Last revision and double-check In progress... March 2024, begun in Feb., 2022

The battleships of the War of 1812 would come to gigantic Lake Erie, but not until after the sons and daughters of Abiathar French and Beriah Alvord arrived on the Ohio lakeshore. Two single sons came first with a friend, that is known, and maybe with a sister or two, roughly in the years 1805-1806. It was early. The beginning counties and townships of NE Ohio were still mega-sized, subdividing into modern names later, making it tricky to track people. This was especially true with difficult Puritan names, grabbed out of the Old Testament, the easy mis-spells, impossible for the uninitiated to detect when proof-reading. Thus, the pioneering parents of the arriving single sons, Abiathar French the junior and his wife Beriah Alvord, were rarely listed as such.

Early counts of those in the house, back East, found them in 1790 in western Mass., north of Springfield, at Westhampton (Hampshire County). The 1790 was the country's first Census, barely post-Revolution, he, as with many young men, some older, a recent soldier. He had married, upon return.

The 1790, with Vermont that year joining the original 13 as a state, showed a concern about future warring by asking for a separate count of men age 16 and over. It showed their household with three such men. Only the household head was given a name. Theirs was Abiathar French, not clear if the recently married junior (him) or the senior (his father). Judging from year and location, the third man would be his sole brother, Jonathan, younger. (Farming there after they left, Jonathan's stone survives in Hampshire County.) Two females were counted in 1790, their ages unspecified. They would include young Abiathar's wife Beriah, and his father's second wife, recently married, in 1789. Weddings were almost always at the bride's church. Hers had been at S. Hadley in 1789. His wife Beriah and his stepmother Naomi had something in common. Their surname at marriage had been Alvord, Beriah's a maiden name, Naomi's possibly a widow's name, maybe maiden, hard-to-tell.

Two daughters were not yet born. Five of the males present were under age 16 in 1790, four with birth dates known, below. (There was a fire at the Westhampton minister's house, Rev. Enoch Hale, brother to Nathan Hale. That fire happened in 1817, well after they had left. Their records were among those reconstructed post-fire, more easily made by the church if there were stones nearby to check, interviews with the family possible when everyone gathered for a new funeral.

One relevant funeral causing four of their birth records to be re-made? When Abiathar's youngest sister, Dorothy French Alvord, died in 1843, a little census of her family was posted at her page in the books. There was also her mention in the 1840 Census, on a list of pensioners, named with age given. She and Abiathar married Alvord siblings, records saved where they married, at Northampton, as Westhampton's church had not opened until a year later. They, thus, did not burn.

SOURCE. 1790 US Census. The original handwritten version is viewable at FamilySearch.org. A type-set copy is archived at census.gov, published in 1809, found by searching for 1790. The latter is organized by County, towns inside, that of "French, Abiathar" found by scrolling to p.130 of the 1809 book, middle column, households at Westhampton in order of interview, future and current in-laws nearby related via his children's marriages once in Ohio and his sisters already married. Thus, "Clap, Ebenezer" was ahead of him. After him, were two Chilsons, as "Chalson", Joseph and Elisha, then "Pettinger, John", meaning Pettsinger/Pittsinger, then two of his wife's Alvords, Jonathan and Jehiel. Later Frenches were of the unrelated DNA connected to the Kingsley family. When son Jacob French married Abigail Bartlett of "West Farms", the other Frenches became distant in-laws, the Bartlett connection to the other Frenches via Abigail's ancestor, Jerusha Pomeroy. Notice that a "Pomroy, Pliny" is listed above, the next column has the other Frenches, with a Kingsley. Rev. Hale is listed near a Phelps, a future in-law name. Two Thayers and a Wales were at Westhampton, their surnames have an origin likely back at Braintree.

The URL working on March of 2024:

www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1790/heads-of-families-massachusetts.pdf

The url working on Feb. 2022 no longer works:

www2.Census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1790/heads_of_families/massachusetts/1790.pdf

NOTE ON RELATIVES. In order to do well, people back then lived next-door to close relatives, whenever practical. Close-by in 1790 were Abiathar's three married sisters, Chilson, his sister Rhoda married John Pittsinger/Pitzinger, his sister Dorothy had married Jehiel Alvord, brother to wife Beriah).

