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In the patriarchal European society continued into the colonies of the Americas the husband and father holds all property and right. This helps to explain the near instantaneous deterioration of John Deake’s family in the beginning of the 1760’s. Though other factors were involved in the collapse, this fact proves a mighty hindrance to all that Hannah Deake may have done to preserve her family as a whole. At first glance, the debts that John Deake inflicted upon himself and his family appear to fester from the heavy expenses of raising a family of nine children. But since he was a doctor, one might also assume that Deake would have had more than enough money to make ends meet. Herein lies the mystery in this family’s defeat. Perhaps he wasn’t a very successful doctor in Hopkinton, a city that quite likely supported a large enough community to require many doctors, thus providing enough competition to raise the quality requirement of its doctors. Or maybe during this period of