Of the Braintree Frenches, likable common folk, their line was proven circa 2014 of different male DNA than some others of surname French early to the British colonies. Each line early to the Bay colony had its John French or two or three.
This John's grandfather, that John French first to Braintree, would be buried there, arrived by 1640, if not before. He was declared a freeman then, which points to the local promoter of the freeman idea, Gov. Winthrop, as a town sponsor. That freeman called John French and the next two generations of his Frenches were in town records with wills making it clear they had been small farmers, apple-growers, hunter/trappers, and millers. (Saw milling and grain grinding both could be done using waterpower, explaining the family's riverside locations, the first generation upstream on the Monatiquot and a later generation upstream on the Cochato, not in the town proper, and the presence of iron-working neighbors in the past who would find river water useful for cooling metal that had been heated until it could be pounded into a shape. The old iron forge-manager, Gov Winthrop, maybe had his employees use adjacent backwaters and marshes as a source of "bog iron, nodules that floated up for a time, useful until gone, no need to expensively buy and bring in iron ore from a distant location as long as they lasted, their depletion explaining why the old iron forge had closed. John's in-law Vintons, wanting to re-start the forging of iron in Braintree, their expected source of ore not stated, maybe arrived a generation too late to take advantage, as the larger population, by then, wanted the stream waters kept appealing cool to attract shad, so voted to not allow the Vintons' forge. )
These Frenches had big families. That was true unless something disastrous happened to sicken or kill a spouse, interrupting that family's child-rearing. More children staying alive in a time without vaccinations maybe was a sign their farms included livestock? People who had learned how to keep their animals alive could apply the same ideas to children (separate the sick from the healthy? use some home medicines and ointments, not others? avoid blood-letting as it weakened an animal, so ditto for a human?)
This John's family was large.
They went to church. They loved their families, not chastising any one in their wills, trying to remember the orphans left behind by early-deceased family members, wanting education enough education for their children in case some wanted to be ministers, an important aspect of their culture, education producing a higher quality minister than if left uneducated.
Some would be angrily disappointed when town money for schooling seemed to be spent only at the end to become Quincy. Was that an extra incentive to separate, in addition to the first church being place inconveniently near the far end of town, instead of at a location central to everyone?. Had related issues caused one of this John's uncles, when on the town council, to vote against a church expense for education, knowing the teacher's time would not be spent serving all of their children, just those living close to the first church?
The first church, located in the part of Braintree closer to downtown Boston, that later separated to become Quincy. Financed by town taxes, old records show the town-church combo hiring both a minister and a teacher.
A more convenient second church for this John's part of old Braintree was permitted only when it was agreed to pay for the second with "subscriptions" by its future members, not by town taxes. Learning that church and state had to be separate, to prevent such abuses in the future, as seen in the past, was a lesson learned in their and other towns? Separation of church and state is now in the US Constitution?
Unrelated Frenches going to the Bay Colony, also early, were instead found with their burials at a distance. Billerica/Woburn to the north (modern Middlesex County, had a William French with a brother called John French , who died with his wife in an epidemic, maybe at Cambridge, Ma, his orphans put in the care of their uncle William).
A branch proven by male DNA to be related to William, arrived separately, their shared male ancestor someone back in England, maybe multiple generations back, not here. Their John French arriving unmarried with his parents, all in a family of tailors. The tailors' stay in the Boston/Dorchester area seemed brief. They were soon enough off to Ipswich, a shipbuilding place northward, up by future Maine. They were only briefly at the Mathers' mother church in Dorchester, while it trained ministers for daughter churches. These included one for the old Braintree church, its congregation formed of Winthrop's freemen in 1640, free to vote in church and town matters, maybe also free of any indenture obligations, say to Gov. Winthrop,if he paid their way here, given Winthrop's writings included his freeman ideas.
(SIDE NOTE: Dorchester's mother church trained ministers in the Mathers' ideas, a main one apparently that a congregation's first members signed a covenant stating what they had agreed upon as the beliefs of their church. Given just one church per town when a town started, so beliefs broad and general if a mix had arrived,but could be very specific and narrow if a set came to a new town and church together from one town, so had their regional variation already decided upon. The congregation or elders could later vote for changes. Were the "New Lights" a century later later the ones who added the idea that a sufficiently charming minister, or an especially demanding one, could make the key decisions without asking for a vote?)
covenant Dorchester was still a rural outskirts of Boston then, not urban until two centuries later, when annexed into south Boston, about as the famine-era Irish arrived.)
That John French, still a tailor, not a farmer/hunter/miller/iron forge worker kind of guy like some in this John French's family, would meet and marry a Freedom Kingsley, took her to Ipswich where they baptized children at that church, raised them until the eldest was near adulthood. They then signed deeds over to someone else when leaving for Northampton, at the extreme SW end of the Bay colony, just above Springfield, so closer to Conn. than to Rhode Island, where Freedom's brother Enos Kingsley had gone, following a Mather protege there who would be that town's first minister, Congregational-leaning. John Kingsley then moved southward, staying near his son Elah Kingsley, who had joined a group with adult baptisms only, gone far south, almost to Rhode Island separated to make their own church and town, very near Rhode Island.