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From "Pioneer Women of Leroy".

NOTE: This covered the early female settlers of the Western Reserve, along Lake Erie, in NE Ohio. Their section noted he and his wife arrived with six children, so excluded the son who died earlier, back in Mass., Abiathar III.

An excerpt is in the bio of his wife Beriah. Spellings are "off". Abiathar as Abiathan, not the same mi-spelling as seen on his daughter's stone, implying his gravestone still existed in the 1890s, but was already hard to read. Beriah's name was no longer understandable , so no attempt was made to give it. She was instead called Mrs. French.

The story labelled in-laws as Clapp (correct variation of Clap) and Keneep (a sound-it-out for the Hessian name settled upon, by those going barely into Illinois, as Keneippe. The Hessians were German-speaking, former soldiers of the British, turned friends, staying post-Revolution).

Finally, this Abiathar's mother-in-law had been a widow of a Mr. Phelps before marrying Mr. Alvord.

"The first death in the township was Patty Clapp, who died in 1806... The same year the second family moved in, Abiathan French, from Massachusetts, with his wife and six children.

...The first marriage in the township was held at their house in 1807, when their daughter, Rebecca, was married to Elah Clapp.

...Although young men and maidens were scarce in the town, the community enjoyed another festival in December of the same year when Spencer Phelps was married to Mary Keneep. Spencer Phelps came in 1803 from Massachusetts and Mary Keneep from the same state two years later with her brother Charles."

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Six children? Happily for family history, early resident Spencer Phelps later would memorialize three, if including Rebecca French via her wedding. He mainly discussed two French sons, John and David, (NOTE: John's birth record survived back at Westhampton; Phelps said David was John's brother.)

John and David French came with Charles Kniep/Keneippe/Keneep, to Ohio together. This moving in sets was done to clear land, set up a garden and cabin, preparing enough for others arriving later to survive. Elderly children and children would then be brought, along with household goods. The friends had to be sufficiently close-to-heart to be a reliable support system in a time with no EMS, no police, no fire protection, when the easiest travel was often by sleigh over lake ice, providing it had frozen thickly, and by rowboat or canoe, up local rivers otherwise, as there were few or no "through roads", merely semi-cleared paths used earlier by trappers and native inhabitants, following deer trails.

The local historians ignored these women, outside of their weddings, but it is possible that Rebecca French and Mary Kniep were also good friends and came with their brothers, to cook and wash, to set-up gardens and orchards, so there would be more than cash crops to support the whole families to arrive later.

Historian Spencer Phelps came in a different set, with two Clapp brothers, and Jonathan B. Russell, to clear and plant land. They were earlier than John and David, but only by a few years, in what Spencer called "Leroy", but was not yet named that.

All were young adults. All five surnames came from Hampshire County in western Massachusetts. Once the land was ready, survival more assured, ready to support more people, parents clearly followed. This was true within a year, in the cases of the Frenches and Knieps. Col. Amasa Clapp had plenty to do back home, no interest in following his sons west, maybe already too ill to travel?

Their respective last towns back in Massachusetts had been smaller ones, ringing the older and larger Northampton, on the Connecticut River. All were inside Hampshire County, so proximity was their first bond. Up to the north, were the towns of Chesterfield and Goshen, from which the Clapps and Phelps and Jonathan Russell came. Southwesterly was Westhampton, from whence the Frenches and Knieps came. The Phelps and Frenches, though some miles apart in Massachusetts, would have met each other previously, through earlier in-laws shared, in particular, the Alvords.

