Maryland Plante

Early Life.

Robert Cole, an early settler in Maryland, was not a man of special achievement or renown, but his life was more typical of colonists than some of those who are better known. Cole was born in Heston, Middlesex, England—his mother, Joan, lived there in the early 1660s. His father, William Cole, died in 1633 or 1634, when Robert was young. He was apparently the only surviving child in the family. Heston lay in a fertile agricultural region, and the Cole family, long resident there, had shared in the local prosperity. Robert Cole could read and write, and, unlike many immigrants, he arrived in the colonies with enough money to buy land and to bring servants. Between 1649 and 1652 Cole married Rebecca Knott, a widow with two children.

Family.

While it is impossible to know why Cole immigrated, it is likely that his Catholicism...