Michael and Ruth nee Winter	see Data	see Family Tree	(generation 15)
(This text added to website in May 2011)

Michael is the son of Michael and probably his wife Elizabeth (whose maiden name is unknown), and a grandson of Michael and Thamsyn Trease of North Petherwin. His baptismal record has not been found but he appears to have been born before 1644.

It appears that from 1662 and possibly earlier Michael was running a farm at Jacobstow. In 1663 Dorothy Doubt, his great aunt, bequeathed some farming equipment to him in her will. The reason for him departing from Pattacott to live at Jacobstow is unknown. As possibly the oldest or indeed the only son, it would have seemed more likely for him to stay at Pattacott and work with his father rather than to lease another farm. Perhaps the farm at Jacobstow was more suitable for being run by one person. Anyway whatever the reason for leaving, by 1670 Michael is back with his father at Pattacot as the new lease drawn up in that year is simply for his and his father's life. The failure to name a wife or an heir of age in the Lease indicates that Michael had neither at that time.

After his father died in 1680, Michael appears to have had no sons to help him with the work on the farm and to continue with the farm when he died. His sister Gertrude may have helped out on the farm until she married in 1685. It is also thought that his Aunt Ann may never married and may have stayed on at the farm firstly helping Michael's father, after his wife Elizabeth's early death in 1660, and then helping this Michael, his son. Ann was probably in her fifties when her brother Michael died and in her seventies when she died, if she is the Ann Trease buried in North Petherwin in December 1702.

In September 1703, Michael Trease married Ruth Winter at North Petherwin. Michael appears to have been about 60 which seems very late in life to marry and start a family. Nothing more is known of Ruth Winter and her surname is not a local name. Michael and Ruth are known to have had four children during the early years of their marriage. The last christening was just over 8 years after they married and may indicate that Ruth was in her mid thirties when she married.

Michael died in December 1723 and his wife Ruth died in September 1747. The long gap between their deaths is compatible with Michael being substantially older than Ruth.

1745 marks the end of the occupation and farming of Pattacott by the Trease family that is known to have begun almost two hundred years earlier and possibly started even before that. The new Pattacott lease drawn up in that year shows a new tenant there, namely William Hurrell.

The baptismal records of four sons of Michael and Ruth have been traced at North Petherwin. None of the sons remained in North Petherwin and deciding where they went is subject to some uncertainty :-

• son William was baptised in October 1704 and would have been almost 20 when his father died. It is surmised that he would have been already helping his father and would have taken over the running of the farm after his father's death. William is thought to have never married and to be the William Trease who was buried in Poundstock in 1772.
  
  
• son Samuel was baptised in March 1706 and appears to have left the area. So far two possible destinations have been found : -
  1. He went to Bristol where he married Mary Tucker in 1751. No children of this marriage have been found. Samuel appears to be the Samuel Trays who died in Bristol in 1780 aged 74 and his wife the Mary Trays who died there in 1780 aged 70.
  2. He went to the Crediton area of Devon where great uncles Samuel and Richard appear to have gone almost 80 years before and married Joan Lee in Nymet Tracy in 1735. So far one child, Mary, has been found.
  
  
• son Richard was baptised in July 1709. No further reference to him has been found.
  
  
• son Peter was baptised in 1712 and would have been aged about 11 when his father died. Peter became a mason and married Joan Sharp in St Gennys in 1740. Peter and Joan had eight children six sons and two daughters. His wife Joan died in 1755 and was buried in St Gennys. Peter died two years later and was buried in Otterham.