Note: Related memorials still linked at Virtual Cemetery Matchmaking By In-Laws
Her grandfather Gregory Belcher had lived at Mt. Wollaston, in the part of old Braintree that became Quincy later. Did her grandfather Gregory and her father Samuel Belcher live near each other for her birth, or not? Was she born inside what became Quincy, or not? We don't know. We know more about where she died.
Three granddaughters of Gregory Belcher would marry three sons of John and Grace French. Pre-marriage, the Belchers and Frenches were not exactly neighbors, but attended the same Puritan-era church. There had been one Braintree church at the beginning, its site now in Quincy, the attendance area or precinct divided in two by Elizabeth's death. Once there were two, the attendance boundaries of each Puritan church were set by residence. A second church was delayed, as early settlers were so few.
There would be a third town-authorized church, eventually, and all would become part of Boston's south suburbs, several centuries later. The land in her day was still farms and wilderness. A neck of land called Dorchester led northward into a tiny, baby version of Boston. Water surrounded an emerging Boston on three sides, its governing elites and the soldiers in side it kept safer by the waterways' almost impassable marshes. The marshes would be filled in later, as drier Boston land filled up and the marsh land was needed to expand.
Her Belchers were outside Boston, lived closer to the ocean, nearish to the first Church of old Braintree. Her French in-laws instead lived more inland, where the saltier Weymouth River turns into the faster-freezing Monatiquot River, a bit southwest of what became Quincy. The French homestead was barely northwest of where modern Elm abuts modern Commercial. Both the farm and the second church were one the north side of the Monatiquot. The church was built in time for Elizbeth's last children to attend, so by 1710 or so.
Local historian Sprague, writing a century later, studied land records and found her spouse Thomas' name associated with land near a crossing of the riverside paths that later became modern Washington and Union Streets. For Elizabeth and Thomas, their time together, however, was before anyone knew of a George Washington, knw there would be a Union independent of Britain. That location put them more inland, further upstream of the 2nd church.
A lot of local travel was by river, paths put alongside the water streams. The wider Monatiquot, of her in-laws, turned into the narrower Cochato River, near her house, causing two paths that crossed, one alongside the main river, flowing west to east, another alongside its tributary, flowing southish to northish. Walking opposite the stream's flow was to go uphill. Thus, near her house, walkers and cart pullers rounded a watery corner, could head further upstream, until at the headwaters, on a ridgetop that looked down at the Plymouth colony to the south. At the time, Plymouth had Pilgrims whereas Braintree had Puritans. The religiously more radical colony was that of the Pilgrims, as they were regarded as "separatists", not merely "nonconformists". (Once to the ridgetop, a trail down the other side of the ridgetop led to the future town of Bridgewater. If did not make the turn to go up the Cochato, then one went north, instead up into the Blue Hills and to what began as Dedham. Places like Mendon and Medfield splintered off later, where some of her youngest children would move once grown, too young when she and Thomas died, barely remembering her and him. )
Her marriage was a clear case of "matchmaking-by-in-laws". Almost 20 years younger than her husband, Thomas French, she was still having children when her husband might have been expected to have finished. When the couple died unexpectedly, they left behind ten orphans, ranging in age from toddlers to teens.
The sickness took first her Thomas, then herself, about a year later. His death was "just in time" to use the second church's The year gave her time to prepare.
Her eldest, a daughter, married a widower, said Sprague. The family paperwork chose as administrators of her estate the next eldest, two teen boys, Thomas the junior and Moses, .
Normally one would rely on the parents' siblings to be be guardians or otherwise step in. Too many of her spouse's siblings could not , as they also died of the sickness. Only older brother Dependence French remained, on the Committee "to hurry up and finish" the purchase of the second precinct's burying ground. That left her side. Belcher relatves would buy some of the land, its sale needed to generate cash to pay off any mortgages or other debts. This money-raising would prevent or at least lessen the need to "sell the children" as indentured servant, the other way to pay off parents' debts.
The old custom of naming godparents at baptism, to protect the children, should the real parents die, had fallen out of use. But, clearly, some in the family took on the godparent role anyway. Son Moses would stay local, with signs of Belcher help. Son Moses' children were thus among the ones able to keep the French name going locally, their stones in the Elm Street cemetery maintained longer and better, as Braintree changed. The younger children of Elizabeth, apprenticed out or otherwise moving, became far-flung.
To see how some of those children fared, see sons Moses' and Abijah/ Habijah's links. See husband Thomas's page for a full list of their children.
CHILDREN COMMENTARY
Were any indentured, if lands sold were not enough to pay off mortgages?
A good indenture might train kindly for a trade. Better-written contracts required a suit of clothes and a minimal education. Others did not. A bad indenture instead could be harsh, the child effectively enslaved until finishing the years contracted. Some victims trying to escape before the labor contract finished. Ads would be put in colonial papers, asking for the capture and return of runaways, with brandings and other disfigurements described. While some locals kept slaves, native or African, others would increasingly turn against the idea, perhaps due to personal knowledge from indenturings gone wrong. Not everyone took that view. For example, the Virginia Company was the private "land developer" for the first successful colony in the south. A long-lived and wealthy Company, it convinced the City of London to let them sweep up the "half-orphaned" from London streets, take them abroad, involuntarily . "Half-orphaned" typically meant only the father was dead, the widowed mother still living. "Involuntary" meant they were to be sent abroad against their will and against their mother's will.
Appallingly, the Virginia Company promised the London elites to be "severe" in the colonial upbringing of the captive, shipped children. There were zero promises to educate children or even to protect against pedophiles. As a result of the severity in an already harsh frontier environment, over half, child or grown, if indentured to the Company, were said to have died in the Virginia colony before reaching their freedom dates.
Children quite small were taken. This writer went to church with a southern woman named Charmaine Foster, whose Irish female ancestor had been taken away from her widowed mother at age three by British officials, then kicked out of her masters' house at age four for not doing enough work. The second masters took her overseas, to the south. She was treated perhaps more kindly by the second masters, yet, not normally, as she never saw her mother again.
Elizabeth's father-in-law, John French, had been declared a "freeman" in Braintree in 1644, a declaration never seen for his children or grandchildren, meaning what? That indenture had been part of his arrangement earlier? Perhaps voluntary, to earn passage over here? Perhaps involuntary, as a political punishment, what the Brits called "transportation"? A descendant still living in Braintree has written to say he still has immigrant John's wallet as an heirloom, that the family tradition was this: Sent to Ireland as part of a military force, young John refused to commit atrocities against the native Irish and was thus punished with imprisonment. Thus, transporting would have been "a way out". John Winthrop was the corporate governor for the Bay Colony, run differently than the Virginia Company. His "freemen" were an experiment in local democracy, not allowed to choose king or colony officials, such as its governor, but the freemen could vote on matters affecting their local church and town.
LIFE SUMMARY.
She, Elizabeth, was daughter to Samuel Belcher and Mary Billings. Varied sources give her a birth date, but it is not clear in what records it appeared. She died at about age 40, date recorded by Rev. Samuel Niles, in the winter, of 1718. Spouse Thomas French, son of John and Grace French, died at about 59, in the fall of 1717, recorded again by Niles, who put the burial of Thomas on the side of his journal indicating the second church's new graveyard as the burial place.
Her immigrant grandfather, Gregory Belcher, was one of the founding "proprietors" of the first church of old Braintree church. As such, he would have been heavily involved in religion, more typical of the first arrivals than of their children. He owned considerable property in the larger Braintree area, bought ironworks land with son-in-law Alexander Marsh, who married a Belcher aunt. A Marsh would be one of the people buying land out of Elizabeth's estate, again, a generosity presumed to help raise cash for the children's benefit, maybe a promise made to her on her deathbed.
Her mother, Mary Billings, according to Belcher genealogy, was, like some others, a reluctant church member. Her mother did not "own the covenant" church-wise until 1684, after Elizabeth's father, Samuel Belcher, had died. Mary did this in time for her marriage to a Samuel Niles (maybe the future Rev. Samuel Niles of the second church?).
She had "signed the covenant", not at Braintree, but at the Dorchester church run by the Mathers, then, in 1701, entered into communion at the first church of Braintree in 1701.
DEATH BY "IT". A spike in the number of deaths stretched from 1717-1720, one or two "normal deaths" undoubtedely mixed in with weakenings of the otherwise healthy. How do we know there was an epidemic of sorts? Rev. Niles had a journal. ...STORY...
Perhaps hog snouts picked up "the germ" as the animals rooted in the table scraps of an about-to-be-sick neighbor? Then carried "whatever" over to another house? Or, perhaps they all met at Thomas' house for some family event, he was sick first, so gave "it" to the rest?
How did "it" end? They did not have "germ theory". Quarantining the sick to keep others healthy was thus not a concept yet. Instead, as some point, enough were immune after becoming sick and then recovering?
A noticeable number died
The burials of Frenches began with Thomas French, ended with his sister Temperance, who had married a Bowditch. Dying in-between were: Thomas' eldest brother, John the junior; plus John's wife, Experience Thayer; plus Thomas' youngest brother, Samuel French. Another was the Frenches' in-law Nathaniel Wales, who lived on the south side of the Monatiquot. All died in 1718, as did Elizabeth. The Wales family, with 12 children, including Joseph Wales, would provide future in-laws for some of Elizabeth's and Thomas's children and grandchildren. These were more examples of "in-law matchmaking", but Elizabeth, Thomas, and Nathaniel would not live to see them.
Weakened by whatever, these Frenches of the first Puritan generation, born in the colonies, did not live the 80 years enjoyed by their father, freeman John French. Only one French lived long among the eight siblings in spouse Thomas' generation. that one was her brother-in-law Dependence, who died at about 83, surviving a decade past his sister Temperance, both named for virtues important to the family.
Dependence was on the committee charged with helping the town and church buy the deed to the private land where Rev. Niles first wife had been buried. The private owner was apparently reluctant to give-up the rest of his pasture, so the committee was said to allow him to continue letting his animals graze on the grave land. A cemetery anthropologist hired by the city to examine Elm Street and report why it looks half-empty given all lots had been sold and used. She found the old paperwork, did radiation detection of what lay under levelled tombs and said there were two causes-- lawnmowing crews tossing footstone with names so they would not have to mow around them and larger headstones broken by decades of animals grazing.
=====================================================
Her husband's birth is not missing, as thought earlier. It was merely left undated, listed oddly. Using sound-it-out spellings of their day, the record said, "Thomas Ffrench, the sone of John Ffrench and Grace his wiffe was born ..." (p.634, "Records of Braintree, 1660-1793").
The record left a space after "born", perhaps to solve some confusion, with hopes of inserting a date later. The likely confusion: He had been second of TWO sons of John and Grace named Thomas. The Braintree records caught the death of the first in 1656, but that infant's baptism had been elsewhere (Braintree's mother church at Dorchester, before the Braintree church was authorized). Whomever came along later, ready to gather up loose records and insert them later into an official book, found a Thomas French dying in 1656 and a Thomas French born at a later date. The likely scenario is that the record gatherers assumed the two Thomases were the SAME person. They would have assumed the later birth date was a mistake, and thus left the second's birth blank when transcribing the loose notes for the book.
==========================================================
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, June, 2015. Revd. July, 2015, Feb., 2018, and Sept., 2021. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page, id 149438310, at findagrave.com, no other site.
Her grandfather Gregory Belcher had lived at Mt. Wollaston, in the part of old Braintree that became Quincy later. Did her grandfather Gregory and her father Samuel Belcher live near each other for her birth, or not? Was she born inside what became Quincy, or not? We don't know. We know more about where she died.
Three granddaughters of Gregory Belcher would marry three sons of John and Grace French. Pre-marriage, the Belchers and Frenches were not exactly neighbors, but attended the same Puritan-era church. There had been one Braintree church at the beginning, its site now in Quincy, the attendance area or precinct divided in two by Elizabeth's death. Once there were two, the attendance boundaries of each Puritan church were set by residence. A second church was delayed, as early settlers were so few.
There would be a third town-authorized church, eventually, and all would become part of Boston's south suburbs, several centuries later. The land in her day was still farms and wilderness. A neck of land called Dorchester led northward into a tiny, baby version of Boston. Water surrounded an emerging Boston on three sides, its governing elites and the soldiers in side it kept safer by the waterways' almost impassable marshes. The marshes would be filled in later, as drier Boston land filled up and the marsh land was needed to expand.
Her Belchers were outside Boston, lived closer to the ocean, nearish to the first Church of old Braintree. Her French in-laws instead lived more inland, where the saltier Weymouth River turns into the faster-freezing Monatiquot River, a bit southwest of what became Quincy. The French homestead was barely northwest of where modern Elm abuts modern Commercial. Both the farm and the second church were one the north side of the Monatiquot. The church was built in time for Elizbeth's last children to attend, so by 1710 or so.
Local historian Sprague, writing a century later, studied land records and found her spouse Thomas' name associated with land near a crossing of the riverside paths that later became modern Washington and Union Streets. For Elizabeth and Thomas, their time together, however, was before anyone knew of a George Washington, knw there would be a Union independent of Britain. That location put them more inland, further upstream of the 2nd church.
A lot of local travel was by river, paths put alongside the water streams. The wider Monatiquot, of her in-laws, turned into the narrower Cochato River, near her house, causing two paths that crossed, one alongside the main river, flowing west to east, another alongside its tributary, flowing southish to northish. Walking opposite the stream's flow was to go uphill. Thus, near her house, walkers and cart pullers rounded a watery corner, could head further upstream, until at the headwaters, on a ridgetop that looked down at the Plymouth colony to the south. At the time, Plymouth had Pilgrims whereas Braintree had Puritans. The religiously more radical colony was that of the Pilgrims, as they were regarded as "separatists", not merely "nonconformists". (Once to the ridgetop, a trail down the other side of the ridgetop led to the future town of Bridgewater. If did not make the turn to go up the Cochato, then one went north, instead up into the Blue Hills and to what began as Dedham. Places like Mendon and Medfield splintered off later, where some of her youngest children would move once grown, too young when she and Thomas died, barely remembering her and him. )
Her marriage was a clear case of "matchmaking-by-in-laws". Almost 20 years younger than her husband, Thomas French, she was still having children when her husband might have been expected to have finished. When the couple died unexpectedly, they left behind ten orphans, ranging in age from toddlers to teens.
The sickness took first her Thomas, then herself, about a year later. His death was "just in time" to use the second church's The year gave her time to prepare.
Her eldest, a daughter, married a widower, said Sprague. The family paperwork chose as administrators of her estate the next eldest, two teen boys, Thomas the junior and Moses, .
Normally one would rely on the parents' siblings to be be guardians or otherwise step in. Too many of her spouse's siblings could not , as they also died of the sickness. Only older brother Dependence French remained, on the Committee "to hurry up and finish" the purchase of the second precinct's burying ground. That left her side. Belcher relatves would buy some of the land, its sale needed to generate cash to pay off any mortgages or other debts. This money-raising would prevent or at least lessen the need to "sell the children" as indentured servant, the other way to pay off parents' debts.
The old custom of naming godparents at baptism, to protect the children, should the real parents die, had fallen out of use. But, clearly, some in the family took on the godparent role anyway. Son Moses would stay local, with signs of Belcher help. Son Moses' children were thus among the ones able to keep the French name going locally, their stones in the Elm Street cemetery maintained longer and better, as Braintree changed. The younger children of Elizabeth, apprenticed out or otherwise moving, became far-flung.
To see how some of those children fared, see sons Moses' and Abijah/ Habijah's links. See husband Thomas's page for a full list of their children.
CHILDREN COMMENTARY
Were any indentured, if lands sold were not enough to pay off mortgages?
A good indenture might train kindly for a trade. Better-written contracts required a suit of clothes and a minimal education. Others did not. A bad indenture instead could be harsh, the child effectively enslaved until finishing the years contracted. Some victims trying to escape before the labor contract finished. Ads would be put in colonial papers, asking for the capture and return of runaways, with brandings and other disfigurements described. While some locals kept slaves, native or African, others would increasingly turn against the idea, perhaps due to personal knowledge from indenturings gone wrong. Not everyone took that view. For example, the Virginia Company was the private "land developer" for the first successful colony in the south. A long-lived and wealthy Company, it convinced the City of London to let them sweep up the "half-orphaned" from London streets, take them abroad, involuntarily . "Half-orphaned" typically meant only the father was dead, the widowed mother still living. "Involuntary" meant they were to be sent abroad against their will and against their mother's will.
Appallingly, the Virginia Company promised the London elites to be "severe" in the colonial upbringing of the captive, shipped children. There were zero promises to educate children or even to protect against pedophiles. As a result of the severity in an already harsh frontier environment, over half, child or grown, if indentured to the Company, were said to have died in the Virginia colony before reaching their freedom dates.
Children quite small were taken. This writer went to church with a southern woman named Charmaine Foster, whose Irish female ancestor had been taken away from her widowed mother at age three by British officials, then kicked out of her masters' house at age four for not doing enough work. The second masters took her overseas, to the south. She was treated perhaps more kindly by the second masters, yet, not normally, as she never saw her mother again.
Elizabeth's father-in-law, John French, had been declared a "freeman" in Braintree in 1644, a declaration never seen for his children or grandchildren, meaning what? That indenture had been part of his arrangement earlier? Perhaps voluntary, to earn passage over here? Perhaps involuntary, as a political punishment, what the Brits called "transportation"? A descendant still living in Braintree has written to say he still has immigrant John's wallet as an heirloom, that the family tradition was this: Sent to Ireland as part of a military force, young John refused to commit atrocities against the native Irish and was thus punished with imprisonment. Thus, transporting would have been "a way out". John Winthrop was the corporate governor for the Bay Colony, run differently than the Virginia Company. His "freemen" were an experiment in local democracy, not allowed to choose king or colony officials, such as its governor, but the freemen could vote on matters affecting their local church and town.
LIFE SUMMARY.
She, Elizabeth, was daughter to Samuel Belcher and Mary Billings. Varied sources give her a birth date, but it is not clear in what records it appeared. She died at about age 40, date recorded by Rev. Samuel Niles, in the winter, of 1718. Spouse Thomas French, son of John and Grace French, died at about 59, in the fall of 1717, recorded again by Niles, who put the burial of Thomas on the side of his journal indicating the second church's new graveyard as the burial place.
Her immigrant grandfather, Gregory Belcher, was one of the founding "proprietors" of the first church of old Braintree church. As such, he would have been heavily involved in religion, more typical of the first arrivals than of their children. He owned considerable property in the larger Braintree area, bought ironworks land with son-in-law Alexander Marsh, who married a Belcher aunt. A Marsh would be one of the people buying land out of Elizabeth's estate, again, a generosity presumed to help raise cash for the children's benefit, maybe a promise made to her on her deathbed.
Her mother, Mary Billings, according to Belcher genealogy, was, like some others, a reluctant church member. Her mother did not "own the covenant" church-wise until 1684, after Elizabeth's father, Samuel Belcher, had died. Mary did this in time for her marriage to a Samuel Niles (maybe the future Rev. Samuel Niles of the second church?).
She had "signed the covenant", not at Braintree, but at the Dorchester church run by the Mathers, then, in 1701, entered into communion at the first church of Braintree in 1701.
DEATH BY "IT". A spike in the number of deaths stretched from 1717-1720, one or two "normal deaths" undoubtedely mixed in with weakenings of the otherwise healthy. How do we know there was an epidemic of sorts? Rev. Niles had a journal. ...STORY...
Perhaps hog snouts picked up "the germ" as the animals rooted in the table scraps of an about-to-be-sick neighbor? Then carried "whatever" over to another house? Or, perhaps they all met at Thomas' house for some family event, he was sick first, so gave "it" to the rest?
How did "it" end? They did not have "germ theory". Quarantining the sick to keep others healthy was thus not a concept yet. Instead, as some point, enough were immune after becoming sick and then recovering?
A noticeable number died
The burials of Frenches began with Thomas French, ended with his sister Temperance, who had married a Bowditch. Dying in-between were: Thomas' eldest brother, John the junior; plus John's wife, Experience Thayer; plus Thomas' youngest brother, Samuel French. Another was the Frenches' in-law Nathaniel Wales, who lived on the south side of the Monatiquot. All died in 1718, as did Elizabeth. The Wales family, with 12 children, including Joseph Wales, would provide future in-laws for some of Elizabeth's and Thomas's children and grandchildren. These were more examples of "in-law matchmaking", but Elizabeth, Thomas, and Nathaniel would not live to see them.
Weakened by whatever, these Frenches of the first Puritan generation, born in the colonies, did not live the 80 years enjoyed by their father, freeman John French. Only one French lived long among the eight siblings in spouse Thomas' generation. that one was her brother-in-law Dependence, who died at about 83, surviving a decade past his sister Temperance, both named for virtues important to the family.
Dependence was on the committee charged with helping the town and church buy the deed to the private land where Rev. Niles first wife had been buried. The private owner was apparently reluctant to give-up the rest of his pasture, so the committee was said to allow him to continue letting his animals graze on the grave land. A cemetery anthropologist hired by the city to examine Elm Street and report why it looks half-empty given all lots had been sold and used. She found the old paperwork, did radiation detection of what lay under levelled tombs and said there were two causes-- lawnmowing crews tossing footstone with names so they would not have to mow around them and larger headstones broken by decades of animals grazing.
=====================================================
Her husband's birth is not missing, as thought earlier. It was merely left undated, listed oddly. Using sound-it-out spellings of their day, the record said, "Thomas Ffrench, the sone of John Ffrench and Grace his wiffe was born ..." (p.634, "Records of Braintree, 1660-1793").
The record left a space after "born", perhaps to solve some confusion, with hopes of inserting a date later. The likely confusion: He had been second of TWO sons of John and Grace named Thomas. The Braintree records caught the death of the first in 1656, but that infant's baptism had been elsewhere (Braintree's mother church at Dorchester, before the Braintree church was authorized). Whomever came along later, ready to gather up loose records and insert them later into an official book, found a Thomas French dying in 1656 and a Thomas French born at a later date. The likely scenario is that the record gatherers assumed the two Thomases were the SAME person. They would have assumed the later birth date was a mistake, and thus left the second's birth blank when transcribing the loose notes for the book.
==========================================================
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, June, 2015. Revd. July, 2015, Feb., 2018, and Sept., 2021. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page, id 149438310, at findagrave.com, no other site.
Note: Related memorials still linked at Virtual Cemetery Matchmaking By In-Laws
Her grandfather Gregory Belcher had lived at Mt. Wollaston, in the part of old Braintree that became Quincy later. Did her grandfather Gregory and her father Samuel Belcher live near each other for her birth, or not? Was she born inside what became Quincy, or not? We don't know. We know more about where she died.
Three granddaughters of Gregory Belcher would marry three sons of John and Grace French. Pre-marriage, the Belchers and Frenches were not exactly neighbors, but attended the same Puritan-era church. There had been one Braintree church at the beginning, its site now in Quincy, the attendance area or precinct divided in two by Elizabeth's death. Once there were two, the attendance boundaries of each Puritan church were set by residence. A second church was delayed, as early settlers were so few.
There would be a third town-authorized church, eventually, and all would become part of Boston's south suburbs, several centuries later. The land in her day was still farms and wilderness. A neck of land called Dorchester led northward into a tiny, baby version of Boston. Water surrounded an emerging Boston on three sides, its governing elites and the soldiers in side it kept safer by the waterways' almost impassable marshes. The marshes would be filled in later, as drier Boston land filled up and the marsh land was needed to expand.
Her Belchers were outside Boston, lived closer to the ocean, nearish to the first Church of old Braintree. Her French in-laws instead lived more inland, where the saltier Weymouth River turns into the faster-freezing Monatiquot River, a bit southwest of what became Quincy. The French homestead was barely northwest of where modern Elm abuts modern Commercial. Both the farm and the second church were one the north side of the Monatiquot. The church was built in time for Elizbeth's last children to attend, so by 1710 or so.
Local historian Sprague, writing a century later, studied land records and found her spouse Thomas' name associated with land near a crossing of the riverside paths that later became modern Washington and Union Streets. For Elizabeth and Thomas, their time together, however, was before anyone knew of a George Washington, knw there would be a Union independent of Britain. That location put them more inland, further upstream of the 2nd church.
A lot of local travel was by river, paths put alongside the water streams. The wider Monatiquot, of her in-laws, turned into the narrower Cochato River, near her house, causing two paths that crossed, one alongside the main river, flowing west to east, another alongside its tributary, flowing southish to northish. Walking opposite the stream's flow was to go uphill. Thus, near her house, walkers and cart pullers rounded a watery corner, could head further upstream, until at the headwaters, on a ridgetop that looked down at the Plymouth colony to the south. At the time, Plymouth had Pilgrims whereas Braintree had Puritans. The religiously more radical colony was that of the Pilgrims, as they were regarded as "separatists", not merely "nonconformists". (Once to the ridgetop, a trail down the other side of the ridgetop led to the future town of Bridgewater. If did not make the turn to go up the Cochato, then one went north, instead up into the Blue Hills and to what began as Dedham. Places like Mendon and Medfield splintered off later, where some of her youngest children would move once grown, too young when she and Thomas died, barely remembering her and him. )
Her marriage was a clear case of "matchmaking-by-in-laws". Almost 20 years younger than her husband, Thomas French, she was still having children when her husband might have been expected to have finished. When the couple died unexpectedly, they left behind ten orphans, ranging in age from toddlers to teens.
The sickness took first her Thomas, then herself, about a year later. His death was "just in time" to use the second church's The year gave her time to prepare.
Her eldest, a daughter, married a widower, said Sprague. The family paperwork chose as administrators of her estate the next eldest, two teen boys, Thomas the junior and Moses, .
Normally one would rely on the parents' siblings to be be guardians or otherwise step in. Too many of her spouse's siblings could not , as they also died of the sickness. Only older brother Dependence French remained, on the Committee "to hurry up and finish" the purchase of the second precinct's burying ground. That left her side. Belcher relatves would buy some of the land, its sale needed to generate cash to pay off any mortgages or other debts. This money-raising would prevent or at least lessen the need to "sell the children" as indentured servant, the other way to pay off parents' debts.
The old custom of naming godparents at baptism, to protect the children, should the real parents die, had fallen out of use. But, clearly, some in the family took on the godparent role anyway. Son Moses would stay local, with signs of Belcher help. Son Moses' children were thus among the ones able to keep the French name going locally, their stones in the Elm Street cemetery maintained longer and better, as Braintree changed. The younger children of Elizabeth, apprenticed out or otherwise moving, became far-flung.
To see how some of those children fared, see sons Moses' and Abijah/ Habijah's links. See husband Thomas's page for a full list of their children.
CHILDREN COMMENTARY
Were any indentured, if lands sold were not enough to pay off mortgages?
A good indenture might train kindly for a trade. Better-written contracts required a suit of clothes and a minimal education. Others did not. A bad indenture instead could be harsh, the child effectively enslaved until finishing the years contracted. Some victims trying to escape before the labor contract finished. Ads would be put in colonial papers, asking for the capture and return of runaways, with brandings and other disfigurements described. While some locals kept slaves, native or African, others would increasingly turn against the idea, perhaps due to personal knowledge from indenturings gone wrong. Not everyone took that view. For example, the Virginia Company was the private "land developer" for the first successful colony in the south. A long-lived and wealthy Company, it convinced the City of London to let them sweep up the "half-orphaned" from London streets, take them abroad, involuntarily . "Half-orphaned" typically meant only the father was dead, the widowed mother still living. "Involuntary" meant they were to be sent abroad against their will and against their mother's will.
Appallingly, the Virginia Company promised the London elites to be "severe" in the colonial upbringing of the captive, shipped children. There were zero promises to educate children or even to protect against pedophiles. As a result of the severity in an already harsh frontier environment, over half, child or grown, if indentured to the Company, were said to have died in the Virginia colony before reaching their freedom dates.
Children quite small were taken. This writer went to church with a southern woman named Charmaine Foster, whose Irish female ancestor had been taken away from her widowed mother at age three by British officials, then kicked out of her masters' house at age four for not doing enough work. The second masters took her overseas, to the south. She was treated perhaps more kindly by the second masters, yet, not normally, as she never saw her mother again.
Elizabeth's father-in-law, John French, had been declared a "freeman" in Braintree in 1644, a declaration never seen for his children or grandchildren, meaning what? That indenture had been part of his arrangement earlier? Perhaps voluntary, to earn passage over here? Perhaps involuntary, as a political punishment, what the Brits called "transportation"? A descendant still living in Braintree has written to say he still has immigrant John's wallet as an heirloom, that the family tradition was this: Sent to Ireland as part of a military force, young John refused to commit atrocities against the native Irish and was thus punished with imprisonment. Thus, transporting would have been "a way out". John Winthrop was the corporate governor for the Bay Colony, run differently than the Virginia Company. His "freemen" were an experiment in local democracy, not allowed to choose king or colony officials, such as its governor, but the freemen could vote on matters affecting their local church and town.
LIFE SUMMARY.
She, Elizabeth, was daughter to Samuel Belcher and Mary Billings. Varied sources give her a birth date, but it is not clear in what records it appeared. She died at about age 40, date recorded by Rev. Samuel Niles, in the winter, of 1718. Spouse Thomas French, son of John and Grace French, died at about 59, in the fall of 1717, recorded again by Niles, who put the burial of Thomas on the side of his journal indicating the second church's new graveyard as the burial place.
Her immigrant grandfather, Gregory Belcher, was one of the founding "proprietors" of the first church of old Braintree church. As such, he would have been heavily involved in religion, more typical of the first arrivals than of their children. He owned considerable property in the larger Braintree area, bought ironworks land with son-in-law Alexander Marsh, who married a Belcher aunt. A Marsh would be one of the people buying land out of Elizabeth's estate, again, a generosity presumed to help raise cash for the children's benefit, maybe a promise made to her on her deathbed.
Her mother, Mary Billings, according to Belcher genealogy, was, like some others, a reluctant church member. Her mother did not "own the covenant" church-wise until 1684, after Elizabeth's father, Samuel Belcher, had died. Mary did this in time for her marriage to a Samuel Niles (maybe the future Rev. Samuel Niles of the second church?).
She had "signed the covenant", not at Braintree, but at the Dorchester church run by the Mathers, then, in 1701, entered into communion at the first church of Braintree in 1701.
DEATH BY "IT". A spike in the number of deaths stretched from 1717-1720, one or two "normal deaths" undoubtedely mixed in with weakenings of the otherwise healthy. How do we know there was an epidemic of sorts? Rev. Niles had a journal. ...STORY...
Perhaps hog snouts picked up "the germ" as the animals rooted in the table scraps of an about-to-be-sick neighbor? Then carried "whatever" over to another house? Or, perhaps they all met at Thomas' house for some family event, he was sick first, so gave "it" to the rest?
How did "it" end? They did not have "germ theory". Quarantining the sick to keep others healthy was thus not a concept yet. Instead, as some point, enough were immune after becoming sick and then recovering?
A noticeable number died
The burials of Frenches began with Thomas French, ended with his sister Temperance, who had married a Bowditch. Dying in-between were: Thomas' eldest brother, John the junior; plus John's wife, Experience Thayer; plus Thomas' youngest brother, Samuel French. Another was the Frenches' in-law Nathaniel Wales, who lived on the south side of the Monatiquot. All died in 1718, as did Elizabeth. The Wales family, with 12 children, including Joseph Wales, would provide future in-laws for some of Elizabeth's and Thomas's children and grandchildren. These were more examples of "in-law matchmaking", but Elizabeth, Thomas, and Nathaniel would not live to see them.
Weakened by whatever, these Frenches of the first Puritan generation, born in the colonies, did not live the 80 years enjoyed by their father, freeman John French. Only one French lived long among the eight siblings in spouse Thomas' generation. that one was her brother-in-law Dependence, who died at about 83, surviving a decade past his sister Temperance, both named for virtues important to the family.
Dependence was on the committee charged with helping the town and church buy the deed to the private land where Rev. Niles first wife had been buried. The private owner was apparently reluctant to give-up the rest of his pasture, so the committee was said to allow him to continue letting his animals graze on the grave land. A cemetery anthropologist hired by the city to examine Elm Street and report why it looks half-empty given all lots had been sold and used. She found the old paperwork, did radiation detection of what lay under levelled tombs and said there were two causes-- lawnmowing crews tossing footstone with names so they would not have to mow around them and larger headstones broken by decades of animals grazing.
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Her husband's birth is not missing, as thought earlier. It was merely left undated, listed oddly. Using sound-it-out spellings of their day, the record said, "Thomas Ffrench, the sone of John Ffrench and Grace his wiffe was born ..." (p.634, "Records of Braintree, 1660-1793").
The record left a space after "born", perhaps to solve some confusion, with hopes of inserting a date later. The likely confusion: He had been second of TWO sons of John and Grace named Thomas. The Braintree records caught the death of the first in 1656, but that infant's baptism had been elsewhere (Braintree's mother church at Dorchester, before the Braintree church was authorized). Whomever came along later, ready to gather up loose records and insert them later into an official book, found a Thomas French dying in 1656 and a Thomas French born at a later date. The likely scenario is that the record gatherers assumed the two Thomases were the SAME person. They would have assumed the later birth date was a mistake, and thus left the second's birth blank when transcribing the loose notes for the book.
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Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, June, 2015. Revd. July, 2015, Feb., 2018, and Sept., 2021. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page, id 149438310, at findagrave.com, no other site.
Her grandfather Gregory Belcher had lived at Mt. Wollaston, in the part of old Braintree that became Quincy later. Did her grandfather Gregory and her father Samuel Belcher live near each other for her birth, or not? Was she born inside what became Quincy, or not? We don't know. We know more about where she died.
Three granddaughters of Gregory Belcher would marry three sons of John and Grace French. Pre-marriage, the Belchers and Frenches were not exactly neighbors, but attended the same Puritan-era church. There had been one Braintree church at the beginning, its site now in Quincy, the attendance area or precinct divided in two by Elizabeth's death. Once there were two, the attendance boundaries of each Puritan church were set by residence. A second church was delayed, as early settlers were so few.
There would be a third town-authorized church, eventually, and all would become part of Boston's south suburbs, several centuries later. The land in her day was still farms and wilderness. A neck of land called Dorchester led northward into a tiny, baby version of Boston. Water surrounded an emerging Boston on three sides, its governing elites and the soldiers in side it kept safer by the waterways' almost impassable marshes. The marshes would be filled in later, as drier Boston land filled up and the marsh land was needed to expand.
Her Belchers were outside Boston, lived closer to the ocean, nearish to the first Church of old Braintree. Her French in-laws instead lived more inland, where the saltier Weymouth River turns into the faster-freezing Monatiquot River, a bit southwest of what became Quincy. The French homestead was barely northwest of where modern Elm abuts modern Commercial. Both the farm and the second church were one the north side of the Monatiquot. The church was built in time for Elizbeth's last children to attend, so by 1710 or so.
Local historian Sprague, writing a century later, studied land records and found her spouse Thomas' name associated with land near a crossing of the riverside paths that later became modern Washington and Union Streets. For Elizabeth and Thomas, their time together, however, was before anyone knew of a George Washington, knw there would be a Union independent of Britain. That location put them more inland, further upstream of the 2nd church.
A lot of local travel was by river, paths put alongside the water streams. The wider Monatiquot, of her in-laws, turned into the narrower Cochato River, near her house, causing two paths that crossed, one alongside the main river, flowing west to east, another alongside its tributary, flowing southish to northish. Walking opposite the stream's flow was to go uphill. Thus, near her house, walkers and cart pullers rounded a watery corner, could head further upstream, until at the headwaters, on a ridgetop that looked down at the Plymouth colony to the south. At the time, Plymouth had Pilgrims whereas Braintree had Puritans. The religiously more radical colony was that of the Pilgrims, as they were regarded as "separatists", not merely "nonconformists". (Once to the ridgetop, a trail down the other side of the ridgetop led to the future town of Bridgewater. If did not make the turn to go up the Cochato, then one went north, instead up into the Blue Hills and to what began as Dedham. Places like Mendon and Medfield splintered off later, where some of her youngest children would move once grown, too young when she and Thomas died, barely remembering her and him. )
Her marriage was a clear case of "matchmaking-by-in-laws". Almost 20 years younger than her husband, Thomas French, she was still having children when her husband might have been expected to have finished. When the couple died unexpectedly, they left behind ten orphans, ranging in age from toddlers to teens.
The sickness took first her Thomas, then herself, about a year later. His death was "just in time" to use the second church's The year gave her time to prepare.
Her eldest, a daughter, married a widower, said Sprague. The family paperwork chose as administrators of her estate the next eldest, two teen boys, Thomas the junior and Moses, .
Normally one would rely on the parents' siblings to be be guardians or otherwise step in. Too many of her spouse's siblings could not , as they also died of the sickness. Only older brother Dependence French remained, on the Committee "to hurry up and finish" the purchase of the second precinct's burying ground. That left her side. Belcher relatves would buy some of the land, its sale needed to generate cash to pay off any mortgages or other debts. This money-raising would prevent or at least lessen the need to "sell the children" as indentured servant, the other way to pay off parents' debts.
The old custom of naming godparents at baptism, to protect the children, should the real parents die, had fallen out of use. But, clearly, some in the family took on the godparent role anyway. Son Moses would stay local, with signs of Belcher help. Son Moses' children were thus among the ones able to keep the French name going locally, their stones in the Elm Street cemetery maintained longer and better, as Braintree changed. The younger children of Elizabeth, apprenticed out or otherwise moving, became far-flung.
To see how some of those children fared, see sons Moses' and Abijah/ Habijah's links. See husband Thomas's page for a full list of their children.
CHILDREN COMMENTARY
Were any indentured, if lands sold were not enough to pay off mortgages?
A good indenture might train kindly for a trade. Better-written contracts required a suit of clothes and a minimal education. Others did not. A bad indenture instead could be harsh, the child effectively enslaved until finishing the years contracted. Some victims trying to escape before the labor contract finished. Ads would be put in colonial papers, asking for the capture and return of runaways, with brandings and other disfigurements described. While some locals kept slaves, native or African, others would increasingly turn against the idea, perhaps due to personal knowledge from indenturings gone wrong. Not everyone took that view. For example, the Virginia Company was the private "land developer" for the first successful colony in the south. A long-lived and wealthy Company, it convinced the City of London to let them sweep up the "half-orphaned" from London streets, take them abroad, involuntarily . "Half-orphaned" typically meant only the father was dead, the widowed mother still living. "Involuntary" meant they were to be sent abroad against their will and against their mother's will.
Appallingly, the Virginia Company promised the London elites to be "severe" in the colonial upbringing of the captive, shipped children. There were zero promises to educate children or even to protect against pedophiles. As a result of the severity in an already harsh frontier environment, over half, child or grown, if indentured to the Company, were said to have died in the Virginia colony before reaching their freedom dates.
Children quite small were taken. This writer went to church with a southern woman named Charmaine Foster, whose Irish female ancestor had been taken away from her widowed mother at age three by British officials, then kicked out of her masters' house at age four for not doing enough work. The second masters took her overseas, to the south. She was treated perhaps more kindly by the second masters, yet, not normally, as she never saw her mother again.
Elizabeth's father-in-law, John French, had been declared a "freeman" in Braintree in 1644, a declaration never seen for his children or grandchildren, meaning what? That indenture had been part of his arrangement earlier? Perhaps voluntary, to earn passage over here? Perhaps involuntary, as a political punishment, what the Brits called "transportation"? A descendant still living in Braintree has written to say he still has immigrant John's wallet as an heirloom, that the family tradition was this: Sent to Ireland as part of a military force, young John refused to commit atrocities against the native Irish and was thus punished with imprisonment. Thus, transporting would have been "a way out". John Winthrop was the corporate governor for the Bay Colony, run differently than the Virginia Company. His "freemen" were an experiment in local democracy, not allowed to choose king or colony officials, such as its governor, but the freemen could vote on matters affecting their local church and town.
LIFE SUMMARY.
She, Elizabeth, was daughter to Samuel Belcher and Mary Billings. Varied sources give her a birth date, but it is not clear in what records it appeared. She died at about age 40, date recorded by Rev. Samuel Niles, in the winter, of 1718. Spouse Thomas French, son of John and Grace French, died at about 59, in the fall of 1717, recorded again by Niles, who put the burial of Thomas on the side of his journal indicating the second church's new graveyard as the burial place.
Her immigrant grandfather, Gregory Belcher, was one of the founding "proprietors" of the first church of old Braintree church. As such, he would have been heavily involved in religion, more typical of the first arrivals than of their children. He owned considerable property in the larger Braintree area, bought ironworks land with son-in-law Alexander Marsh, who married a Belcher aunt. A Marsh would be one of the people buying land out of Elizabeth's estate, again, a generosity presumed to help raise cash for the children's benefit, maybe a promise made to her on her deathbed.
Her mother, Mary Billings, according to Belcher genealogy, was, like some others, a reluctant church member. Her mother did not "own the covenant" church-wise until 1684, after Elizabeth's father, Samuel Belcher, had died. Mary did this in time for her marriage to a Samuel Niles (maybe the future Rev. Samuel Niles of the second church?).
She had "signed the covenant", not at Braintree, but at the Dorchester church run by the Mathers, then, in 1701, entered into communion at the first church of Braintree in 1701.
DEATH BY "IT". A spike in the number of deaths stretched from 1717-1720, one or two "normal deaths" undoubtedely mixed in with weakenings of the otherwise healthy. How do we know there was an epidemic of sorts? Rev. Niles had a journal. ...STORY...
Perhaps hog snouts picked up "the germ" as the animals rooted in the table scraps of an about-to-be-sick neighbor? Then carried "whatever" over to another house? Or, perhaps they all met at Thomas' house for some family event, he was sick first, so gave "it" to the rest?
How did "it" end? They did not have "germ theory". Quarantining the sick to keep others healthy was thus not a concept yet. Instead, as some point, enough were immune after becoming sick and then recovering?
A noticeable number died
The burials of Frenches began with Thomas French, ended with his sister Temperance, who had married a Bowditch. Dying in-between were: Thomas' eldest brother, John the junior; plus John's wife, Experience Thayer; plus Thomas' youngest brother, Samuel French. Another was the Frenches' in-law Nathaniel Wales, who lived on the south side of the Monatiquot. All died in 1718, as did Elizabeth. The Wales family, with 12 children, including Joseph Wales, would provide future in-laws for some of Elizabeth's and Thomas's children and grandchildren. These were more examples of "in-law matchmaking", but Elizabeth, Thomas, and Nathaniel would not live to see them.
Weakened by whatever, these Frenches of the first Puritan generation, born in the colonies, did not live the 80 years enjoyed by their father, freeman John French. Only one French lived long among the eight siblings in spouse Thomas' generation. that one was her brother-in-law Dependence, who died at about 83, surviving a decade past his sister Temperance, both named for virtues important to the family.
Dependence was on the committee charged with helping the town and church buy the deed to the private land where Rev. Niles first wife had been buried. The private owner was apparently reluctant to give-up the rest of his pasture, so the committee was said to allow him to continue letting his animals graze on the grave land. A cemetery anthropologist hired by the city to examine Elm Street and report why it looks half-empty given all lots had been sold and used. She found the old paperwork, did radiation detection of what lay under levelled tombs and said there were two causes-- lawnmowing crews tossing footstone with names so they would not have to mow around them and larger headstones broken by decades of animals grazing.
=====================================================
Her husband's birth is not missing, as thought earlier. It was merely left undated, listed oddly. Using sound-it-out spellings of their day, the record said, "Thomas Ffrench, the sone of John Ffrench and Grace his wiffe was born ..." (p.634, "Records of Braintree, 1660-1793").
The record left a space after "born", perhaps to solve some confusion, with hopes of inserting a date later. The likely confusion: He had been second of TWO sons of John and Grace named Thomas. The Braintree records caught the death of the first in 1656, but that infant's baptism had been elsewhere (Braintree's mother church at Dorchester, before the Braintree church was authorized). Whomever came along later, ready to gather up loose records and insert them later into an official book, found a Thomas French dying in 1656 and a Thomas French born at a later date. The likely scenario is that the record gatherers assumed the two Thomases were the SAME person. They would have assumed the later birth date was a mistake, and thus left the second's birth blank when transcribing the loose notes for the book.
==========================================================
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, June, 2015. Revd. July, 2015, Feb., 2018, and Sept., 2021. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page, id 149438310, at findagrave.com, no other site.
Gravesite Details
Old burying ground in front third of Elm Street Cemetery is now mostly markerless. Rev. Niles put those burials on the leftside of his journal, according to town's preservation plan for the grounds, done by a cemetery archeologist, circa 2011.
Family Members
Spouse
