Francis Weekes (settler)

Francis Weekes (c. 1616 – 1689), also spelled Wickes, was a founding settler of Providence in what would become the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Weekes immigrated to England before 1635 and came to Providence as a minor with John Smith, the miller, from Dorchester, Massachusetts. Weekes, whom Roger Williams called a "poor young fellow," joined Williams and three others at a Seekonk River settlement in 1636 before crossing the river to found Providence, Rhode Island. In Providence he received a home lot on Towne Street and some meadow land. He signed the 1637 Compact and the 1640 Combination with his mark.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Weekes left Providence by 1645 for New York.^[2] In 1645 he was in the settlement established by anabaptist Deborah Moody at Gravesend, Long Island. In 1657 he was a selectman in Hempstead, Long Island. By 1661 the Weekes family settled in Oyster Bay, Long Island, where Francis owned a home, a home lot, and ten acres of farmland. By 1673 he moved to a home a half mile east of Oyster Bay.^[6][1]

Weekes's will is dated June 25, 1687, and he died in 1689.^[6][7]

Weekes married Elizabeth, whose last name is unknown, about 1640. They had eight children between 1641 and 1654: Samuel, John, Joseph, Elizabeth, Anna, Thomas, James, and Daniel. Their children were baptized in the Dutch Church in New Amsterdam, the oldest non-Anglican Protestant church in North America. His wife, Elizabeth, became a Quaker and was fined in 1658 in Hempstead, Long Island, for "meeting in the woods, where there were two Quakers—the one of them as named, the wife of Francis Weekes."^[2][6][7]