The newest bond was future in-laws they would soon share, the Knieps. Charles had LOTS of siblings. Not only would Spencer and David French marry Kniep sisters (Mary and Lucy, respectively), but Charles' brother, Solomon, would marry the daughter of the circuit-riding Methodist minister who had come in to marry just them and theirs, back in 1809, no one else. That minister was Rev. Shadrack Ruark, maybe also a J.P. (he resisted Anglic-izing and Irish-izing; otherwise he'd have been Cedric O'Rourke). Shadrack's marriage list added another son for Abiather, Timothy French. A birth record back in Westhampton has been found (recently, at FamilySearch). Earlier, we assumed rather than knew with certainty that he was related. No historian explicitly named him as connected, though he did trade land with known sons of Abiathar. He was listed with David and Jacob in the 1830 Census back in Ohio, and, by the 1840 US Census, had moved to Branch County in lower Michigan, with young Frenches next-door likely to be his brother Jacob's. In the 1850 Census, wife Mary was confirmed, they'd given a daughter a name common in the family, Rebecca. The land trades added Jacob French to the list, the early-to-Ohio Jacob also confirmed as Abiathar's son by the abolitionist husband of a granddaughter, Andrew Jackson Williams, an attorney and state representative inside Ohio, whose biography was written post-Civil War. Jacob had already married back in Massachusetts; perhaps John did as well? Spencer Phelps said three French families came, first, Jacob with wife (about to have son Edwin and maybe more), second, Abiathar with wife and two sons (David and Timothy) and two daughters (Rebecca and Rhoda) and perhaps John (with wife and...?). John disappeared into oblivion; he must have moved away from Leroy and, once away, was too hard to separate from the myriad other John Frenches?

Spencer Phelps wrote decades later, as an aged blind man, speaking the way they would have, homespun. He delivered his memoirs to the Painesville Telegraph and to historians (see David French's page). Other info for them can be picked out of the marriage, land and census records, plus newspaper accounts.

Websites about early Mormans helped tremendously in understanding the early geography. No one collected birth or death records, nor did they report parents on the marriage records, making the other sources matter, more than normal.

[Scratchpad--following to be pared down or moved]

LEROY

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When Spencer Phelps said his memoirs concerned Leroy, what did he mean? He perhaps would have meant the area to be served by the informal Leroy, Ohio, mail drop, what they originally called Chesterfield, after the hometown in Mass. of Spencer and the Clapps, but changed, as that mail address was too similar to another already in use. No real post office (government run) would be had until 1824, and that only ran once per week, between Painesville and Pittsburg. The "service area" for the earlier, informal mail address would not exactly match the later, official "Leroy Township". (Not added until 1820 or later, it was a "governance township" in charge of electing local officials, raising taxes, building and maintaining roads and schools, created by splintering off from a large, mega-Painesville Twp., its separate governance, along with those of other small townships, were not needed until people felt the job was too large for the mega-Painesville and mega-Cleveland townships which were all that existed before.)

Nor did the governance townships exactly match the much earlier numbered "survey township" system. The latter divided the multi-county "Western Reserve" into a checkerboard-like grid (around 1797-98), each full, square township five miles by five miles, with permanent boundaries, in straight lines, making it easier to describe local land accurately in deeds. (Thus, going west to east, the bottoms of Mentor, Concord, and Leroy Townships lined up with the unchanging straight-line bottoms of those numbered "survey townships" all referred to as Town 10 North. However, meandering rivers separated the governance townships from each other. They thus did not follow the other straight lines of the surveyed squares set inside that row. The square inside row T10N, located about where Mentor is, would be Range Nine West (R9W). Range Eight West (R8W), is about where Concord is, and Range Seven West (R7W), about where Leroy is.

(SIDE NOTE- Survey Townships were allocated by lottery to the first "proprietors", then divided into lots by them. Some were merely land speculators wanting to "flip", but many of the original proprietors sent relatives (typically sons) to farm the land, many waiting until after the War of 1812 to do so. Col. Amasa Clapp, father to the two Clapp brothers, had been a proprietor, did not wait, accounting for their earliness. These would be very few townships and P.O.'s at the start, with more added later as population grew. There was no "rural free delivery" yet. People had to walk or ride to their assigned PO or mail drop to pick up their mail, making it convenient if stores/ liveries/ taverns/ inns were around the PO. The third layer? )

THREE RIVERS, FIVE SONS, TWO DAUGHTERS

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They left Abiathar III behind in western Massachusetts, as he died before they could come, July 5, 1800, at age 16 according to the book written a century later, by Beriah's larger family, in 1908, "A Genealogy of the Descendants of Alexander Alvord".

A different book, on the women of Lake County, says Beriah and he came with six children. The other six siblings, would spread out across what by 1840 became Lake County in Ohio (previously the NW part of mega-Geauga County, with Ashtabula County previously the NE part).

