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The Christmas Day Twins
He was called Dependence, as that was his grandfather's name, that grandfather a son of the immigrant John French who, in 1640, was declared a "freeman" and member of Braintree's newly formed church and town. John French's wife, Grace, this Dependence's great-grandmother, never had her maiden name made public in any record surviving from her or her children's lifetimes. Her stone, so very old, still exists. Photographed in recent years. It was found buried under tossed grave dirt, after a substitute stone was made, courtesy of a renovation of old Braintree's...
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The Christmas Day Twins
He was called Dependence, as that was his grandfather's name, that grandfather a son of the immigrant John French who, in 1640, was declared a "freeman" and member of Braintree's newly formed church and town. John French's wife, Grace, this Dependence's great-grandmother, never had her maiden name made public in any record surviving from her or her children's lifetimes. Her stone, so very old, still exists. Photographed in recent years. It was found buried under tossed grave dirt, after a substitute stone was made, courtesy of a renovation of old Braintree's first cemetery in the mid-1800s, now called Hancock Cem., the renovation done before the locations of old burials were forgotten.
Why was it so hard to find his cemetery, until now? The stone was not gone. Maybe spellings and place names kept changing, making it too hard to find its cemetery? Thank you to user Paul Hunt for taking the photograph.
DEPENDENCE VS. DEPENDANCE, THE TWIN. Born as "Dependence" in old Braintree, he died as "Dependance" in old Bridgewater, we presume at an aging adult child's house, as this D. was just 11 years short of a full century when he died. Noah Webster's dictionary did not appear until 1828, then took decades to "catch on". Spellings until then varied, both by person ("Let's sound it out, was that an e or an a?") and by place ("Our minister says he wants to keep the two families straight by spelling the men's names differently.").
A big confusion? Signs are that he alternated, or had his adult children alternate, between two locations, in different towns, able them, to attend churches with different ministers. One was that part of old Stoughton corner, now called Avon. It is located right at Randolph's western edge.
(Randolph had, pre-Revolution, been the location of Braintree's third church and south precinct). Moving across Randolph's west edge left them still in what became modern Norfolk County. This Dependence and his twin John French farmed across the road from each other there, in future Avon. D's other location was barely southward of future Norfolk, across the Plymouth County line, into that part of the old Bridgewaters that became Brockton. Both areas would soon be in transition, from farming, to boot-making, from rural, to metro outskirts.
Were he and his Christmas Day twin, John, both born on Dec. 25? Or, merely baptized together on Dec. 25?
No one had trouble spelling John's name, just his. However, his twin remains lost in a crowd of too many John Frenches, until you learn his geography.
PURITAN VS. PILGRIM PLACES. They moved, first one twin, then the other, with the short move from old Braintree (its Randolph part) putting them both in what was still old Stoughton, is now Avon. A road freshly carved out of mother Braintree left future Randolph, went west, by mere blocks, into what was then the east side of mother Stoughton. Others went out to locate there also, names found on an old hand-drawn map kept in a history section at Avon's web site. Twin John located along the north side, twin Dependence was listed to its south, but barely so.
Dependence would leave descendants at his old place, then moved, to die in a different county, but without moving far. The county line marks the old Plymouth colony's north edge, Puritans mostly to its north, Pilgrims, mostly to its south. By their era, years surrounding the Revolution, the Puritan-descended like D. were now moving across that boundary, starting to mix. Their later generation had turned more tolerant of diversity and, hence, each other, than those previously and deliberately seeking "pure" places. Perhaps the former radicalism died away, as the Pilgrims had a century to mellow, so religious labels mattered to fewer on either side of their religious divide?
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(Background. This over-simplifies, but Pilgrims were what historians call "separatists", deeply engaged in "my way or the highway". Back in England, they deliberately left the bigger king-run church due to rejecting its greater diversity, that diversity naturally there due purely to being large. In contrast, less extreme, the Puritans, who moved to the colonies a decade later than did the Pilgrims, were what historians call "non-conformists". In particular, the king's choice for top bishop, a man called Bishop Laud, "went radical" and tried to stamp out pre-existing diversity. He wanted ot eliminate "local tribes", to make a "national King's tribe" of sorts across the whole church and nation. The resulting "Laudian" policies essentially forbade long-lived geographic- and class-based variations in rituals and customs passed along by congregants' "tribal" ancestors. Also chastised were those ministers who wanted to try new ideas, for example, to more safely hold an infant in the lap while seated, instead of baptizing it while standing. This was the case for old Braintree's first minister, William Tompson. (His daughter, Elinor, married first Mr. Veazie/Vesey. When he left her widow, she married the first of the John Frenches of Braintree, the immigrant, the great-grandfather to the Christmas Day twins, who had been left a widower by wife Grace. )
Even though not separatist in thinking, the Puritans thought it wise to leave England. Remembering the prior cruelties to both Protestant "lollards" and Catholic "recusants", some thought they might be next. (Ten years later, Cromwell took over in England and then Ireland. He did not become tolerant, but changed the intolerance to favor the Puritans, and reject others, so there was no longer a need for Puritans to leave for religious reasons. Economic opportunity thereafter became the driver of Puritan moves, instead.)
MARY, TWINS' MOTHER. Their mother, Mary Vinton, had been a poster child for religious tolerance. She came from north of Boston, born in 1692. That year, too many people, who would have been known to her old neighbors, had been hung as witches, some young witnesses getting time off from chores, some older neighbors tortured by inquisitors to get the testimony needed to prosecute. All this was done with the apparent approval of some local ministers, who failed to preach against crowd hysteria and superstition (false gods).
Once in Braintree, she refused to sign the local (second church's) complete covenant. One thing possibly included in the whole might have been a promise to follow any group decision. Seemingly innocent at first glance, to a thinking person, it could include, ahem, witch hangings. This refusal to sign apparently meant no birth record for her eldest, a daughter, as none has been found.
Braintree's "second church" compromised. They adopted a "halfway covenant", did not force her to sign the whole covenant. This let her sign in good conscience, as she then did, very shortly before the twins' births. That let Mary Vinton baptize all her other children locally, including the twins' younger brothers, Abiathar and Joshua French, in the same church as their Braintree cousins. The twins' births are thus of record, unlike their older sister's, Mary the Jr.
TWINS' PLACE NAMES. The places they lived in could divide and did. Boundaries between places started changing in the lifetimes of the twins, then kept changing after they died.
In their lifetimes:
(1) COUNTIES CHANGED.First, Plymouth County mainly shrunk. It lost some of its western end to brand new Worcester County, but gained the town/township of Hingham, with Bridgewater always inside. Old Braintree and other places just south of Boston would request their own county. Second, a new Norfolk County would split off from old Suffolk. Left in Suffolk archives in Boston would be early Braintree and Stoughton land records (which ideally require checking property lines against official surveys and maps). However, church-town records of vital life events (birth, death, marriage) stayed local in their towns.
(2) OLD BRAINTREE SPLIT. The town (township) of old Braintree split into the first three of its eventual four parts in the 1790s, one for each of the three churches officially authorized, one new church per generation. Their church opening followed AFTER each generation moved, beginning ocean-and-harbor-side in an inconvenient NE corner of old Braintree, now Quincy, then moving up the river system to what is modern Braintree (where Grandpa Dependence raised their father).
MIGRATION BY ROAD, NOT WATER. Thus, while the rivers' waters flowed downstream, joining together to get larger, ending at the ocean, new generations of earlier Frenches at moved in the opposite direction, upstream. By the twins' generation, upstream vacancies were gone. They went elsewhere, had to use roads, perhaps to find a different river system on the other side of a ridge. The main roads were better developed by then, a century after ancestors had arrived.
With Boston and Puritans to the north, Plymouth and Pilgrims to the south, two old roadways ran north-south to connect them. Both ran parallel-ish to the coast, one farther back, by the Blue Hills, now called Washington, one closer to the Coast, now called Commercial.
A third old roadway, shorter, running east-west, called Elm Street, connected the two long ones. The second church and second burying ground both are still on it, near its west end, where it stops at Washington. The original French homestead was at the other end, near it stops due to running into Commercial, above Elm.
Two roads led from Dorchester southward into old Braintree, past other towns, then into Pilgrim-land. Dorchester mattered to the powerful located in Boston, military or merchant, as the only way in and out of Boston by foot or wagon was over the valuable "Dorchester Neck". That was a narrow strip of higher land, essentially a natural bridge to a baby city that was otherwise almost an island, with lowland marshes to either side of the neck.
The two roads south:
(1) Now Commercial, best used by "Generation 0, The Immigrants", so, known to the twins' great-grandparents, John French, the known immigrant, and wife Grace. John and Grace knew it as the "old Plymouth road". It went south via Weymouth.(Grace's origin not of record in her own era, clearly not a Kingsley as alleged two hundred years after she died, but by one branch's family tradition, an Alden from Plymouth. A Plymouth birth is not impossible, John's farm being right on this road to Plymouth, and Plymouth being settled earlier. )
(2) Now Washington, best used by "Generation 1, the First Braintree-Born", including his grandfather, the first Dependence French, whose younger brothers Thomas and Samuel also had farms along Washington (apparently held later by their sons Joshua, Moses and Josiah, respectively).
JOHN, TWINS' FATHER. Dependence named his eldest son, the twins' father, after his own father. Dep3ndence was long-lived. Being eldest, John of Generation 2, Mary Vinton's spouse, would not wait decades to take-over this father's old homestead, instead moved further upstream, on the Cochato, in what is now Randolph, above where the Cochato and the Farm River merge to make the larger Monatiquot. He was described as miller, farmer, and hunter/trapper (making side jobs of curing and tanning). Two of the three locations benefitted from a waterside location.
Place changes after the twins died:
BROCKTON. VS. BRIDGEWATER. In Plymouth County to the south, twin Dependence's place for child-rearing and church attendance was described in some old history books as "the Stoughton corner of the north parish of Bridgewater".
Technically correct, that was a mouthful. People took shortcuts, one source saying Stoughton, another, Bridgewater, and a third, North Bridgewater, while still talking about the same place and people. Decades after this twin died, North Bridgewater (3) finally split off as its true own town, 1820-ish, and (4) fifty years later, changed its name to Brockton, so not until 1870ish. