1210.Henry Lake. Born ca Aug 1611 in Liverpool, Lancashire. Henry was baptized in Chidwell, Liverpool, Lancashire, on 11 Aug 1611. Henry died in Dartmouth, MA on 21 Feb 1673.
Henry came to New England in the group from Lancashire led by Rev. Richard Mather (grandfather of Cotton Mather) that emmigrated together to Dorchester.
After his wife’s execution in Dorchester, 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.105
This Henry Lake is probably not the son of a David & Alice (Backster) Lake of Wavertree, Childwall, England, as David's will did not name Henry or his brother Thomas.
Check out the article “The Early Rhode Island Lakes” by G. Andrews Moriarty, The American Genealogist, volume 12 (1935), pp. 17-24.
Ca 1641 Henry married Alice. Born in England. Alice died in Boston, MA ca 1650/1.
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.