♂Robert Finney

Robert Finney (about 1568 – about 1637) was a man of the parish of Lenton, in Nottinghamshire, England, whose widow and children crossed to Plymouth Colony^W late in the 1630s. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), by two lines of descent, both through his son John Phinney.

Lenton

Robert was a son of Jeffrey Finney, who was buried at Lenton, just southwest of Nottingham, on 21 July 1586, and of Ellen Smedley. His mother, by then a widow, made her will on 8 August 1606, asking to be buried in Lenton churchyard “as neare to my husband Jeffray Finnye as may be”. She left “to my sonne Robart Finnye my ride Cowe”, named him one of her four executors, and gave a small sum of money and a hen to each of “John Fynnye And to Katherine Fynnye sonne and daught’ of my sonne Robart Fynnye”. She was buried nine days later.

Robert probably married about 1595, but his wife’s name is not known; the Lenton marriage register has a gap from 1589 to 1612. The couple had at least six children. Katherine, thought to be the eldest, was born about 1596 and later married Gabriel Fallowell. The register records the baptisms of the other five between 1599 and 1611: Joyce, Anne, John, Robert and a second Anne. The first two died young: Anne was buried in February 1602/3, and Joyce in August 1603.

The crossing

The family’s last entry at Lenton is the baptism of John’s daughter Margaret in July 1637; by 24 December 1638 John was at Plymouth, where his son John was born. No burial or will for Robert is known at Lenton. A tradition among his descendants holds that he died at sea on the way to New England, and the 1994 study that placed the family at Lenton judged that it may be true, though he may instead have died soon after reaching Plymouth.

His widow is very likely the “Mother Feney” who died at Plymouth on 22 April 1650, “aged fourscore and upwards”. Four of their children settled at Plymouth: John, Robert, Katherine with her husband Gabriel Fallowell, and Anne, who married Samuel King.

The family

Their son Robert, baptized at Lenton on 16 February 1607/8, became one of Plymouth’s leading men. A 1994 study of the family records him as constable in 1645, a deputy to the colony’s General Court in the 1650s, 1660s and 1670s, and a deacon of the church from 1669 until his death on 7 January 1687/8. He and his wife, Phebe Ripley, had no children.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through John Phinney and meet again in James Morton (born 1714). One runs through John’s son John and his daughter Reliance Phinney (1681–1735); the other through John’s daughter Hannah, who married Ephraim Morton, and her son John Morton (1680–1739). John Morton and Reliance Phinney married at Barnstable on 27 December 1705, and James Morton was their son. Hannah’s place in the family rests on compiled genealogies that make her a daughter of John Phinney, and on the 1686 will of John’s brother Robert, who left bequests to “my three Kinsfolke Robert Finney Josiah Finney and Hannah the wife of Ephraim Morton Junr”.

Notes

The Lenton identification

Clifford L. Stott, “The Finney Family of Lenton, Nottinghamshire and Plymouth, Massachusetts”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 148 (October 1994): 315–327, identified the Plymouth Finneys with this Lenton family. Each of the five Lenton baptisms of his children names Robert as the father (“Johannes filius Roberti Finnye”); the baptism of Robert on 16 February 1607/8 agrees with the age of Robert Finney of Plymouth, “near fourscore years” at his death; and Ellen Finney’s will names Robert’s children John and Katherine. Stott prints the register entries from the parish registers and the bishop’s transcripts, and Ellen’s will from the register of the Exchequer and Prerogative Courts of York. The birth year 1568 is his estimate, since Lenton’s baptisms before 1598 are lost, and he places the marriage “probably at Lenton, about 1595”. The identification of “Mother Feney” as Robert’s widow is also his.

Death

Online family trees give his death as 1637, in the Atlantic Ocean. Stott writes that “He died probably about 1637/8, probably enroute to New England or soon after arrival”, and notes that no burial or probate record for Robert or any of his family is known, which suggests that they left the parish and the county.

Names

Stott calls Robert’s mother “Ellen, probably Smedley”; her will names “my brother Thomas Smedlay” as one of its supervisors. The name is written Finnye in the Lenton register and Phiny by 1636; the family’s descendants spell it both Finney and Phinney.