The different sets stayed in their original geographies through the early 1700s, some of the Braintree Frenches staying there until modern times. One whose public name is Anonymous, so I won't say his name, told me he was the one who had his DNA tested and stopped the confusion
See wife Mary Vinton's page for stories. See daughter Mary French French's page for cemetery details. See sons identified as the Christmas Day twins
VITALS
====================================================
Son of Dependence French, by 2nd wife Rebecca Fenno.
Grandson of John French, the Puritan immigrant, and his mysterious wife, Grace (maiden name unknown, perhaps an Alden of Plymouth).
ONE MARRIAGE.
He married Mary Vinton in her home town of Reading, next door to Woburn, recorded in multiple places. The town of Reading Mass preserved old "sound-it-out" spellings, so spelled her name as "Vintin", but also has "Vinten" for her siblings. Woburn substituted modern spellings when it published its book 150 years later:
"John French of Braintree and Mary Vinton of Woburn, at Reading, Feb. 19, 1711. Source: "Marriage Records of Woburn", Part 3 of the "Woburn Records of Births, Deaths, and Marriages".
TEN CHILDREN.
Nine born before the opening of Third Church, the last after.
Mary ~1713 (birth date less certain than the following, as her baptism was delayed until her mother, Mary Vinton, born 1692, year of the Salem Witch Trials, had negotiated signing of a Halfway Covenant with the church, instead of the Full Covenant, the first to do this in this area, noted by her relative Rev. Vinton in his Memorial of the Vintons. She would marry a related French, not a first cousin, and stay in the area, one of her descendants, dying a bachelor, donating the French Commons in his will to Braintree, located near the Thayer Academy.)
John & Dependence Dec 25 1714 (the Christmas Day Twins, living just outside Randolph's section of old Braintree, just off the "old beaten path" that led from what is now Randolph down to old Bridgewater, their towns since splintered from the rest, now Avon and Brockton, respectively, once parts of east Stoughton and north Bridgewater. Son Dependence had 10 children, with some descendants found later out in Hampshire County, near his brother Abiathar. Both sets perhaps followed their mother's brother and nephew out in that direction, both named Abiathar Vinton.)
Hannah Sept 17, 1718,
Elizabeth Jan. 1, 1722, (in 1743, m. Caleb Hobart, Jr.)
Abigail Dec 6, 1725,
Mehitable Oct 14, 1772 (m. Micah Thayer, she d. 1773, he d. 1802),
Rebecca June 11, 1728,
Abiathar April 7, 1732 (with a brother-in-law, he followed some of uncle Abiathar Vinton's family "out west", taking maturing children to live on newly opened land at the western part of the Bay Colony, doing so sometime after 1770, but before the Revolution. The Vintons went to towns on the northern edge of Northampton. The Frenches went to the western edge. The two Abiathar Frenches, senior and newlywed junior, would petition later, post-Revolution, to have their end spun-off as the new town and new church of Westhampton, separation of church and state not fully in place yet, so both a town and its sole church were arranged at the same time. Both Northampton and Westhampton were farming villages on the west bank of the Connecticut River, with ownership of adjacent territory further to the west disputed by neighboring NY, even though very poor land. The junior's large family left pre-1805, skipping over neighboring NY and its large landlords, headed instead for the Western Reserve in Ohio, where it was possible to own, not just rent. The Fourteen Families book, written pre-1835, could be read as implying Abiathar French the senior was still in Westhampton as they wrote, making him close to 100 in age. It's more likely that he died earlier, that the authors meant that some of his children still lived there. In particular, his son Jonathan French married a Barker, and his daughter Doritha/Dorothea/Dorothy, as soon as she reached legal age, married an Alvord, both to raise families locally. Another daughter married a Hessian named Pettsinger, who also stayed nearby, but perhaps her spouse was hard to track if in a subset not allowed to own land. None of his children married anyone from the original hearthplace of Braintree. Thus, marrying people distantly related was avoided. Some being too closely related had started to be a problem in Braintree.)
Joshua 1734 (year probably estimated from age at death, birth/baptismal not exact as others had been. The Third Church had opened by his birth; his parents would have been founding members. Hence his birth record was not included in the book edited by Bates for First and Second Church, released in the 1850s.)
The list of 10 children comes from pp. 91-92 in the 1835 book with an incredibly long title, "Family Memorial: Part 1. Genealogy of Fourteen Families of the Early Settlers of New-England, of the Names of Alden, Adams, Arnold, Bass, Billings, Capen, Copeland, French, Hobart, Jackson, Paine, Thayer, Wales and White ... All These Families are More or Less Connected by Marriage, and Most of Them of Late Generations, the Descendants of John Alden. " By Elisha Thayer, Samuel White Thayer, Stephen W. Jackson.
