James COLE

                   Freeman in 1633-Plymouth, Mass.
Sources:Cole Gen. A5 C11 p57; Sav. Gen. Dic. p 426;
Representative Men and Old Families of R. I. V3 p 1773 p 2263, Am. Com. V6 p
312 Biog. Ency. V38 p 310, 319; Davis Hist. of Swansea p 154.
James Cole from Highgate, England came to Plymouth, Mass, with a grant from King James for whom he was named.

The connection of James Cole as the son of Sir William Cole, Earl of Enniskillen is by tradition and not by documentation.  The generations of Coles are from "The Genealogy of the cole Family" by James Edwin Cole who states, "In my opinion James Cole of Plymouth is a descendant of Thomas Cole who died in 1571."


JAMES COLE:
       Descendants of James Cole of Plymouth 1633 by Ernest Byron Cole

       James Cole of Plymouth, Mass. was born in England, lived at Highgate, London.  He married Mary Lobel, daughter of Dr. Mathiew Lobel, a noted botanist and physician of Lille, France, the son of Jean de Lobel, a distinguished Lawyer.  Mathiew was a physician at Monpelier, Germany, Italy and Switzerland; he also practiced medicine at Antwerp being attached as physician to William of Orange.  From Antwerp he came to London and became physician to James Cole, mentioned above.  Dr. Lobel is the author of a number of books on medicinal plants and is the discoverer of the medical plant new known as Lobelia, which is widely used to the present day.
       The James Cole family emigrated to America in 1632 and settled first at Saco, Maine, but soon after removed to Rhode Island, and from there to Plymouth, Mass.  the Cole family was the first to live on the hiss at Plymouth and it came to be know as  "Col's Hill," or "Burial Hill,' as it was here that the pilgrims of the Mayflower buried their dead.  James Cole came to own considerable property, a part of which included Plymouth Rock.

       Hugh Cole, 2nd son, born in London, England, 1627, son of James, came with his father  to plymouth, Mass. in 1633 and was admitted as freeman of Plymouth in 1657.  He married (1) 8 Jan 1654 Mary Foxwell, (2) Elizabeth Lettuce, (3) Mary Shelley.
       The following appears upon the Plymouth records: "8 Apl 1634.  It was agreed with James Cole that his son Hugh shall keep the cowes from Apl 15 to November and shall have for his pay fifty bushels of corn.  He shall bring them up every morning to be milked and then carry back to feed and bring them home at night."  (At this time Hugh would be 7 years old.)
       Hugh Cole was made surveyor of highways at Barnstable and granted 100 acres of land at Acushauett.  In 1667 with others he purchased of King Phillip 500 acres of land on the west bank of what was named for him Cole's River.  He was a shipwright and civil engineer and many of the tracts of land of Swansea were surveyed by him  He was a selecman of Swansea for many years and was representative and deputy to the general court in the years 1773, 74, 75, 80, 83, 84, 85, 86 and 89.
       He was for years the friend of King Phillip (Indian Chief.)  Having been requested by the plymouth Colony Council to visit King Phillip and report the conditions he made the following report:
       "Swansea, 1 Apl 1671.  Most Honorable Sirs:  Yours I received this day whereby I perceive you desire to know what posture the Indians are in.  I do not find them to continue in a posture of war as they have been.  I went to Mount Hope last second day on purpose to see their proceedings and was in many of their houses, but saw nothing as intending to war.  But asking them of their reason of continuing together at Mt. Hope, they answered it was to see Phillip's child buried, and I have seen some return, but the greater part of them are together.  And they gave me as the reason because the wind does so blow against them they cannot go home with their canoes -- not else.  Rest assured I am yours to command what I am able.

"27 Oct 1669  Hugh Cole"
       In June 1675 at the commencement of the war with King Phillip, two of Hugh Cole's sons were made prisoners by the Indians and taken to Phillip at Mt. Hope.  Phillip ordered them set at liberty, because as he said, Hugh cole ad always been his friend.  He sent word to Hugh Cole that he could no long restrain his warriors and for him to take his family and immediately remove to Rhode Island.
       This he did and one hour afterward his home was in flames.  While he had been on such friendly terms with Phillip, his was the first house burned and Gershom Cole was the first person killed.
       After leaving his home, Hugh Cole located at Portsmouth, R.I.  Savage says; "Hugh was a Sergeant in the war against King Phillip."  After the war in hishis election as representative he is always spoken of as sergeant.  After the close of the war, 1667 he returned to Swansea and built a house, a few rods from where Miss Abby Cole now lives.  The well walled by him on the Kickemuit River is still there.
       Part of this land has descended by will , no deed having been made for it; it has neverpassed out of possession of the Cole family and is now owned by Miss Abby Cole (1908.)  Part of the land owned by him in Swansea, is now part of Warren, R.I.
       He died in Swansea, 2 Jan 1699, and was buried in Tyler Point Cemetery, Howland Measow, Barrington, R. I.  He had 10 children, the first seven born in Plymouth, the other three in Swansea.


