♂Robert Bartlett

Robert Bartlett (died 1676) was a wine cooper of Plymouth in Plymouth Colony^W, one of its early settlers, and the husband of Mary Warren (about 1610–1683). He was the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Rebecca Bartlett (died 1658).

Arrival and marriage

According to the Mayflower Society’s compiled genealogy of the Warren family, Robert Bartlett came to Plymouth on the Anne^W in 1623, three years after the Mayflower, and received one acre in that year’s division of land. He was still unmarried when the colony divided its cattle on 22 May 1627, and he was on the colony’s list of freemen^W in 1633, and the colony’s tax lists of March 1633 and March 1634 rate him at nine shillings, next after the entry for “Widow Warren”.

Robert Bartlett and Mary Warren married at Plymouth after 22 May 1627, perhaps in 1629, as the compiled genealogy places it. On 1 July 1633 “Mrs. Warren and Robt. Bartlet” were assigned to mow where they had mown the year before, which the compilers take to mean that he was married to the widow Warren’s daughter by 1632 at the latest. At a court of 7 March 1636/7 the colony confirmed the land that Mary’s mother, Elizabeth Warren, widow of Richard Warren^W, had given to her sons-in-law Richard Church, Robert Bartlett and Thomas Little at their marriages to her daughters.

The compiled genealogy credits the couple with eight children born at Plymouth, Benjamin, Rebecca, Mary, Sarah, Joseph, Elizabeth, Lydia and Mercy, the eldest by 1633 and the youngest in March 1650/1. Their daughter Rebecca married William Harlow at Plymouth on 20 December 1649 and died before July 1658, when he married again.

Business and the courts

From 1 December 1635 Richard Stinnings was apprenticed to Robert for nine years, to receive two suits of apparel and £3 at the end. On 4 August 1638 Robert bought the last three years of Thomas Shreive’s service from John Barnes for £6 10s. and twenty bushels of corn, and in 1638 he hired Edward Shaw for a year at £8 10s. On 9 April 1649 he bought Richard Church senior’s house and land at Eel River, with a meadow, for £25, paying £8 10s. of it in a red ox named Mouse.

On his petition the court is said to have confirmed to him, on 7 October 1652, the Eel River land that his mother-in-law had given him at his marriage. In 1660 the Court of Assistants^W summoned him for speaking contemptuously of the singing of psalms. He was convicted, acknowledged his fault in part, was sharply admonished, and was ordered to acknowledge it to those he had spoken to before being discharged.

Later life and death

His later years are known from the compiled genealogy’s abstracts of the colony’s land and court records. When his son-in-law Richard Foster died, Robert took a ten-year lease of Foster’s lands on 27 June 1659 and agreed to make good £8 to Foster’s son Benjamin when the boy reached twenty-one. He was on the list of freemen again on 29 May 1670. Styled a wine cooper of Plymouth, he gave land on 14 July 1670 to his son-in-law James Barnabey, a cordwainer, and his daughter Lydia, and on 14 July 1673 he gave his son Joseph all of his farm, reportedly to be entered only after the deaths of both him and his wife Mary.

He made his will on 19 September 1676, leaving all his estate to his wife to divide among their children, and died at Plymouth before the will was proved on 29 October 1676. The will was spoken rather than written, and he was apparently “very weake in body” when he made it. The inventory, it seems, listed two dwelling houses, a barn, upland and meadow, and books. On 6 March 1676/7 Mary and their son Joseph were granted administration of the estate.

Lines of descent

The line descends through their daughter Rebecca Bartlett, who married William Harlow. Rebecca’s place in the family rests on a confirmation of 1683, as the compiled genealogy abstracts it, in which her brothers Benjamin and Joseph Bartlett upheld their father’s bequest of 50 acres at Plymouth to his grandson William Harlow Jr., born to William Harlow on 2 June 1657, while Rebecca was his wife. The next step is less certain. The line continues through Rebecca Harlow (1655–1727), the wife of Isaac Cushman (1648–1732) of Plympton, whom compiled Mayflower genealogies identify with William and Rebecca’s daughter Rebecka, born at Plymouth on 12 June 1655, only as a possibility; her age at death fits that birth, and a journal article discusses the question.

Notes

Origins

His English origin is not known. The compiled Warren genealogy suggests that he was perhaps a son of Robert and Alice (Barker) Bartlett, and cites a journal article proposing that he was the Robert Bartlett baptized at Puddletown, Dorset, on 27 May 1603; neither suggestion has been tested against a record here.

Court, land and probate records

The apprenticeship of Richard Stinnings, the purchase of Thomas Shreive’s term, the 1649 Eel River purchase and the 1660 court case are entries in the printed Records of the Colony of New Plymouth (volumes 1, 3 and 12) and are on record. The 1652 confirmation comes from the abstract of the court order in The Mayflower Descendant, volume 3 (Court Orders III:17), and is compiled: that abstract dates it 7 October 1652, while The Great Migration Begins gives 5 October 1652. The wording of the spoken will, the inventory’s contents and the 1673 terms of Joseph’s gift are also from compiled abstracts. The inventory is dated 24 January 1676, which in the Old Style calendar falls after the day it was exhibited, 29 October 1676; the compilers note the discrepancy.

Sources

Except for Rebecca’s marriage, which is entered in the Plymouth Colony records, and the entries named in the notes above, the dates and transactions on this page are taken from the abstracts of the Plymouth Colony court, land and probate records in the compiled genealogy, Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, volume 18, part 1 (Richard Warren). The compilers give his death only as falling between the date of his will and the date it was proved.