=====================================================
This John's grandfather, that John French first to Braintree, would be buried there, arrived by 1640, if not before. He was declared a freeman then, which points to the local promoter of the freeman idea, Gov. Winthrop, as a town sponsor. That freeman called John French and the next two generations of his Frenches were in town records with wills making it clear they had been small farmers, apple-growers, hunter/trappers, and millers. (Saw milling and grain grinding both could be done using waterpower, explaining the family's riverside locations, the first generation upstream on the Monatiquot and a later generation upstream on the Cochato, not in the town proper, and the presence of iron-working neighbors in the past who would find river water useful for cooling metal that had been heated until it could be pounded into a shape. The old iron forge-manager, Gov Winthrop, maybe had his employees use adjacent backwaters and marshes as a source of "bog iron, nodules that floated up for a time, useful until gone, no need to expensively buy and bring in iron ore from a distant location as long as they lasted, their depletion explaining why the old iron forge had closed. John's in-law Vintons, wanting to re-start the forging of iron in Braintree, their expected source of ore not stated, maybe arrived a generation too late to take advantage, as the larger population, by then, wanted the stream waters kept appealing cool to attract shad, so voted to not allow the Vintons' forge. )
These Frenches had big families. That was true unless something disastrous happened to sicken or kill a spouse, interrupting that family's child-rearing. More children staying alive in a time without vaccinations maybe was a sign their farms included livestock? People who had learned how to keep their animals alive could apply the same ideas to children (separate the sick from the healthy? use some home medicines and ointments, not others? avoid blood-letting as it weakened an animal, so ditto for a human?)
This John's family was large.
They went to church. They loved their families, not chastising any one in their wills, trying to remember the orphans left behind by early-deceased family members, wanting education enough education for their children in case some wanted to be ministers, an important aspect of their culture, education producing a higher quality minister than if left uneducated.
Some would be angrily disappointed when town money for schooling seemed to be spent only at the end to become Quincy. Was that an extra incentive to separate, in addition to the first church being place inconveniently near the far end of town, instead of at a location central to everyone?. Had related issues caused one of this John's uncles, when on the town council, to vote against a church expense for education, knowing the teacher's time would not be spent serving all of their children, just those living close to the first church?
The first church, located in the part of Braintree closer to downtown Boston, that later separated to become Quincy. Financed by town taxes, old records show the town-church combo hiring both a minister and a teacher.
A more convenient second church for this John's part of old Braintree was permitted only when it was agreed to pay for the second with "subscriptions" by its future members, not by town taxes. Learning that church and state had to be separate, to prevent such abuses in the future, as seen in the past, was a lesson learned in their and other towns? Separation of church and state is now in the US Constitution?
Unrelated Frenches going to the Bay Colony, also early, were instead found with their burials at a distance. Billerica/Woburn to the north (modern Middlesex County, had a William French with a brother called John French , who died with his wife in an epidemic, maybe at Cambridge, Ma, his orphans put in the care of their uncle William).
A branch proven by male DNA to be related to William, arrived separately, their shared male ancestor someone back in England, maybe multiple generations back, not here. Their John French arriving unmarried with his parents, all in a family of tailors. The tailors' stay in the Boston/Dorchester area seemed brief. They were soon enough off to Ipswich, a shipbuilding place northward, up by future Maine. They were only briefly at the Mathers' mother church in Dorchester, while it trained ministers for daughter churches. These included one for the old Braintree church, its congregation formed of Winthrop's freemen in 1640, free to vote in church and town matters, maybe also free of any indenture obligations, say to Gov. Winthrop,if he paid their way here, given Winthrop's writings included his freeman ideas.
(SIDE NOTE: Dorchester's mother church trained ministers in the Mathers' ideas, a main one apparently that a congregation's first members signed a covenant stating what they had agreed upon as the beliefs of their church. Given just one church per town when a town started, so beliefs broad and general if a mix had arrived,but could be very specific and narrow if a set came to a new town and church together from one town, so had their regional variation already decided upon. The congregation or elders could later vote for changes. Were the "New Lights" a century later later the ones who added the idea that a sufficiently charming minister, or an especially demanding one, could make the key decisions without asking for a vote?)
covenant Dorchester was still a rural outskirts of Boston then, not urban until two centuries later, when annexed into south Boston, about as the famine-era Irish arrived.)
That John French, still a tailor, not a farmer/hunter/miller/iron forge worker kind of guy like some in this John French's family, would meet and marry a Freedom Kingsley, took her to Ipswich where they baptized children at that church, raised them until the eldest was near adulthood. They then signed deeds over to someone else when leaving for Northampton, at the extreme SW end of the Bay colony, just above Springfield, so closer to Conn. than to Rhode Island, where Freedom's brother Enos Kingsley had gone, following a Mather protege there who would be that town's first minister, Congregational-leaning. John Kingsley then moved southward, staying near his son Elah Kingsley, who had joined a group with adult baptisms only, gone far south, almost to Rhode Island separated to make their own church and town, very near Rhode Island.
The different sets stayed in their original geographies through the early 1700s, some of the Braintree Frenches staying there until modern times. One whose public name is Anonymous, so I won't say his name, told me he was the one who had his DNA tested and stopped the confusion
See wife Mary Vinton's page for stories. See daughter Mary French French's page for cemetery details. See sons identified as the Christmas Day twins
VITALS
====================================================
Son of Dependence French, by 2nd wife Rebecca Fenno.
Grandson of John French, the Puritan immigrant, and his mysterious wife, Grace (maiden name unknown, perhaps an Alden of Plymouth).
ONE MARRIAGE.
He married Mary Vinton in her home town of Reading, next door to Woburn, recorded in multiple places. The town of Reading Mass preserved old "sound-it-out" spellings, so spelled her name as "Vintin", but also has "Vinten" for her siblings. Woburn substituted modern spellings when it published its book 150 years later:
"John French of Braintree and Mary Vinton of Woburn, at Reading, Feb. 19, 1711. Source: "Marriage Records of Woburn", Part 3 of the "Woburn Records of Births, Deaths, and Marriages".
TEN CHILDREN.
Nine born before the opening of Third Church, the last after.
Mary ~1713 (birth date less certain than the following, as her baptism was delayed until her mother, Mary Vinton, born 1692, year of the Salem Witch Trials, had negotiated signing of a Halfway Covenant with the church, instead of the Full Covenant, the first to do this in this area, noted by her relative Rev. Vinton in his Memorial of the Vintons. She would marry a related French, not a first cousin, and stay in the area, one of her descendants, dying a bachelor, donating the French Commons in his will to Braintree, located near the Thayer Academy.)
John & Dependence Dec 25 1714 (the Christmas Day Twins, living just outside Randolph's section of old Braintree, just off the "old beaten path" that led from what is now Randolph down to old Bridgewater, their towns since splintered from the rest, now Avon and Brockton, respectively, once parts of east Stoughton and north Bridgewater. Son Dependence had 10 children, with some descendants found later out in Hampshire County, near his brother Abiathar. Both sets perhaps followed their mother's brother and nephew out in that direction, both named Abiathar Vinton.)
Hannah Sept 17, 1718,
Elizabeth Jan. 1, 1722, (in 1743, m. Caleb Hobart, Jr.)
Abigail Dec 6, 1725,
Mehitable Oct 14, 1772 (m. Micah Thayer, she d. 1773, he d. 1802),
Rebecca June 11, 1728,
Abiathar April 7, 1732 (with a brother-in-law, he followed some of uncle Abiathar Vinton's family "out west", taking maturing children to live on newly opened land at the western part of the Bay Colony, doing so sometime after 1770, but before the Revolution. The Vintons went to towns on the northern edge of Northampton. The Frenches went to the western edge. The two Abiathar Frenches, senior and newlywed junior, would petition later, post-Revolution, to have their end spun-off as the new town and new church of Westhampton, separation of church and state not fully in place yet, so both a town and its sole church were arranged at the same time. Both Northampton and Westhampton were farming villages on the west bank of the Connecticut River, with ownership of adjacent territory further to the west disputed by neighboring NY, even though very poor land. The junior's large family left pre-1805, skipping over neighboring NY and its large landlords, headed instead for the Western Reserve in Ohio, where it was possible to own, not just rent. The Fourteen Families book, written pre-1835, could be read as implying Abiathar French the senior was still in Westhampton as they wrote, making him close to 100 in age. It's more likely that he died earlier, that the authors meant that some of his children still lived there. In particular, his son Jonathan French married a Barker, and his daughter Doritha/Dorothea/Dorothy, as soon as she reached legal age, married an Alvord, both to raise families locally. Another daughter married a Hessian named Pettsinger, who also stayed nearby, but perhaps her spouse was hard to track if in a subset not allowed to own land. None of his children married anyone from the original hearthplace of Braintree. Thus, marrying people distantly related was avoided. Some being too closely related had started to be a problem in Braintree.)
Joshua 1734 (year probably estimated from age at death, birth/baptismal not exact as others had been. The Third Church had opened by his birth; his parents would have been founding members. Hence his birth record was not included in the book edited by Bates for First and Second Church, released in the 1850s.)
The list of 10 children comes from pp. 91-92 in the 1835 book with an incredibly long title, "Family Memorial: Part 1. Genealogy of Fourteen Families of the Early Settlers of New-England, of the Names of Alden, Adams, Arnold, Bass, Billings, Capen, Copeland, French, Hobart, Jackson, Paine, Thayer, Wales and White ... All These Families are More or Less Connected by Marriage, and Most of Them of Late Generations, the Descendants of John Alden. " By Elisha Thayer, Samuel White Thayer, Stephen W. Jackson.
=====================================================
Of the Braintree Frenches, likable common folk, their line was proven circa 2014 of different male DNA than some others of surname French early to the British colonies. Each line early to the Bay colony had its John French or two or three.
This John's grandfather, that John French first to Braintree, would be buried there, arrived by 1640, if not before. He was declared a freeman then, which points to the local promoter of the freeman idea, Gov. Winthrop, as a town sponsor. That freeman called John French and the next two generations of his Frenches were in town records with wills making it clear they had been small farmers, apple-growers, hunter/trappers, and millers. (Saw milling and grain grinding both could be done using waterpower, explaining the family's riverside locations, the first generation upstream on the Monatiquot and a later generation upstream on the Cochato, not in the town proper, and the presence of iron-working neighbors in the past who would find river water useful for cooling metal that had been heated until it could be pounded into a shape. The old iron forge-manager, Gov Winthrop, maybe had his employees use adjacent backwaters and marshes as a source of "bog iron, nodules that floated up for a time, useful until gone, no need to expensively buy and bring in iron ore from a distant location as long as they lasted, their depletion explaining why the old iron forge had closed. John's in-law Vintons, wanting to re-start the forging of iron in Braintree, their expected source of ore not stated, maybe arrived a generation too late to take advantage, as the larger population, by then, wanted the stream waters kept appealing cool to attract shad, so voted to not allow the Vintons' forge. )
These Frenches had big families. That was true unless something disastrous happened to sicken or kill a spouse, interrupting that family's child-rearing. More children staying alive in a time without vaccinations maybe was a sign their farms included livestock? People who had learned how to keep their animals alive could apply the same ideas to children (separate the sick from the healthy? use some home medicines and ointments, not others? avoid blood-letting as it weakened an animal, so ditto for a human?)
This John's family was large.
They went to church. They loved their families, not chastising any one in their wills, trying to remember the orphans left behind by early-deceased family members, wanting education enough education for their children in case some wanted to be ministers, an important aspect of their culture, education producing a higher quality minister than if left uneducated.
Some would be angrily disappointed when town money for schooling seemed to be spent only at the end to become Quincy. Was that an extra incentive to separate, in addition to the first church being place inconveniently near the far end of town, instead of at a location central to everyone?. Had related issues caused one of this John's uncles, when on the town council, to vote against a church expense for education, knowing the teacher's time would not be spent serving all of their children, just those living close to the first church?
The first church, located in the part of Braintree closer to downtown Boston, that later separated to become Quincy. Financed by town taxes, old records show the town-church combo hiring both a minister and a teacher.
A more convenient second church for this John's part of old Braintree was permitted only when it was agreed to pay for the second with "subscriptions" by its future members, not by town taxes. Learning that church and state had to be separate, to prevent such abuses in the future, as seen in the past, was a lesson learned in their and other towns? Separation of church and state is now in the US Constitution?
Unrelated Frenches going to the Bay Colony, also early, were instead found with their burials at a distance. Billerica/Woburn to the north (modern Middlesex County, had a William French with a brother called John French , who died with his wife in an epidemic, maybe at Cambridge, Ma, his orphans put in the care of their uncle William).
A branch proven by male DNA to be related to William, arrived separately, their shared male ancestor someone back in England, maybe multiple generations back, not here. Their John French arriving unmarried with his parents, all in a family of tailors. The tailors' stay in the Boston/Dorchester area seemed brief. They were soon enough off to Ipswich, a shipbuilding place northward, up by future Maine. They were only briefly at the Mathers' mother church in Dorchester, while it trained ministers for daughter churches. These included one for the old Braintree church, its congregation formed of Winthrop's freemen in 1640, free to vote in church and town matters, maybe also free of any indenture obligations, say to Gov. Winthrop,if he paid their way here, given Winthrop's writings included his freeman ideas.
(SIDE NOTE: Dorchester's mother church trained ministers in the Mathers' ideas, a main one apparently that a congregation's first members signed a covenant stating what they had agreed upon as the beliefs of their church. Given just one church per town when a town started, so beliefs broad and general if a mix had arrived,but could be very specific and narrow if a set came to a new town and church together from one town, so had their regional variation already decided upon. The congregation or elders could later vote for changes. Were the "New Lights" a century later later the ones who added the idea that a sufficiently charming minister, or an especially demanding one, could make the key decisions without asking for a vote?)
covenant Dorchester was still a rural outskirts of Boston then, not urban until two centuries later, when annexed into south Boston, about as the famine-era Irish arrived.)
That John French, still a tailor, not a farmer/hunter/miller/iron forge worker kind of guy like some in this John French's family, would meet and marry a Freedom Kingsley, took her to Ipswich where they baptized children at that church, raised them until the eldest was near adulthood. They then signed deeds over to someone else when leaving for Northampton, at the extreme SW end of the Bay colony, just above Springfield, so closer to Conn. than to Rhode Island, where Freedom's brother Enos Kingsley had gone, following a Mather protege there who would be that town's first minister, Congregational-leaning. John Kingsley then moved southward, staying near his son Elah Kingsley, who had joined a group with adult baptisms only, gone far south, almost to Rhode Island separated to make their own church and town, very near Rhode Island.
The different sets stayed in their original geographies through the early 1700s, some of the Braintree Frenches staying there until modern times. One whose public name is Anonymous, so I won't say his name, told me he was the one who had his DNA tested and stopped the confusion
See wife Mary Vinton's page for stories. See daughter Mary French French's page for cemetery details. See sons identified as the Christmas Day twins
VITALS
====================================================
Son of Dependence French, by 2nd wife Rebecca Fenno.
Grandson of John French, the Puritan immigrant, and his mysterious wife, Grace (maiden name unknown, perhaps an Alden of Plymouth).
ONE MARRIAGE.
He married Mary Vinton in her home town of Reading, next door to Woburn, recorded in multiple places. The town of Reading Mass preserved old "sound-it-out" spellings, so spelled her name as "Vintin", but also has "Vinten" for her siblings. Woburn substituted modern spellings when it published its book 150 years later:
"John French of Braintree and Mary Vinton of Woburn, at Reading, Feb. 19, 1711. Source: "Marriage Records of Woburn", Part 3 of the "Woburn Records of Births, Deaths, and Marriages".
TEN CHILDREN.
Nine born before the opening of Third Church, the last after.
Mary ~1713 (birth date less certain than the following, as her baptism was delayed until her mother, Mary Vinton, born 1692, year of the Salem Witch Trials, had negotiated signing of a Halfway Covenant with the church, instead of the Full Covenant, the first to do this in this area, noted by her relative Rev. Vinton in his Memorial of the Vintons. She would marry a related French, not a first cousin, and stay in the area, one of her descendants, dying a bachelor, donating the French Commons in his will to Braintree, located near the Thayer Academy.)
John & Dependence Dec 25 1714 (the Christmas Day Twins, living just outside Randolph's section of old Braintree, just off the "old beaten path" that led from what is now Randolph down to old Bridgewater, their towns since splintered from the rest, now Avon and Brockton, respectively, once parts of east Stoughton and north Bridgewater. Son Dependence had 10 children, with some descendants found later out in Hampshire County, near his brother Abiathar. Both sets perhaps followed their mother's brother and nephew out in that direction, both named Abiathar Vinton.)
Hannah Sept 17, 1718,
Elizabeth Jan. 1, 1722, (in 1743, m. Caleb Hobart, Jr.)
Abigail Dec 6, 1725,
Mehitable Oct 14, 1772 (m. Micah Thayer, she d. 1773, he d. 1802),
Rebecca June 11, 1728,
Abiathar April 7, 1732 (with a brother-in-law, he followed some of uncle Abiathar Vinton's family "out west", taking maturing children to live on newly opened land at the western part of the Bay Colony, doing so sometime after 1770, but before the Revolution. The Vintons went to towns on the northern edge of Northampton. The Frenches went to the western edge. The two Abiathar Frenches, senior and newlywed junior, would petition later, post-Revolution, to have their end spun-off as the new town and new church of Westhampton, separation of church and state not fully in place yet, so both a town and its sole church were arranged at the same time. Both Northampton and Westhampton were farming villages on the west bank of the Connecticut River, with ownership of adjacent territory further to the west disputed by neighboring NY, even though very poor land. The junior's large family left pre-1805, skipping over neighboring NY and its large landlords, headed instead for the Western Reserve in Ohio, where it was possible to own, not just rent. The Fourteen Families book, written pre-1835, could be read as implying Abiathar French the senior was still in Westhampton as they wrote, making him close to 100 in age. It's more likely that he died earlier, that the authors meant that some of his children still lived there. In particular, his son Jonathan French married a Barker, and his daughter Doritha/Dorothea/Dorothy, as soon as she reached legal age, married an Alvord, both to raise families locally. Another daughter married a Hessian named Pettsinger, who also stayed nearby, but perhaps her spouse was hard to track if in a subset not allowed to own land. None of his children married anyone from the original hearthplace of Braintree. Thus, marrying people distantly related was avoided. Some being too closely related had started to be a problem in Braintree.)
Joshua 1734 (year probably estimated from age at death, birth/baptismal not exact as others had been. The Third Church had opened by his birth; his parents would have been founding members. Hence his birth record was not included in the book edited by Bates for First and Second Church, released in the 1850s.)
The list of 10 children comes from pp. 91-92 in the 1835 book with an incredibly long title, "Family Memorial: Part 1. Genealogy of Fourteen Families of the Early Settlers of New-England, of the Names of Alden, Adams, Arnold, Bass, Billings, Capen, Copeland, French, Hobart, Jackson, Paine, Thayer, Wales and White ... All These Families are More or Less Connected by Marriage, and Most of Them of Late Generations, the Descendants of John Alden. " By Elisha Thayer, Samuel White Thayer, Stephen W. Jackson.
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This John's grandfather, that John French first to Braintree, would be buried there, arrived by 1640, if not before. He was declared a freeman then, which points to the local promoter of the freeman idea, Gov. Winthrop, as a town sponsor. That freeman called John French and the next two generations of his Frenches were in town records with wills making it clear they had been small farmers, apple-growers, hunter/trappers, and millers. (Saw milling and grain grinding both could be done using waterpower, explaining the family's riverside locations, the first generation upstream on the Monatiquot and a later generation upstream on the Cochato, not in the town proper, and the presence of iron-working neighbors in the past who would find river water useful for cooling metal that had been heated until it could be pounded into a shape. The old iron forge-manager, Gov Winthrop, maybe had his employees use adjacent backwaters and marshes as a source of "bog iron, nodules that floated up for a time, useful until gone, no need to expensively buy and bring in iron ore from a distant location as long as they lasted, their depletion explaining why the old iron forge had closed. John's in-law Vintons, wanting to re-start the forging of iron in Braintree, their expected source of ore not stated, maybe arrived a generation too late to take advantage, as the larger population, by then, wanted the stream waters kept appealing cool to attract shad, so voted to not allow the Vintons' forge. )
These Frenches had big families. That was true unless something disastrous happened to sicken or kill a spouse, interrupting that family's child-rearing. More children staying alive in a time without vaccinations maybe was a sign their farms included livestock? People who had learned how to keep their animals alive could apply the same ideas to children (separate the sick from the healthy? use some home medicines and ointments, not others? avoid blood-letting as it weakened an animal, so ditto for a human?)
This John's family was large.
They went to church. They loved their families, not chastising any one in their wills, trying to remember the orphans left behind by early-deceased family members, wanting education enough education for their children in case some wanted to be ministers, an important aspect of their culture, education producing a higher quality minister than if left uneducated.
Some would be angrily disappointed when town money for schooling seemed to be spent only at the end to become Quincy. Was that an extra incentive to separate, in addition to the first church being place inconveniently near the far end of town, instead of at a location central to everyone?. Had related issues caused one of this John's uncles, when on the town council, to vote against a church expense for education, knowing the teacher's time would not be spent serving all of their children, just those living close to the first church?
The first church, located in the part of Braintree closer to downtown Boston, that later separated to become Quincy. Financed by town taxes, old records show the town-church combo hiring both a minister and a teacher.
A more convenient second church for this John's part of old Braintree was permitted only when it was agreed to pay for the second with "subscriptions" by its future members, not by town taxes. Learning that church and state had to be separate, to prevent such abuses in the future, as seen in the past, was a lesson learned in their and other towns? Separation of church and state is now in the US Constitution?
Unrelated Frenches going to the Bay Colony, also early, were instead found with their burials at a distance. Billerica/Woburn to the north (modern Middlesex County, had a William French with a brother called John French , who died with his wife in an epidemic, maybe at Cambridge, Ma, his orphans put in the care of their uncle William).
A branch proven by male DNA to be related to William, arrived separately, their shared male ancestor someone back in England, maybe multiple generations back, not here. Their John French arriving unmarried with his parents, all in a family of tailors. The tailors' stay in the Boston/Dorchester area seemed brief. They were soon enough off to Ipswich, a shipbuilding place northward, up by future Maine. They were only briefly at the Mathers' mother church in Dorchester, while it trained ministers for daughter churches. These included one for the old Braintree church, its congregation formed of Winthrop's freemen in 1640, free to vote in church and town matters, maybe also free of any indenture obligations, say to Gov. Winthrop,if he paid their way here, given Winthrop's writings included his freeman ideas.
(SIDE NOTE: Dorchester's mother church trained ministers in the Mathers' ideas, a main one apparently that a congregation's first members signed a covenant stating what they had agreed upon as the beliefs of their church. Given just one church per town when a town started, so beliefs broad and general if a mix had arrived,but could be very specific and narrow if a set came to a new town and church together from one town, so had their regional variation already decided upon. The congregation or elders could later vote for changes. Were the "New Lights" a century later later the ones who added the idea that a sufficiently charming minister, or an especially demanding one, could make the key decisions without asking for a vote?)
covenant Dorchester was still a rural outskirts of Boston then, not urban until two centuries later, when annexed into south Boston, about as the famine-era Irish arrived.)
That John French, still a tailor, not a farmer/hunter/miller/iron forge worker kind of guy like some in this John French's family, would meet and marry a Freedom Kingsley, took her to Ipswich where they baptized children at that church, raised them until the eldest was near adulthood. They then signed deeds over to someone else when leaving for Northampton, at the extreme SW end of the Bay colony, just above Springfield, so closer to Conn. than to Rhode Island, where Freedom's brother Enos Kingsley had gone, following a Mather protege there who would be that town's first minister, Congregational-leaning. John Kingsley then moved southward, staying near his son Elah Kingsley, who had joined a group with adult baptisms only, gone far south, almost to Rhode Island separated to make their own church and town, very near Rhode Island.
The different sets stayed in their original geographies through the early 1700s, some of the Braintree Frenches staying there until modern times. One whose public name is Anonymous, so I won't say his name, told me he was the one who had his DNA tested and stopped the confusion
See wife Mary Vinton's page for stories. See daughter Mary French French's page for cemetery details. See sons identified as the Christmas Day twins
VITALS
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Son of Dependence French, by 2nd wife Rebecca Fenno.
Grandson of John French, the Puritan immigrant, and his mysterious wife, Grace (maiden name unknown, perhaps an Alden of Plymouth).
ONE MARRIAGE.
He married Mary Vinton in her home town of Reading, next door to Woburn, recorded in multiple places. The town of Reading Mass preserved old "sound-it-out" spellings, so spelled her name as "Vintin", but also has "Vinten" for her siblings. Woburn substituted modern spellings when it published its book 150 years later:
"John French of Braintree and Mary Vinton of Woburn, at Reading, Feb. 19, 1711. Source: "Marriage Records of Woburn", Part 3 of the "Woburn Records of Births, Deaths, and Marriages".
TEN CHILDREN.
Nine born before the opening of Third Church, the last after.
Mary ~1713 (birth date less certain than the following, as her baptism was delayed until her mother, Mary Vinton, born 1692, year of the Salem Witch Trials, had negotiated signing of a Halfway Covenant with the church, instead of the Full Covenant, the first to do this in this area, noted by her relative Rev. Vinton in his Memorial of the Vintons. She would marry a related French, not a first cousin, and stay in the area, one of her descendants, dying a bachelor, donating the French Commons in his will to Braintree, located near the Thayer Academy.)
John & Dependence Dec 25 1714 (the Christmas Day Twins, living just outside Randolph's section of old Braintree, just off the "old beaten path" that led from what is now Randolph down to old Bridgewater, their towns since splintered from the rest, now Avon and Brockton, respectively, once parts of east Stoughton and north Bridgewater. Son Dependence had 10 children, with some descendants found later out in Hampshire County, near his brother Abiathar. Both sets perhaps followed their mother's brother and nephew out in that direction, both named Abiathar Vinton.)
Hannah Sept 17, 1718,
Elizabeth Jan. 1, 1722, (in 1743, m. Caleb Hobart, Jr.)
Abigail Dec 6, 1725,
Mehitable Oct 14, 1772 (m. Micah Thayer, she d. 1773, he d. 1802),
Rebecca June 11, 1728,
Abiathar April 7, 1732 (with a brother-in-law, he followed some of uncle Abiathar Vinton's family "out west", taking maturing children to live on newly opened land at the western part of the Bay Colony, doing so sometime after 1770, but before the Revolution. The Vintons went to towns on the northern edge of Northampton. The Frenches went to the western edge. The two Abiathar Frenches, senior and newlywed junior, would petition later, post-Revolution, to have their end spun-off as the new town and new church of Westhampton, separation of church and state not fully in place yet, so both a town and its sole church were arranged at the same time. Both Northampton and Westhampton were farming villages on the west bank of the Connecticut River, with ownership of adjacent territory further to the west disputed by neighboring NY, even though very poor land. The junior's large family left pre-1805, skipping over neighboring NY and its large landlords, headed instead for the Western Reserve in Ohio, where it was possible to own, not just rent. The Fourteen Families book, written pre-1835, could be read as implying Abiathar French the senior was still in Westhampton as they wrote, making him close to 100 in age. It's more likely that he died earlier, that the authors meant that some of his children still lived there. In particular, his son Jonathan French married a Barker, and his daughter Doritha/Dorothea/Dorothy, as soon as she reached legal age, married an Alvord, both to raise families locally. Another daughter married a Hessian named Pettsinger, who also stayed nearby, but perhaps her spouse was hard to track if in a subset not allowed to own land. None of his children married anyone from the original hearthplace of Braintree. Thus, marrying people distantly related was avoided. Some being too closely related had started to be a problem in Braintree.)
Joshua 1734 (year probably estimated from age at death, birth/baptismal not exact as others had been. The Third Church had opened by his birth; his parents would have been founding members. Hence his birth record was not included in the book edited by Bates for First and Second Church, released in the 1850s.)
The list of 10 children comes from pp. 91-92 in the 1835 book with an incredibly long title, "Family Memorial: Part 1. Genealogy of Fourteen Families of the Early Settlers of New-England, of the Names of Alden, Adams, Arnold, Bass, Billings, Capen, Copeland, French, Hobart, Jackson, Paine, Thayer, Wales and White ... All These Families are More or Less Connected by Marriage, and Most of Them of Late Generations, the Descendants of John Alden. " By Elisha Thayer, Samuel White Thayer, Stephen W. Jackson.
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Family Members
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