TWICE-MARRIED REBECCA & MURDERED DAVID, BEST-DOCUMENTED. Two are certain to have lived and died in Lake or Cuyahoga County-- First, the only one with stone still standing and legible, put up after a long life, is a self-proclaimed daughter who "threw down a lifetime anchor" in Leroy Township, now in Lake county, and stayed where she started married life, Rebecca French Clapp McMillen. Her two children by Elah Clapp surviving to adulthood, Octavia/Octava and Amasa, are trackable. The son, Ogden, who died young, is not.

Rebecca's murdered brother, David French, left behind 5 or 6 young orphans listed in a different grandfather's papers, with all three sons trackable, including an Elah French and an Ogden French, pretty clearly named to honore the decease Elah Clapp and Ogden Clapp.

MYSTERY JOHN & PROLIFIC JACOB. The final whereabouts of two, John (b. Dec. 7, 1778) and Jacob (b. May 23, 1781), are unknown, but Jacob seems findable. John was a mystery man untrackable after his first mention by Phelps and a too-common name to find, without more info.

Jacob married in MA, can be followed while in Ohio, up into the 1830s. We've recently found Jacob's land arrangements in Cuyahoga County land records, so learned that their locations included Newburgh, high on the Cuyahoga R. Jacob and wife Abigail Bartlett married in western MA (she had relatives renowned for pear growing), perhaps went to VT before OH. He had at least one son, the first of multiple Edwin Frenches in this line, identified in the biography of the abolitionist husband of granddaughter Amelia Climena French Jackson. Edwin and his daughter Amelia and others are now buried in the family plot of Abiathar Jr's wealthy grandson, Julius French. (Edwin's body "traveled" cemetery to cemetery due to a grave-robbing incident by the local medical school. The case went to court. Hands were slapped.)

JACOB & DAVID'S KNOWN GRANDCHILDREN. The graves of Jacob's son Edwin and of murdered David's son Elah are in the same beautifully landscaped cemetery, Lake View, along with Garfield's tomb, all in the eastern part of Cleveland, next to what became Little Italy in the 1920s, now trendy. (Lesson: Being buried in the same cemetery as a dead President does wonders for upkeep of aging graves. Check out Grace French's 335-year-old grave at Hancock Cem. in Quincy Mass., where John Adams is buried. Your ancestor did not have to be President, merely buried near them.)

RHODA FRENCH KEEP & TIMOTHY FRENCH-- LIVING & DYING ALONG THE MICHIGAN-INDIANA BORDER. To move the count coming to Ohio from the above four to six, we must add in the two who came to Ohio and then left. Rhoda French married Luther Keep. They lived in Leroy Twp., where he was an Overseer of the Poor in the early 1830s, then moved, to a new house in Indiana, but with their farmland next-door in what became Fawn River, Michigan. We know her Indiana cemetery, thanks to a volunteer's transcript, but the transcript mauled Rhoda's first name.

Probably the last to die, Timothy French had a quiet presence. He typically had the largest census household when only the head was named, so may have housed aging parents or hired siblings as farm hands, making his household more than just his immediate family.

In Censuses, Timothy was still in Ohio for the 1830, then disappeared from Ohio and instead showed up in Michigan for the 1840, with wife Mary still alive and a daughter still at home for the 1850. He was a widower in 1860, living with a different daughter and her daughter. His age was available in 1850 and 1860, but he seemed younger than the Timothy that Abiathar and Beriah had in Westhampton on Jan. 20, 1790?

The first possibility is that that the first Timothy died as a child and that this Timothy was his namesake, born later, similar to the others having unrecorded births. The other possibility is that he is not a Braintree French, but of other DNA, in which case Rhoda and other Frenches out of Fawn River and the county next-door (Branch) would be viewed as less likely to be of Abiathar.

He stayed close to Abiathar's Frenches. In particular, Timothy's death presumably took place near to Fawn River, near Rhoda French and Luther Keep's farm, half split by a move of the state boundary, so the farmhouse went to Indiana, the change of address giving the illusion the Keeps were not near nearby.

Fawn River was the township to which Ransom French moved, after leaving his location next to Timothy in Branch County, by moving a bit westward, barely over the county line. Sturgis/Sturges was the adjacent village. Ransom French, the known ancestor of this writer's spouse, farmed in the area. Before he died "too young " in 1852 (leaving children from toddler to teens in age), he had started or bought a foundry business in Sturgis, so was iron-working, like the Vinton ancestors. In the late 1830's, he went to and fro between Michigan and Mentor in Lake County, Ohio, a place where Spencer Phelps said he had ultimately moved. He lived in two counties in Mich., both along the Indiana border, where other Frenches from Ohio or Mass. or Vermont had also moved. There was plenty of French neighboring until several followed others out to the California Gold Rush, leaving Mich. in 1853-1854.

There was an Edwin French back in Ohio, with whom Ransom exchanged quit claim deeds during his return period.

TWO POSSIBILITIES TO CONSIDER: First, was this French a son to this Timothy, so, assuming Timothy was of Abiathar, a cousin to the Edwin French, a farmer back in Perry, retired at a wealthy son's house in Cleveland, buried in Willoughby, then grave-robbed, reburied in his wealthy son's plot? Second, was he instead Jacob's son, so a brother to Edwin, even closer?

Timothy was never specifically named by Spencer. However, Spencer's brother-in-law, Shadrack Ruark, a circuit-riding Methodist minister, married Timothy French to Mary Allison and also married David at about the same time, plus Mary Allison's likely brother, before riding to a different part of his circuit. Other people at the time were married by JPs or other ministers. Ruark was there specially for them.

What did David French, Shadrack Ruark, and Spencer Phelps have in common? They all married Keneippe sisters, daughters of Christian Kniep, one of the Hessian soldiers who changed sides in the American Revolution (borrowed from Prussia, the Brits paid their rulers, not them, so they saw little reason to be loyal to the Brits). The father Kniep spelled his own name the shorter Germanic way, but others tended to "sound out" the family name, for an Americanized spelling as Keneipp or Keneippe or Keneep. The K in front of the N clearly was not silent, but pronounced, making it Scandinavian, so Kniep could have been on the Friesian or Danish end of the Prussians.

This was the second generation in a row with one French sibling marrying "outside the group", to a non-Puritan, specifically a Hessian. (Abiathar Jr's sister, another Rhoda, married Johannes Petzinger, name Anglicized into John Pettsinger or Petsinger, choice used depending upon the branch of his family inheriting the name.)

THREE RIVERS. They stayed close to rivers, as the family had always done. In Massachusetts, just south of Boston. ancestors were first along the Monatiquot and then went to the Cochato, both in old Braintree. Abiathar Sr. moved to the Connecticut River Valley in western Mass. That happened after a Dec. 1770 court appointment in old Braintree, but before Abiathar Jr. enlistment from Hampshire County in to Porter's regiment, Feb. 1776, for an ill-fated, mis-managed march into Canada. With perhaps more land than before, but suddenly separated from the ocean by the whole state of Connecticut, there was no winter employment of the types they had seen back by Boston. PAbiathar Jr. married Beriah Alvord and started a family, with one son recently married before they decided to move.

Perhaps the Great Lakes would be ocean-like? A place richer in opportunity was opening, the Western Reserve in Ohio, so they went. They did so prudently, not rashly, by sending some sons first, John and David, to clear land and plant, so the rest could come later with a food supply assured.

There were three choices of river in the Reserve, all emptying along the Ohio shoreline, in to the great-sized lake called Erie. At one lay a tiny, baby Cleveland. A place still plagued by mosquitoes and ague and other swamp sicknesses, the marshy land on its eastward side perhaps caused its early settler/constable/JP named Parker to die too young. Land on its westward side was still closed to settlement.

So, early settlers chose locations accordingly, definitely looking for upland to stay above the disease zone, yet along the three rivers. Water travel was easier than following hit-and-miss deer trails through woods. Being close-ish to harbors allowed sending produce out on schooners:

THEIR RIVERS IN OHIO

*GRAND R. On the east end of Ohio's long lakeshore, along the meandering Grand River, suited to land uses needing water in their processes, such as distilleries. Settlers there went past what became Freeport, past a village then called Champion, to what would become Leroy. Son John French and assumed son David French went with Spencer Phelps and Charles Kneneippe or Kniep, all of western Massachusetts, to clear land and plant. They followed the Clapp brothers, sons of Col. Amasa Clapp, by a year or two.

They were a tightly knit group. Spencer's Phelps are found in Massachusetts records as in-laws somehow of Beriah Alvord. One of the Clapp brothers would start the marriage ball rolling by marrying Rebecca French, known to be Abiathar and Beriah's child by a tombstone memorial to them found on her own stone, never mind the mis-spellings as non-Puritans rarely got them right. ("Her name could not have been Beriah, it must have been Maria." "Is that an er or ar?").

Brother Jacob was already married to Abigail Bartlett, who had relatives famed for being very good at growing pears. They may have gone to VT after marrying in western Mass., prior to coming to OH, so he brought his family out after David and John arrived. He is the only Jacob French around, so it must be him when we read the area news of a Jacob French getting wounded in the War of 1812, finding an Indian pipe while plowing and turning it over to a museum out east, assisting in land deals, and running one of the local distilleries (business was a way to store grain without rotting and ship it out in small quantities on schooners, to Detroit and such; the canal later would give farmers an alternative, a chance to sell fresh grain quickly in Cincinnatti.) We know Jacob and Abigail had a son named Edwin. An abolitionist politician elected to the state house named A. J. Williams would describe Edwin and Jacob as ancestors of his wife and Edwin's daughter, Amelia Climena French, but sadly named no siblings t Edwin, nor said he was an only children. If he had other children, they may have moved to Michigan with Timothy.

*CUYAHOGA R. On the west end, the Cuyahoga R., wide-mouthed, good for a harbor later, but not yet, as still too marshy, won't be drained until the big canal comes in mid 1820s. . Early settlers went up it, past Cleveland and on to Newburgh, the latter since subdivided into Cleveland suburbs. Son Jacob and assumed son David would have land transactions later that involved Newburgh. David, by then married to Lucy Kneneippe or Kniep, daughter of a Hessian soldier who changed sides in the Amer. Rev. War, also, by then a father of five or six young children, would be waylaid and beaten, caught while walking to Newburgh, taking several days to die. The ring leader went to prison. Perhaps David had alcohol problems, as that was mentioned when his heirs appealed for land to be returned to them. He had not been sober when he signed away that parcel a few years earlier.

*In-between, but closer to Cleveland, the Chagrin R. rose, steeper and narrow-mouthed, the accelerated water flow good for disturbing mosquito larvae, but also making water power for mills. Its main town, the early town of Chagrin, later to be called Willoughby, attracted the very first settlers, David Abbot and Peter French.

These river settlements were inside two mega-sized mother townships, circa 1800s and 1810s. A giant Painesville Township went westward from the Grand. A giant Cleveland Township included Chagrin and Newburgh. These two mothers would pare down in size as daughter townships spun off their edges, circa 1820s. Thus, it may appear that settlers starting inside Painesville moved out, but in reality, boundaries changed so new township governments could form (needed for more local roads and schools as population thickened). The War of 1812 slowed population growth, so slowed the spin-off process.

Ohio was toward the end of Abiathar Jr.'s life. The name Abiathar French appeared three or four times inside what would become Lake County, presumably after he died, still viewable, always after his assumed death date so he could not make corrections, and not always easy to recognize as the odder Puritan names were often mis-spelled, true for both he and his wife:

(1) On the gravestone of assumed daughter Rebecca in Leroy Township.

Massachusetts-born according to censuses, mentioned by Spencer Phelps as Rebecca French, early arriving after her brothers, noted as a French in a Geauga County record when she married one of the Clapps, she is not otherwise specifically named as Abiathar's and Beriah's daughter unless you (a) notice the gravestone and (b) ignore the mis-spellings. Unlike the four older brothers, and like the youngest three, she is never cited with parents' names in Mass. records, perhaps as Shay's Rebellion intervened with recordkeeping. Her stone, for now, serves at a minimum, as the cenotaph for Abiathar and his wife.

We might someday conclude they are actually buried there, if graves are never found elsewhere, as the cemetery is said to have begun in 1811, well before the Germanic Brakeman (Broekman?) family arrived to buy the surrounding land and give it their name.

(2) In pioneer Spencer Phelp's memories as an old man. We hear him, as he wrote (or spoke to a transcriber), telling the young emerging historians, in a humble way, how Phelps and the Frenches, the Knieps/Kenneipes, and the Clapps, all settled around the area that became Lake County in 1840, their part known as Leroy.

They'd eventually separated from having a Painesville P.O. by picking up their mail instead at a Post Office further up the Grand River, which winds out of modern Lake County, into Ashtabula County, not yet a separate county.

Much as two towns in Vermont (three if you count Bridgewater) had been named after the French's home turf in Braintree and Randolph, Mass., the set initially named the new P.O. in Ohio after Phelps' hometown in Chesterfield, Mass. A problem? Another Ohio P.O. already had that name.

Giving up the best name, they had to find another. Being community-supporting in ethics, not elite-creating, it was not hard. Migrating New Englanders tended to follow the Puritans' custom of naming towns after from whence they came, left behind, yet beloved. We can wonder--Did they worry perhaps about creating new kings by naming towns after specific people? Painesville had done it, and Cleaveland/Cleveland had done it, named for "proprietors" (land developers or speculators), theirs associated with the Western Reserve. One growing city's name did become a big giant billboard for a future Presidential candidate. (Grover Cleveland would become US President in the 1880s, out of NJ. How many Ohioans would vote for him, due to having a familiar name?)

The second namesake town, Leroy, NY, provided settlers to Ohio, but had first been settled by many from Mass., It was also inside the Puritan migration stream out of New England that followed the Great Lakes westward.

(3) As "Abiattur French" in the Leroy town records around 1835. (That was a "sound-it-out" spelling, maybe on the German end of pronunciation, due to the double t's. Earlier gross mis-spellings were Bostonish, so dropped the r, "Abiatha".)

Abiathar was a priest in the Old Testament. However, people no longer had ministers teaching them all the Old Testament names, borrowed to make children's names forever memorable, even though mis-spelled every step of the way. However, when we find him, we know it's him, unlike his son with the too common name of John

He was almost 80.

Signs long existed that he was damaged by service in the Rev. War under a well-connected Captain who then perhaps succeeded in getting part of his own military history expunged, the part that would tell about when Abiathar served as a Private. A town north of Abiathar's, where some of his wife's Alvord cousins lived, told some stories, however. That Massachusetts history concerned 1776, men riding in on horseback to remove their sons from a deeply erring command.

This town record in Ohio is 1835ish, sixty years and five censuses later than 1776. We can picture a Germanic neighbor discovering the octogenarian in his house, maybe in a state of undress and ill health? "Dis-composed for some years", as had been said about his older sister Mary, referring to dementia?

What to do next? Perhaps the neighbor took him to the township authorities, giving them Mr. French's name in a Germanic accent.

What we know for sure: Whoever responded to the situation "warned him out". They did this a lot, had earlier "warned out" the young (age 12?) Almira French, orphaned and impoverished by the road murder of her father David French some years earlier. How would Abiathar hear this, assuming he understood? "You are now too poor to pay us to care for you. You are now too old to work. So, after 20 plus years of living here and your families paying taxes since 1808 or 1809, we no longer want you, so leave. We do not want any incomers or visitors to see how we take care of our elderly, so you must disappear."

What was the next step? Did the neighbors find his daughter Rebecca, she of the stone memorial, who married first a Clapp, then, widowed early, married an Irish-born Pennsylvanian named McMillen? She cared as her family acknowledged him on her tombstone.

Did they contact my husband's known ancestor Ransom French down in Michigan. He did return to Ohio at about the correct time, seen doing mutual quitclaims a year apart with Edwin French (cousin? brother?) in Perry Twp, and caught in an 1840 Land Atlas with sizeable acreage for the time in Mentor Twp, west of the village. His son Alford Oren French would be born in Mentor in 1838, but the surrounding children (Climena next older, Mary Eliza next younger) were born in Michigan.

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Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, July, 2015, under revision Feb., 2022 and March. 2024, as more has been found. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page.