Robert Wheaton

     Robert was born in 1605 in Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales. He immigrated to New England about 1636. Robert married Alice Bowen, daughter of Richard Bowen and Ann (?), circa 1640 in Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts. He was a man of independent thought and was unafraid to speak his mind. The result of this trait was that the narrow thinking leaders of the colony drove him out labeling him as “a pestilential fellow”. He removed to Weymouth and met Elder Samuel Newman and went with him to Seekonk. Here Elder Newman renamed the settlement Rehoboth and Robert became an elder of the church of this settlement. He prospered there as a planter; forced to leave there during King Phillip's War, he returned and spent the remainder of his life in Rehoboth.¹ Robert departed this life in 1696 in Rehoboth, Bristol County, Massachusetts.