No stone survives. Her birth date is officially 1658, source below. Some insist it was 1659. Why the difference? With her Feb. birth, 1658 resulted from the colonists' old calendar. Its new year occurred late, at the end of March, putting her Feb. inside 1658 on their calendar. Our modern calendars instead shift to a new year on Jan. 1, causing 1659. ( Rev. Niles' first wife had a Mar. birth and Feb. death. When the old second burying ground was enlarged to become Elm Street Cem., her remains were then moved to a tomb, descendants involved determining her dates.)

In progress... What did she think of her Thayer uncles? She had two. Shadrach stayed local, plus Ferdinando, not long local. The latter led others off to a "frontier" (Mendon, then called Nipmug), with Mendon soon described as burning, literally. Over the years 1675 to 1680, many in Ferdinando's set temporarily retreated, some to Medfield, its 60 or so houses regarded safer, as only half burned, with more going all the way back, to considerably safer Braintree and Weymouth. (The latter had more often settled on spots truly deserted by natives, after illnesses struck. )

In her era, the men's opinions and stories might often be written into public records, but, less often, the women's.

She was a child of Thomas Thayer Jr, the immigrant who was declared a freeman in Braintree in 1647, after her spouse's father, John French the elder, had been declared that, in a first round, earlier at Braintree. Family members named Thayer were large in number, to be buried in multiple old places nearby, and at the daughter towns and mother town of Mendon, if not in Braintree.

Three sons of Thomas the senior and Margery had come with their parents from England. They arrived about the same time as immigrant Richard Thayer. A memorial of the two families, after locating survivors through 1857, was then published 1874 by Bezaleel Thayer, b. 1795. The author said the two families guessed they were not related back in England, but, after intermarriages in the colonies, definitely became related. While early ones of Thomas were more often upriver, on the freshwater Monatiquot, more of Richard's early family located downriver in Weymouth, at the sea's edge, a place suited for ship building, due to the saltiness of the Weymouth tidal river delaying freezing, .

Her father (Thomas Thayer the junior) and her Frenches (immigrant John French and his son John, her husband) were all very decent in reputation. Her father was in on the initial adventure led by his brother Ferdinando, away from Braintree, to create a town to be called Mendon. He must have trusted him, to go to a deeper wilderness, beyond the "praying Indians" served by Rev. Elliott in neighboring Roxbury. Was it wise to go where they might be resented, the native peoples living there understandably not all ready to leave?

Uncle Ferdinando Thayer proved to be a "bit of a rake", well-documented, at least in his later years. Was her uncle merely colorful, or downright shocking? We are left to imagine how she reacted, once key events for him later in his life became public, told by his second wife, in court, when asking for support.

When Experience was a young child, that uncle and his first wife decided to move away, from the coast, to which Braintree was near, beyond Boston and Roxbury. They went over what was seen from the seas as the "Blue Hills", to what would, much later, become Worcester County. This would be the only future county so long, that it stretches the full length of interior Massachusetts, from the top (bordered by Vermont and NH), to the bottom (bordered by Rhode Island).

Its sheer size and late creation make it harder to search all old sources, in order to link the Thayer descendants. This was said to be true even for Thayers who still lived there as late as 1900-1910, according to a relative from SW Wisconsin, serving in his state's legislature.

Experience had many cousins, former playmates, in that uncle's set. ("Ferdinando and Huldah Thayer had 12 children, five or six born in Braintree, the others in Mendo," said an old book, called the "Thayer Memorial", )

Planning began early. Ferdinando was said to begin his arrangements to leave, for Mendon, when it was still called Nipmuck. He would not be there, however, until around 1665, as Experience turned from five to six, too young to understand, but her family stayed in contact, as she later married a John French from Braintree, whose younger sister married a Thayer and then a Wheelock, that sister's family staying longer.

Ferdinando had a definite good side. His father's property was divided among the three sons when the senior Thayer (a shoemaker, he used Tayer) died in 1665. The mother's share (maiden name Margery Wheeler) was to be divided later. Brother Ferdinando generously decided the division was unequal, so gave most of his share to his two brothers. Shoemaker Tayer lived near the Frenches along what was a tributary to the Weymouth, the Monatiquot, though spelled many ways. Their side of Monatiquot has Elm Street, the old foundry road, running west-east along the river. The burying ground on Elm Street and its "Second Church" and "Second Burying Ground" were not yet authorized, so his body had to be transported to the inconvenient "First Church"/"North Church" and its burying ground, up near the seaside high point that was the site of the old Merry Mount/Mare Mount trading post. It's now in the daughter town of Quincy, with the immigrant generation of the Frenches buried there as well. Building the second church more central to the population would wait for her generation to reach an older age.

OFF TO MENDON, THEN BACK. There would have been a going-away party, a feast with "everyone invited", that she and the playmate cousins would remember as their good-bye to Braintree, temporary for her, long-lasting for them.

Unhappy natives displaced by the overtaking of Nipmuck, with their allies, eventually chased Uncle Ferdinando and others out of Mendon, in a most violent way, lots left behind "put to the torch", including church-town records. Once tired of the attacks and attacking, he and a son were then back in Braintree, for a short-term only. This was official for them, as, unlike Experience, they were required to pledge loyalty to the latest king, creating a record with their names. The circumstances meant that Experience can be presumed back in Braintree, too, as she married John French the junior.

Ferdinando and many of the others would return to Mendon. His wife, Huldah, died there in 1690, when Experience was 32ish. Her own parents, Thomas the junior and Anna/Hannah, died in the next decade, presumably in Mendon, but that's not yet been researched well. She was left behind in Braintree, with a spouse and children of her own.

The uncle's second wife "knew too much" about the Mendon return. That new wife became dis-satisfied with the behavior of Ferdinando and certain sons, aiding and abetting, who had returned with him. Breaking the hidden rule in some places that women must stay silent, the second wife was motivated to sue in public. She separated from the uncle by staying on property back across the hills, subject to the Boston area's courts. That second marriage ended colorfully in those courts, where she told secrets, justifying the current separation, while asking for future support. His secret things were perhaps already suspected by relatives back in Braintree, those who were still following "do unto others" rules, but now the secrets were public.

The non-Mendon records still exist, in old books, online, when the originals often are distant or not readable (handwritten ink often faded, things might be scrawled or done in a too-flowery hand). Their era used "sound out" spellings. It's often hard to check the full variety, given the different dialects brought in from their different corners of the British Isles. Some of the dialects dropped letters. Others treated different letters as pronounced in the same way. Below is a sample,

===========HER VARYING SPELLINGS===================
Her home town: Old Braintree, also seen as "Braintrey".

An older cousin's birth record, presenting the uncle's name most spectacularly: "Sarah Thayer the daughter of Ffarthenendoe Thayer and Hulda his wiffe was borne the (12) (3) 1654."

Her birth record: "Experince Thayer, daughter of Thomas and Hannah born 15. 12. 1658".

The birth record of a first son who died young: "John Ffrench" son of John Ffrench Junior by Experience his wife was borne September 20th, 1686."

We wonder, were there two ways to pronounce the letter F? Their's were done softly, in the way that SS is a softer sound than S?

(Sources:"Records of the town of Braintree, 1640-1793", compiled a century later by town clerk Samuel A. Bates, published in 1886, a searchable copy kept at archive.org.)

SIDE NOTES. We know son John died young, as she also named a later son John. She had three daughters named Ruth, as the first two had died young.

Her death of 1719 is on p.725 of Bates' wonderful book, name correctly spelled, one of many deaths in the period 1717-1719. Her brother-in-law Thomas was among the first to die of the "something mysterious" that killed so many, directly or via the after-effects of "it". Their Rev. Niles wrote in his journal that he almost died of "it". Her surviving brother-in-law, Dependence/Dependance French, was made busy with funerals of too many to close together and with the committee arranging for the purchase of the burying ground. Brother-in-law Thomas French was the first to die, his burial listed by Rev. Niles in his journal, the town's first official listing at what became the Elm Street Cemetery in Braintree. (Niles' first wife was already buried there, by a private arrangement, her grave said to be covered with rocks to keep wolves out.) Thomas French's wife Elizabeth died near the end, after trying to arrange outcomes for her many small children by naming her eldest sons, just teens, barely over the legal age of 14, as administrators of her estate. Experience would have left some teen-aged orphans also? Her children are the main research still in progress.

Her cousin's birth was on p.635; her first son's birth, p. 664. Her birth is on p.818, in a later section than her marriage, as it came from a different book of handwritten records. That book was transcribed by S.D. Hayden, said town clerk Bates. (The Haydens were a local family, so familiar with the names of the Frenches born to John and Grace after settling on country lanes replaced by what became Elm Street and Commercial. )
===============================================

Grave List

FINISHING FERDINANDO. They thus pronounced "Ferdin", as "Farthen". Was this an attempt by English to mimic a Portuguese or Spanish pronouncing of the name? Had Experience's Thayer grandparents, when still in England across the seas, back in Gloucester, decided to name their son for a well-connected Sir Ferdinando Gorges with Spanish or Dutch connections?

Sir Gorges was a kingpin for land ventures in the colonies, much as was his more successful competitor for colonists, John Winthrop, Winthrop's title of Governor referring to a position on a corporate board. Mr. Gorges went to and fro, between his little colonies and his shareholders and family back in England. He had been a major financier of some of the first settlements in the early Puritan era. Did the Thayers know him? Go to one of those settlements, under his financing, before ending at Braintree, where others were instead financed by Winthrop's set?

Being elsewhere first would account for her father being named a freeman of Braintree in 1647, seven years after her father-in-law, the immigrant John French, named earlier, in 1640. (A typical indenture contract to pay off a transportation or other debt could last seven to ten years?)

GORGES' PLACES. There had been two short-lived colonial areas connected to Gorges. One was well north of Boston, in future Maine/NH, near a good lumber supply for shipbuilding, claimed by Gorges circa 1622, so very early. Another was at Weymouth, immediately south of Braintree. The first was destroyed by warring. The second was partially interrupted by the minister of the church departing for other places, taking much of his congregation with him. The second was nearest to Braintree, on the opposite bank of the Weymouth waterway. Its advantage? The "Weymouth foreriver" accepted incoming sea tides once a day, not just mildly salty, but sea-salty, so slow to freeze over in winter, letting ships move about longer after upriver parts and upcoast harbors had frozen. The shipwaters not freezing mattered to anyone not always busy with farming/animal husbandry. Some made all of their living from shipping, possibly what made some Thayers wealthy, while others could farm in the summertime, then add winter income from temporary shipbuilding and carpentry repairs.

The more important of the two Fernandos, Sir Gorges, mostly stayed back in England. He only visited the colonies for short periods. His temporary colonizings were set up by, and for, others who planned to stay. People called them "adventurers" (a word then referring to business "ventures" that sought risky profits). Their presence makes it clearer that Puritans were not the only people settling in New England. The old Gorges settlements set "how to" examples for future settlers, though not exactly successful themselves.

Unlike old Braintree, which would have a street near its first church named Squanto, people in Gorges' northern settlements were less able to stay out of trouble with native populations. Gorges' settlers to the north thus ended by dispersing, once tired of attacks and attacking.

When Gorges' northern settlement emptied, some of the refugees came down the coast to Braintree. One of the Gorges refugees would cruelly shoot to death a starving local native man who stole a cooling pie from a window. Because the punishment did not fit the crime, the Braintree peers convicted the shooter. In the refugee shooter's old settlement, would the people have instead clapped, so the shooter imagined his overly big reaction to a tiny crime was acceptable?

Unlike the Puritans, "adventurers" might not be religious. If not church-going, they were often (not the same as always) less aware of the "do unto others" rules taught be the better clergy.

Not being church-going, the wives and children of adventurers can be harder to find in local records. In Puritan areas, every town had one authorized church. The church and its burying ground and record-keeping and ministry and teachers were subsidized by the town, with the town using the church as a meeting house. Early members wrote a "covenant", each revision voted upon, to which new members had to agree, if wishing to join. Some covenants were harsh. Some were modest, whereby "signing the covenant" meant merely agreeing to help pay for a minister and teacher.

The town portion of the local records listed the adventurers via their legal papers (taxes, land contracts, , will filings and related estate settlements, offices held, with fence watcher and pig chaser on some lists, militia members, assigned work projects for married men different from those given to unmarried).

The church portion, in contrast, omitted those adventurers not church-going. Adventurers not named were detectable only by the absence of their name. (Records might skip anyone not signing the covenant, or with marriage vows not done under clergy. Those avoiding infant baptisms might not see parents' names listed alongside each child's. If only one parent agreed to the covenant, they might be the only parent listed. In nearby Weymouth, a Mary Thayer was brought in for baptism by her grandfather, listed only as Mr. Lyon. And so on. )

Due to their having religious parents, her father and his brother Shadrack, and their more adventuring brother, Ferdinando, and his adventuring cousin/uncle (Richard/Ricardo? Thayer, junior and senior) were all listed with parents in church records in England. They disappeared from local colonial records when off on "adventures". Cousin/uncle Richard Thayer's adventures involved the south seas, thus Richard junior or senior died on the island of Barbadoes/Barbados, a place known for rum-dealing and slave trading.

For Ferdinando Thayer's biggest adventure, authorities granted permission, to maybe 25-30 families from Braintree and neighboring Weymouth, to go west-ish of Braintree, allowed to settle across eight square miles. That very large grant was dated 1660, when Experience was about two. The place chosen was "Nipmug", also written as Nipmuck, given dialects that pronounced a final g and ck with the same sound. It would be called "Quinshepauge" later, then Mendon.

The people involved dawdled a few years before going out to that grant, perhaps understanding the land was not really as "free and clear" as promised. Then, finally, they were required to go, or they would otherwise forfeit their land.

The delay accounts for Ferdinando not being there until 1665. The authorities could have granted thousands of acres each to a few ultra-large landlords, as done in some parts of the southern colonies. Some or most state constitutions in the south were written so only large landowners then could vote, not their renters or laborers, causing general unhappiness with conditions that followed, impoverishment of tenants, and the encouragement of slavery, given one family was not big enough to work a huge holding by themselves. In Winthrop's colony, the goal was different. As in Braintree, it produced something closer to modern democracy. Acres granted to each family for its homestead would depend upon "head count" (number of people brought along and needing to be fed, mainly counting family, with employees and servants less often in the count). The greater a grantee's number of heads counted, the better a "proprietor" might fare. People with large families did best on the grant end for homesteads, but could buy larger shares of land if having the money. Ferdinando arrived with wife and five or six children born in Braintree, so had a headcount of seven or eight. Add on Thomas and his wife and children, did that double the headcount number? Experience's future sister-in-law, John French's sister, Elizabeth French, had married Jonathan Thayer, son of Ferdinando, so would be there later. They thus perhaps added to Ferdinando's headcount as well.

These headcount grants, or homesteads, were for land closest to the combined town hall and church, called a "meeting house", or in key places needed by everyone (mill sites and bog iron needed a waterway with a miller and a blacksmith).

Ferdinando's homestead was said to be south of the Mendon town center.

Ferdinando was sufficiently prosperous from prior business ventures that he could afford to give away his Braintree land. He could afford to add to his headgrant with pasture land, woods for lumber, rock for quarrying, etc. Some fringe locations were likely to split off, a generation or two later, as a daughter town/township, so would be of greater value later.

In this manner, Ferdinando, as one of the original signers for Mendon, a "proprietor", became a land developer of sorts. A descendant, Hon. Lyman W. Thayer, would be a state legislator once in Wisconsin. Asked to write his biography, he wrote this of his immigrant ancestors:

"Thomas Thayer, who was born in England and on emigrating to America, about 1630, settled in Braintree, Massachusetts, in company with his wife, Margery, and their three sons: Thomas, Ferdinando and Shadrach. The second son, Ferdinando Thayer, was married January 14, 1652, to Hulda Hayward, of Braintree, where they resided until after his father's death, when he removed, with a colony from Braintree and Weymouth, to Mendon, Massachusetts, where many of his descendants now live. He was one of the largest landed proprietors in his township and his homestead was a little south of the present center of the town of Mendon. He was a man of wealth in his day and gave farms to each of his sons, several of whom became extensive land dealers. Many of their descendants still occupy those farms, which have been in possession of the family for over two hundred years. Ferdinando Thayer died at Mendon, September 1, 1690."
(Source: 1912 book,"Fond Du Lac County, Wisconsin, Past and Present" Volume II, pages 650-652, edited by Maurice McKenna. The legislator's father descended from Ferdinando's sixth child. That cousin to Experience, Capt. Thomas Thayer, b.1664, some years younger than herself, thus farmed in Mendon, while she was back in Braintree. He had married a Dedham woman. )

TO AND FRO. Their town officially incorporated under the Mendon name in 1667, when Experience was about nine. (Mendon was then part of the British-run county called old Middlesex, much larger than now, but would later be in a newly created Worcester County.)

What was the main result, at least, at first? Stories varied. Natives tolerated the first settlers, offered them food if hungry. Tolerance was easier when off in the hills hunting and trapping in the winter, not there all the time. The young men in the tribes then grew angry as more arrived and claimed the summertime village spots, streamside acres made productive for garden , fishing, and corn-growing , by earlier clearing and cultivation by the natives. They were sometimes without enough food to feed their children. Their children sometimes died off as settlers brought in deadly things like measles and small pox. If people did not leave when asked nicely, it became easier to ask not so nicely, with weapons and fire, used by both sides.

Warring with natives not ready to leave permanently caused the settlers' flight in 1675, when she was about 17. Experience's set went mainly back to Braintree for the next five years or so. Others went to Weymouth, or to the three towns that had been sponsoring/supervising their daughter church and minister in Mendon (Medfield, Dedham and Roxbury).

Eventually, British troops, of which the colonists were a part, stopped the threats there and elsewhere . The costly financing of troops caused a need to raise taxes. If not fairly done, if regressive in type, this became one of the things making the kings unpopular.

Threat gone, many returned to Mendon in 1680. Others stayed away permanently, the case for herself. She was 22 by then, a good marrying age, not likely to die from giving birth when too young, body not ready. John French the junior, a neighbor before, now a neighbor again, was available..

Multiple Thayers married multiple Braintree Frenches. She and another Thayer married a sister and brother from among the elder children of immigrant John French and his wife Grace, John the junior and his bit younger sister Elizabeth.

This was natural. Brothers and sisters who were close in age, so "best friends", shared their good fortunes in finding good mates by making introductions to the best of the latest in-laws.

John's sister Elizabeth would return to Mendon (or, possibly never left). Once widowed, she then married a widower named Wheelock, after her daughter by Jonathan had married that man's son

Believed by some genealogies to be buried in Mendon or a daughter town are Experience's parents and Ferdinando. The absence of their names among Braintree deaths, however, makes Mendon in Worcester County the likely place. Sister-in-law Elizabeth's history became hard to track when her surname changed a second time, to Wheelock, as the Wheelock children moved northward inside that giant county.
.
Mendon's early records burned in the warrings. These would have included some births and deaths. What records remain?

Things kept outside Mendon.

A distressed marital situation, of widower Ferdinando, with his unhappy second wife, went to court. Someone calling herself "Cathie" (Cathie Door? Dorr?) went through handwritten court records and and reported them here:
Freepages.genealogy.RootsWeb.ancestry.com/~Cathie/DThayer.html.

NOTE: The transcriber's spouse, Dave, descended from Ferdinando's son Isaac. Those Thayers migrated off to NH. A Lucy Thayer then married a White, a name seen back in Mendon, and raised her children in Washington County, Vermont.

Braintree-descended Frenches would also migrate to both of those places, producing an Orvis French born in Washington County. He surveyed several hundred descendants in the late 1800s, in order to write about the many migranting away from Braintree.

THE WARRING. Local histories covered what became called King Philips War That included the burning of Mendon, a big event, as it related to the different towns which early ringed old Boston.

[Notes follow will be eliminated, used while double-checking.]

(1) GORGES. If tied to Ferdinando Gorges, her Thayers perhaps had ties to Maine, of which NH was an offshoot, and/or ties were to early Weymouth, not just Braintree. The Gorges family were originally said to come in to England at the time of the Norman invasion, then were made lords while serving under King John. After the inheriting male line ended, sons of a female line inherited, but only by changing their name from Russell to Gorges. His male yDNA thus was not Gorges, but Russell. His Spanish first name came from Ferdinando Lygon, his mother's brother. Ferdinando Lygon was said to be born in Madresfield (madre is Spanish for mother, so old timers wroteit as Maddersfield, etc). The place is in Worcestershire, England, reminding us that Mendon's modern county borrowed its name of Worcester from England.

(2) COLONIAL GEOGRAPHY: The Netherlands was a territory still under Spanish control in her father's and Gorges' lifetimes. Its Spanish control put the name Isabel/Isabella and Ferdinand/Ferdinando into the English vocabulary.

Isabella of Castille married Ferdinand of Aragon. That let their grandson later unite their regions under one ruling noble, a king, with the result called Spain. The Spanish Netherlands was a colony of sorts, including most of Belgium and Luxembourg and parts of the north of France, after the Dutch split off as their own Dutch Republic in 1581. During the lifetime of Ferdinando Gorges, these Netherlands or lowlands would be ruled by another Isabella, Isabella Clara Eugenia, an Infante/Infanta, meaning a prince/princess not scheduled to inherit the full crown. In her case, a younger brother had priority, though females in Spain could inherit. She had married into the Austrian nobility, to an Archduke named Albert. The Infanta took care of her ailing father, still ruler of Spain and Portugal, so was perhaps often absent from the Netherlands.

The Infanta's spouse Albert died in 1621; herself, in 1633. Experience's father sailed for the colonies on the Blessing in 1637. Mr. Gorges died in 1647.

When Gorges acted in a corporate way, he was associated with the Plymouth Company. His youngest son, Robert, was not well liked when acting as Governor of Maine, maybe as too dictatorial. Thus, his eldest son, John, instead inherited the Province of Maine. A grandson inherited it next, then sold it in 1677 to the Massachusetts colony for a small amount, not much there , done when Experience was 19. Maine stayed with Massachusetts through the Revolution, its edges serving as that state's northeastern frontier, bordering French Canada. Maine would not become its own state until 1820.

The Infanta's territory would be fought over in warrings that involved the British both earlier and later. When young, Capt. Ferdinando Gorges had been made a Spanish prisoner after a battle, released by an exchange of prisoners. After Massachusetts owned Maine, the British royals wanted neither the French-Spanish Bourbons nor the Austrian Hapsburgs to win sole control, so allied instead with the northern Germanics, hoping they would take over instead. The new alliances contributed to the future power of what would be Prussia, its last Kaiser a grandson of Queen Victoria. It was a common complaint by those living in the fought-over places that no one ever asked them what THEY wanted, and that the Prussian outcome was to make everyone conquered into serfs and tenants.

(Sources: Wiki historians, To check: Cassell's Illustrated History of England)

(3) One tree said parents of the immigrant sons (Thomas and Margery Thayer) were shoemakers, with another branch headed instead by a related Richard Thayer. [Doutbful that Ferdinando made his huge money on cobbling Puritans, as not a large mkt, plus cottage industry of shoemaking for others came post-Revolution, after the Adonijah Frenches and others learned skills while manning forts]

The record book listing her cousin does not detail her own birth? Check If her family of Thayers came in with the Gorges settlers, who preceded the Puritans, and moved around. Her own branch would have somebody stay in Braintree as long as they still occupied land inherited from her grandfather Thayer. Her uncle Ferdinando's fringe town of Mendon burned at one point, in a warring with natives not yet ready to leave. Some genealogies say her parents, Thomas Thayer (the junior) and Anna/Hannah, died or were buried at Mendon, as was Ferdinando. However, there are no obvious official records from their own era, written by a minister or town clerk, online at this point, to verify this. The absence of their names among Braintree deaths, however, makes Mendon the likely place. Her uncle Shadrach died in Braintree, body transported a distance to the First Church. Its people buried there believed in the Trinity, yet church that turned Unitarian a century later. Her elder relative Richard Thayer (the uncle Rich. sr? the cousin Richard jr? Whichever one owned land in remote Barbadoes, so died there. Many there (not all) had unsavory history involving slaves or rum-running OR the brits transported them there as caught doing something or otherwise punished. Check where died there? . He had sons who stayed in Braintree and took their turns holding office, regarded as a responsibility, not a matter of prestige or vanity.

The two brothers, her father Thomas, her uncle Ferdinando, were said to have arrived in 1637 on the ship Blessing, as a pre-teen and early teen. Their parents and a younger brother (Shadrack Thayer, their way of spelling Cedric) also came.

An old 1913 book called "The Thompson Family", printed by the Mendon Historical Society, said,

"From this account we may conclude that the little Gorges settlement at Weymouth-Braintree was well-to-do ... [on] September 2, 1635, 'the plantation of Wessaguscus' finally taking the name of Weymouth; while five years later, May 13, 1640, the town of Braintree was established, including the territory to the westward up to Dorchester. On the banks of the Monotoquett River in those days, on the Braintree side, lived a shoemaker named Thomas Thayer, whose second son was named Ferdinando, after Sir Ferdinando Gorges; a rare instance of a child being named such a distinctively foreign name in those days; and pretty conclusive evidence that Thomas Thayer the senior had been one of Gorges' settlers. Of this Ferdinando Thayer, it is moreover to be noted that he was one of the pioneer settlers of the new plantation at Nipmuck in 1662, afterwards named Mendon. He went there with some twenty-five or thirty other men from Weymouth and Braintree, one of the leaders of whom was a John Thompson..." (p. 18, main author Adrian Scott, with Henry A. Whitney and perhaps others.)


Again, her grandparents were the shoemaker Thomas Thayer who died in Braintree around 1665, his will read at that time citing her father and two uncles, and his wife, Margery Wheeler. That elder Thomas went by Tayer, not Thayer. When their Braintree land was split between the three sons, with Experience's father already in possession of some by his father's death, brother Ferdinando generously decided the division was unequal, so gave most of his share to his two brothers. (He was a man of means by then, not in need of the Braintree land?) Uncle Ferdinando would instead be official owner of a large acreage in Mendon very early, by 1663. That would happen by the time his niece Experience was just five. The warring with natives and the French that caused de-population and lost records began later.

Who was Ferdinando Gorges? A British Lord and "adventurer/ financier" given land grants in American colonies.

Gorges sent explorers and then, by 1606, colonists. Sir Gorges never came to America himself, sent heirs instead, and had earlier financed varied settlements, including some far to the north, in lower Maine. He would see some of his plantings of people declared as Maine province by 1622 (these plantings of people caused the use of the word "plantation" before Weymouth incorporated as a town). Later warrings and the resulting de-population after his death then caused Gorges' heirs to sell their Maine land to Massachusetts by 1677, when Experience would have been around 19.

There is no birth record remaining for an Experience Thayer or Tayer; perhaps it was among those lost at the First Church (in what became Quincy). But, it could have been elsewhere. Mendon burned in the warrings with native peoples, losing records. Old Weymouth perhaps lost records carried away by ministers who migrated southward. Thus, some early Thayer children's births were dateable only by their reported order between better documented siblings. A closely estimated birth year is found for Experience, estimated from her age at her better documented death.

Experience's death record was included in the book of vital records for old Braintree, put together as old Braintree split into its first three parts, edited by city clerk Bates. It gave her age at death as 61, which is repeated by old genealogy books. (List below; the author of her husband's page here at Findagrave having used Sprague. Though old, these were written over a century past her death, so stayed silent on her birthplace.)

THE MIDDLE.
Experience would have been about 14 in 1675. Early Mendon had largely de-populated at this time, related to warring with displaced native tribes who had made an alliance with the friendlier French. French troops, at different points, protected forts and settlements and trading posts in Canada, St. Louis and Detroit. Many natives also had good relationships with French missionaries who rotated by canoe through territories including the Great Lakes, Vermont and Maine. Much of Mendon's early British population, not on good terms with natives, retreated back to Braintree for an interim, around 1675, during a period that history books have labeled as King Philip's War.

Their retreat was perhaps the event which allowed Experience to meet and marry her future husband, the second John French of Braintree. In that same interim, that John's younger sister, Elizabeth French, would meet and marry Experience's cousin, Jonathan Thayer, his father being her uncle Ferdinando. Jonathan would be one to receive sizeable land in Mendon from his father. Sister-in-law Elizabeth French and this cousin, Jonathan Thayer, returned to Mendon to raise their children. Experience and her husband, John French, would stay in old Braintree to raise theirs. (Cousin Jonathan would die youngish, with his widow marrying into the Wheelocks of Mendon after a daughter had done so, and having several more children by Benjamin Wheelock the Sr.)

Around 1678, when Experience was about 20, her uncle Ferdinando and her cousin Jonathan were on record in Braintree as making an "oath of loyalty" there (to the British king? to fight the French who had been protecting the natives?). Over the next two decades, her uncle would return to Mendon, serving in office (last as a Surveyor of Highways, a handy job for anyone wanting advance notice of the next good land to buy). He would convey sizable chunks of Mendon land to a total of five sons. There thus may have been many more family evacuees to Braintree who would return to Mendon later, with Isaac Thayer being a prominent name among those sons. (Brother-in-law Isaac was also Ferdinando's son. To show the strong inter-locking of these few families, Isaac produced Ebenezer Thayer. That nephew of Experience would then marry Mary Wheelock of Mendon, related to the Benjamin Wheelock mentioned previously.)

Was it always fun being a rich man? Not if a woman might marry you solely for your money and land, not for love.

At one point, in 1696, Ferdinando's second wife contested his land transfers to his sons. Previously known as Anne Freebury/Freeburg, she was believed to have been from Sir Gorges' settlements or that of his ex-partner, a George Mason, in the lower Maine region, Mason's spilling over into what became lower New Hampshire. That second wife accused uncle of starving her, further accused both him and his sons of selling alcohol to the Mendon natives. She painted him as deserving to have his house burnt down in the warrings. Experience would have been around 38 by then. By the time Experience was 42, around 1700, Ferdinando went to court, declared himself almost 80 and nearly destitute of "comforts" that the second wife had removed from his house. He apparently was suing for financial separation,(almost?) accusing the second wife of having burned his house, saying she issued threats to do so.

Experience's youngest son, John French, named after his father and grandfather and deceased older brother, was born about that time, around 1699, in friendlier Braintree. Son John would marry one of the Darlings of Mendon, perhaps after moving there to reclaim land or to otherwise take advantage of family connections.

The original two John Frenches, Experience's spouse and father-in-law, were more of the "worker bee" sort than of large means, in the sense that the first John and his wife Grace received only a tiny acreage per person after bringing five to Braintree around 1635ish, were not of record using family money to buy a larger piece as some had done. (The five heads countable at that point, helping the family "earn " land, were the parents Grace and John, a young version of Experience's husband John, and his two siblings. These first children of John and Grace were baptized at a "mother church" in Dorchester, Mass., just to the north, before Braintree had its own, with Experience's spouse's name, as an infant, in its church records in 1640.)

Her husband John's page lists their own children as born/baptized in old Braintree. These are findable in old Braintree's records, as edited by Bates, by searching for the name Experience, then noting when it appears with John French (sometimes written as Ffrench). Their known children were born roughly between 1686 and 1699 (old colonial records can often be off by a year due to calendar changes, more if delayed infant baptisms were used as birth records).

In birth order, Experience's children included a John who died young (third in the chain of consecutive Johns), Anna/Hannah (stayed single?), a well-covered Thomas (with a bright son called Joseph favored in his grandparents' will), Grace (named for Experience's mother-in-law, Grace French, she married a Samuel Curtis), Deborah (suicidal in 1726), William (probably lived longest), and another John (fourth in this line's chain of John Frenches, went off to Mendon, where he married Margaret Darling).

THE END.
Experience and her husband, John French the junior, died in old Braintree, their deaths close together, he in 1718, she in 1719. Multiple of his other relatives also died during the several years over which a slow-moving epidemic hit the area.

THE NEXT GENERATIONS.
Descendants of son Thomas French, perhaps the best-tracked of her children, thanks to the work of a Ms. Dodge, included a grandson named Micah French, and great-grandsons named Micah and Bartholomew French. The first in a long chain of Micah Frenches was born in 1726, so in the decade after Experience's death (in the epidemic which also killed her spouse and multiple other relatives in the first generation of Frenches). Only Dependence French, brother-in-law to Experience, lived decades more, and, thus, buried many taken by the epidemic and saw what happened to descendants.

The first Micah French would marry Ruth Wild of Stoughton, a town just outside old Braintree, "kind of" on the way to Mendon, closeby to the west, and also on the road (old beaten path?) to Bridgewater, closeby to the south. Also in-between was Canton, eventually carved out of the others, another place where Experience's descendants could perhaps be found.

Micah and Ruth, in turn, parented many great-grandchildren that Experience and John did not live to see, but who were of official record in the nearby town of old Bridgewater in Plymouth County, raised in the eastern part. Experience's more trackable great-grandsons by the first Micah and Ruth were a second Micah French born/baptized in Bridgewater by 1747, plus his brothers Bartholomew and Barzillai French, recorded in 1751 and 1762, with several sisters in-between. Not of town record with the other births, so more doubtful as another possible son of Micah and Ruth, is an Alpheus French cited in an old Bridgewater history by Nahum Mitchell as b. 1767(p.164). The name Alpheus is not found in Royalston/Athol nor in Vermont with the rest of Micah's family after they all moved. The Alpheus really meant by Mitchell may instead have been in the line of a namesake twin grandson of Dependence (that twin called "Dependence I" by Mitchell, to separate him from his son, another namesake). The family of said twin attended church in Bridgewater, near Micah. They lived in/near the other twin, yet another John French, in that corner of Stoughton which became modern Avon. That Alpheus French, Mitchell reported, married Mehitable Brett in 1800, whom Mitchell may then have mixed up with the Mehitable Pratt who married a David French believed by Mitchell to be Micah's brother. (Mitchell's history clearly was confused over these lines. This writer's spouse descends, we believe, from Abiathar French, with two of Abiathar's three brothers being the considerably older twins, one named John, the other, Dependence, after their grandfather, but with no brother named Thomas. Yet, Mitchell called Micah both son of Thomas and the twins' nephew.)

Mitchell believed that, before moving afar, the first Micah returned with his large family to old Stoughton, where he had married Ruth Wild earlier. Stoughton would mean living near the adult twin grandsons of Micah's great-uncle Dependence, with Micah and the twins being second cousins, their fathers, first cousins, their grandfathers, brothers. The place of the twin called Dependence became modern Brockton, while the place of the other twin, another John French, would turn into modern Avon. Avon's web site in 2015 showed an old map with both twins' locations; text indicated another unspecified French living nearby.

Leaving the twins' families and thus lots of second and thirdcousins behind, the first Micah's bunch, now young adults of fighting age, then headed to the northern frontier of the Massachusetts colony. They did this around the time of the American Revolution, before some headed for what we now call Vermont. The British had won, so the earlier warring with the French and their native allies had stopped, with colonists now ready to go to war with the King-loyal British and their native allies coming out of NY and Canada. Perhaps five of Experience's great-grandchildren via Micah and Ruth would marry in the Royalston/Athol frontier area to the north, just below future Vermont. These were Bartholomew, the second Micah, and sisters Prudence and Anna/Hannah French, with those two sisters born or baptized in Bridgewater in 1756 and 1759. The Mary who died there may have been the sister born in 1749. Another sister listed in East Bridgewater records, the Ruth junior born in 1753, died or married elsewhere, true also of brother Barzillai.

SIDE NOTE. Vermont had never existed as a colony pre-Revolution, was instead inside the Hampshire Grants, un-named. The Grants had their own colonial Governor, were created as part of an arrangement with Connecticut, perhaps to the chagrin of the Massachussetts sets that wanted the land. Some others among the Braintree French would indeed be granted some of that land, in what later became Orange County, Vermont, places sentimentally called Braintree, VT, and Randolph VT, named after "home". However, the Micah sets would end nearer the new state capital of Montpelier, in particular, in Barre, Vermont.

SOURCES& MYSTERIES.
Bartholomew's grandson, Orvis French, migrated to the Chicago area to become a retailer and hotelier before interviewing around 200 relatives, in order to write a family genealogy that covered those Braintree Frenches who had moved out-of-state, away from the Massachusetts hearth places adjacent to Boston. Its details have not been seen by enough people, including this writer. However, his work, based on the recollections and home records of so many, while not perfect, importantly avoided making the "Kingsley mistakes" that first appeared in the late 1800s, mixing-up the families of two different John Frenches. some children of each having common, so matching names, both Johns living in the 1600s, but with differing male DNAs and differing locations inside Massachusetts. The mix-up led to the belief that the older John's wife, Grace of Braintree, maiden name unclear, was related to the younger John's wife, Freedom Kingsley of Northampton, daughter to John Kingsley of Rehoboth. Orvis wrote instead that Grace had been an Alden of Plymouth, easier to believe due to other Aldens living near, intermarrying with, and buried by other Braintree Frenches and due to Grace's age fitting what would have been an eldest child for the first Aldens. However, no record remains from Grace's OWN ERA, to confirm. Plymouth's early records, like Mendon's, were lost. Their graveyard was said to be on a cliff that washed into the sea, only a cenotaph memorial constructed later to remember them

Varied old books collated old "vital records" from church and town. A 1917 book on vitals for East Bridgewater listed, on p. 54, six children for the first Micah and wife Ruth. City clerk Bates edited records for old Braintree, plus a book first published in 1840 and republished in 1897 by Nahum Mitchell on the vital records of Bridgewater. Mitchell's Bridgewater book listed the first Micah's children and called Micah the son of Thomas French, but is puzzling on one point, as he then listed Dependence French as uncle to the first Micah, when he was instead great-uncle. A different Thomas French, married to Elizabeth Belcher, died in the epidemic some years before 1726, the year that the first Micah was born. He was another great-uncle to Micah. Perhaps Mitchell confused the two Thomases, the great-uncle versus Micah's father?

Micah's 1726 birth is according to still another old book on Fourteen Important Families in the area (those Puritans who intermarried with the Pilgrim Aldens). Vital records were also collected and organized into books for Royalston and Athol.

A recent city preservation plan for the Elm Street Cemetery displays a shot of Rev. Niles' diary page, showing his record of the death/burial of Thomas French, with the left side of that diary reserved for what is now the burying ground at the front of Elm Street. The plan shows an air photo of water-filled graves in the old part near the front, most without stones. It tells the story of how Rev. Niles became very sick in the epidemic, almost died. The plan errs, however by re-naming Dependence French as "Independence French", thereby confusing dependence on the will and grace of God, an important concept for Puritans such as these, with political independence from the British.

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Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, Jan., 2016. Revd. Nov. 2018, 2017. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page. Descendants of people named here may use whole paragraphs in private materials for family.