COLE  200 -- 1900, by Juliette Cole Arden:
       Reign of King James chap. III, p. 23

       So we arrive at the time of King James, when the thrones of Scotland and England became one and the family of Cole, so powerful for centuries was loaded with additional honors and estates.  At this time Sir William Cole was established in Ireland by the King and given immense estates at Enniskillen.  He and his descendants were afterwards created Baron Mount Florence Viscount and Earl of Ennislillen and Baron Grinstead:  F.R.S., D.C.L., F.S.S., being the titles held by the present head of family, Lord Cole.  The Barony of Ranelagh was also conferred upon them, but became extinct.
       James Cole, a younger son of sir William Cole of Enniskillen, the namesake and favorite of the King, about the time of the first Pilgrim settlement, at Plymouth, Mass. was given a grant by the King to most valuable land there.  He was destined later to become head of the American branch of the family.
        Not until after the King's death, however, was any move made by James even to visit Plymouth.  He then resided at Highgate, a suburb of London, where he was especially known for his love of flowers.  In 1624 he made a most interesting marriage to Mary, the daughter of the famous Dr. Matthieu de Lobel, also residing at Highgate, physician to all the courts of Europe, and special physician to William of Orance, and later to King James.  He was the son of a well known lawyer, Jean de Lobel of Lille (France.)  Nor was his fame as a Doctor all that he had achieved at that time, for he was known all over the world for his many books, not only on Medicine but also on floriculture, and he had very beautiful gardens around his house at Highgare.  The Lobelia has its name from him, who first discovered it medicinal qualities.

Chapter IV, p. 31:
       Between 1630 and 1633 James cole and his wife with their children, James Jr. and Hugh came to America to settle, years after the death of King James.
       Every effort was made not to interfere with the Pilgrim settlement but the grant was a troublesome affair, which in the end had to be adjusted by the Courts.  They built their home on the hill just back of the rock landing place, overlooking the Bay, since known as Cole's Hill.  It was a little North of Leyden Street, on which houses of the early settlers had been built.  Two other children, John and Mary were born there.
       James Cole established the Inn, probably the first in New England, on Leydon Street.  In 1636, the Courts allowed him 10 acres of land, three of which were on the "South side of Leydon Street, from Warren to the westerly line of the lot opposite the Universalist Church."  (Undoubtedly the land immediately around the Inn.)  In 1637, he was allowed 7 acres surrounding his house (Cole's Hill.)  In 1641 fifty acres additional were given to him and still more in 1642  (In the Lakenham meadow district.)   In 1662, a grant at Secconet Neck and in in 1665 thirty acres on the South side of the Nanuet River.  For many years he and his eldest son, James Jr. kept the Inn.  In 1668 he sold out to his son who continued to run it until 1698.  There is no record of the death or burial place of either James Cole or his wife Mary.  His children and grandchildren intermarried with those of the original settlers. . .
       The sons, meantime had helped to establish settlements at Swansea and Bridgemater.  In 1667, Hugh Cole with seventeen others, among them, Constance Southworth, Thomas Willetts, afterwards first English Mayor of New York, Josias Winslow, Capt. James Cudworth, John Coggeshall and his (Hugh's) brother, John Cole, purchased of King Philip, the Indian Chief, all the marsh and meadow land of Mettapoisett, anout 500 acres.  They named it Swansea.  It was on the east side of Cole's River, now known as the Swansea River.  (It comprised the present towns of Swansea and Somerset, Mass., and Barington and Warren in Rhode Island.)
       Just eight years after it was founded it was the scene of a dreadful Indian massacre by some of King Phillip's tribe in which many of the settlers lost their lives, and all had to flee.  The Indians afterward burned the houses.  All would have been killed had it not been for the love of King Phillip for Hugh Cole, whom he secretly warned of the danger at the last minute, "declaring he could no longer hold his men back."  The select men of Swansea from 1669 to 1675 were: James Brown, Thomas Levis, Benjamin Alby and John Butterworth.  1675 was the year of the massacre.
       After the death of James Jr., his eldest son John occupied the residence on Cole's Hill, which was turned over by him about 1726 with the hope that it would ultimately be made into a national park to pretect the famous rock and landing place.  The hope seems about to be realized.
       In the meantime tablets have been let into the face of Cole's Hill commemorating the deaths of the first settlers during those years and a stone canopy has been built over the rock to protect it from the vandalism of souvenir hunters.


THE ANTECEDENTS OF JAMES COLE:
       Chapter V, p. 35

       There would perhaps always have been a mystery as to which branch of the Cole family James cole belonged, had the knowledge not been passed down from generation to generation through the James Jr. descendants, who, after five generations in Plymouth, settled in Western Mass., and in New York.  To Consider 3rd and his wife, who was his first cousin, the daughter of Elijah Cole, the line was perfectly known, and they were born in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Consider Cole living to be eighty-nine.
       Through all the years they had lived in close communion here with the descendants of one of the Sanderson family of Castle Sanderson, County of Cavan, Ireland, which adjoins Fermanagh where Enniskillen is located; the same Sanderson family into which Sir John Cole of Enniskillen had married nearly three hundred years ago.
       We find the Sandersons in 1886 then almost extinct here, mentioned especially at the celebration of William Cole (son of Consider 3rd) and his wife Cynthia Jackson as follows:  "Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo Sanderson were the only people present who were at the wedding fifty years ago. . ."
       the James Cole family might never have come to America at all if King James had lived longer.  The changed conditions brought about by his death, especially in the court circles due to the pro-Catholic tendencies of King Charles, and his marriage to a Roman Catholic, together with the renewal of religious persecutions there, were undoubtedly deciding factors in their removel here.  Not only that but as the youngest son of his family, after the death of King James, he stood very slight chance of favors at home.
       The discrepancies in the records abroad may be either accidental of intentional on the part of those compiling them for in those days anyone who went to America was very easily lost sight of by their families for obvious reasons.  The distance was so great too, as to sever communications between them usually after a short time.  Indeed no proper official records of even births and deaths were in England prior to 1837.

(The author gives her line as James Cole s/o Sir Wm. Cole of Enniskillen:)
       James Cole b. 1625 London md (1) Mary Tilson (2) Abigail Davenport
       John Cole b. 1660 md (1) Patience Barber (2) Susanna Grav.
       John Cole b. 1699 md Sarah _________
       Joseph Cole b. 1723 Plympton, Mass. md Ruth Sampson
       Consider cole md (?) Abigail Vaugn.  Moved to Paris, ME
       Consider Cole
       Consider cole md  _______ cole, his first cousin, d/o Elijah Cole
       William Cole md Cynthia Jackson
       Julliette Cole Mrs. Henry Arden)


COLE'S HILL:  The First Burying Ground

       "But what was most sad and lamentable, that in two or three months half of the number died, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts."
                      ---from William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation

     Before the Mayflower left Cape Cod, and while she lay at anchor in Plymouth harbor, a violent and fatal sickness broke out among her passengers.
       Confinement in their close and crowded cabin, the hardship of a long and stormy voyage, poor food and the exposure of building their first houses on shore, caused many of the Pilgrim company to lose their lives, in sight of the promised land they had ventured so much to gain.
       Hardly a family but lost one or two of its members; wives, their husbands, children, their parents; before spring came, one half of the little colony had perished and were secretly buried on this hill by the shore.
       Three hundred years later, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants placed a handsome sarcophagus to honor and receive these dead from their nameless graves, which time and accident had disturbed, and the Massachusetts Tercentenary commission set aside a park reservation on the crest of the hill, to surround the monument.  It was formally dedicated September 8, 1921.
       On the side facing the street, the inscription reads:
       "This Monument marks the First Burying Ground in Plymouth of the Passengers of the Mayflower.
       "Here under cover of darkness the fast dwindling company laid their leveling the earth above them lest the Indians know how many were the graves.
       "Reader  History records no nobler venture for faith and freedom than that of this Pilgrim band.
       "In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and cold they laid the foundations of a state wherein every man, through countless ages should have liberty to worship God in his own way.
       "May their example inspire thee to do thy part in perpetuating and spreading the lofty ideals of our republic throughout the world
       At one end of the memorial is inscribed:
       "The Bones of the Pilgrims found at various times in or near this enclosure and preserved for many years in the canopy over the Rock were returned at the time of the Tercentenary celebration and deposited within this monument.
                      "Erected by the General Society of
                        Mayflower Descendants A.D. 1920."
       On the opposite end of the monument is:
       "About a hundred sowls came over in this first ship, and began this work which God in his Goodness hath hithertoe Blessed.  Let his Holy Name have ye praise."
                                                                      Bradford


Hartford Times  B-8835 -- (1) W.J.H. March 10, 1956.  Answered by G.E.G., M.W. and possibly others.   Given for the sake of accuracy.  I believe it has never been conclusively proven whem James (1) Cole of Plymouth, Mass. married.  I give the following from the Bo