfather of Cotton Mather) emigrated together to Dorchester.

After his wife's execution in Dorchester 9 (she was executed as a witch?), Henry removed to Portsmouth, where he was admitted as an inhabitant in 1652, having previously witnessed a deed there on 23 Apr 1651. By 1673 he had removed to Dartmouth.

ca 1641 Henry married Alice [Lake]. Born in England. Alice died ca 1650/1 in Boston, MA.

1859. Alice IREOD was born about 1616 in Lancashire, England. She died in 1650 at the age of 34 in Boston, Suffolk Co., MA. She had two more children, names unknown, born abt. 1648 and abt. 1650.

The article "Witchcraft in the American Colonies" that appeared in the American Quarterly describes many cases of persecution of women and a few men claimed to be witches. In it, Mrs. H. Lake is listed as being tried as a witch in Dorchester, found guilty, and executed in Boston in 1650. Also, there is quoted a letter from Nathaniel Mather to Increase Mather, 31 Dec 1684, which gives a small detail about the case. 'I have also received by way of London one of your books of Remarkable Providences. ... Why did you not put in the story of Mrs. Hibbens witchcrafts, & the discovery thereof, as also H. Lake's wife, of Dorchester, whom, as I have heard, the devill drew in by appearing to her in the likenes, & acting the part of a child of hers then lately dead, on whom her heart was much set: as also another of a girl in Connecticut who was judged to dye a reall convert, tho she dyed ofr the same crime?' From The Mather Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 4th ser., VIII (1868), 59-60. See also W. F. Poole, editor, Governor T. Hutchinson's Witchcraft Delusion, p. 384, n5.

About 1650 Alice was executed as a witch.5

Children were: