Early Guilford histories cite a John French, maybe him, maybe his son, selected as a town clerk of Guilford, his service 1716 to 1717. That was seventy years after a Thomas French, planter, had his name noted in the first volume of court records, on August 14, 1645. "Mr. Samuel Disbrow, Richard Bristow, Thomas Betts, members of the church, and Thomas French, planter, took their oath" (1877 book, "History of Guilford, Connecticut, from its first settlement in 1639", by Ralph Dunning Smith, Albany NY, J. Munsell, printer, viewable).

Some people assume if two have the same last name, they must be related. Instead, there were unrelated families of Frenches to the Conn. colonies. There's nothing in the book to suggest his John French was a son to planter Thomas French. In addition to unrelated John Frenches possibly near, Thomas had multiple related John Frenches whose birth date does not match the 1662 implied by this John being 65 at death. ( He had a brother called John French, a tailor, at Northampton, Mass. northward, death notice sent back to their mother's church at Ipswich, in Essex County. A nephew John French married Hannah Palmer French, whose stone still stands at Newman Cemetery, after a state boundary change caused the address to change to Rhode Island, at East Providence. 1682 court testimony said that Thomas and Mary Button had only one son surviving, Ebenezer, thus, neither the John French born to the them July 21, 1652 nor son Thomas French, had survived. The mother of Thomas had maiden name Riddlesdale. His brother John's wife had maiden name Freedom Kingsley. The migrations of Mary Button and Thomas brought them separately from England. Both went to the Boston area, then to Guilford.)

From FrenchFamilyAssoc.com (aka FFA, a club formed by Mara French in 2007, to identify and separate families often unrelated, despite sharing the surname of French). They've put Thomas French in Group 06, with over 15 male DNA testers, all shown to be Haplogroup G, in contrast to Haplogroup R, the most common across all testers surnamed French. See Mary Button French's page for more details, but a list put into testimony under oath in 1682 shows no John French:

"Proof of the Button line is based on Guilford land records mentioned in the Boston Transcript, 1910, that William Stone Sr. & Jr. of Guilford testified that "Hannah, Mercy, Deliverance, Sarah, Martha, & Ebenezer French are the children of Mary French and Thomas French and the reputed daughter of Lieutenant John Button of Boston. Oath was taken Nov 22, 1682."

Feb. 2024, From Findagrave contributor JB, 48697180