The Plymouth Hereditary Society (PHS) is a lineage society for descendants of individuals who established residence in one or more of the eighteen towns of the Plymouth Colony between 1620 and 1691. It was founded in 1990. Membership requires documentary proof of lineal descent from a resident who lived in the Colony for at least one year. Rehoboth, the birthplace of my qualifying ancestor, is among the recognized Colony towns.
Phebe Lovell
Phebe Lovell, also found in records as Lowell, Lovewell, or Loven, was born on 25 December 1666 in Rehoboth, Bristol County, Plymouth Colony. Her birth appears in the published Vital Records of Rehoboth, 1642–1896, anchoring her identity within one of the original towns of the Plymouth Colony. Though later genealogists have debated her exact parentage, with some attributing her as a daughter of John Lovell and Elizabeth Sylvester, the record evidence is not yet conclusive. The shifting spellings of Lovell and Lovewell in seventeenth-century New England further complicate the issue, but there is little doubt that the child born in Rehoboth in 1666 is the woman later known as the wife of Andrew Cook.
On 24 July 1685, Phebe married Andrew Cook in Chelmsford, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Their early years together followed the frontier edge of settlement, as towns like Dunstable, Chelmsford, and Watertown shifted in their boundaries. The couple’s son Andrew was born at Dunstable in 1687, and over the next fifteen years they welcomed a large family. Elizabeth, Alice, Phebe, John, Thomas, and Joseph Cook appear in compiled records and town registers, with the family centered in western Middlesex County by the turn of the century. A Sudbury town meeting entry of 29 November 1697 notes “Andrew Cook and wife appeared,” situating Phebe firmly in the community’s daily governance. Later records at Weston provide further glimpses of the family’s presence and the baptisms of younger children.
Beyond vital entries, Phebe emerges in land and probate transactions. On 26 December 1713, an agreement between Andrew Cook Jr. and his father Andrew Cook Sr. outlined family property arrangements, obligations of support for parents, and payments due to younger sons. Such documents give texture to the family’s domestic life and hint at Phebe’s role as matriarch of a growing household. Most telling is a deed dated 21 June 1723, in which Phebe surrendered her dower rights to Joseph Lovell of Natick. This transaction proves that she was alive after that date, extending her lifespan later than the “about 1717” death date repeated in some secondary sources.
The story of Phebe’s life is one of movement, continuity, and survival across the shifting boundaries of Massachusetts towns. Born in the Plymouth Colony, she married into the Cook family and raised children who would spread across New England. Her known children include Andrew (d. 1721), Elizabeth, Alice, Phebe, John, Deacon Thomas, and Joseph, many of whom are traceable into the mid-eighteenth century through probate and land records. Together they represent the continuation of a line that began in Plymouth Colony and extended through the great migrations westward into New Hampshire, Ohio, Indiana, and beyond.
Although her burial place is not known, the documentary trail places Phebe Lovell at the heart of colonial Massachusetts family life. She stands as an example of the second generation born within the Plymouth Colony, bridging the early years of Rehoboth’s settlement with the emergence of new towns across Middlesex County. Through her, I trace my membership in the Plymouth Hereditary Society, recognizing the endurance of her line and the way her descendants carried the Plymouth legacy into later centuries.
Membership in the Society
Through Phebe Lovell’s birth in Rehoboth and subsequent life across the Middlesex County towns, my eligibility rests on her documented residence within the Plymouth Colony timeframe and the continuation of the line forward through New England and the Midwest. This page consolidates the core records that frame Phebe’s identity, family, and chronology within the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Additional memberships will be added as they are approved.
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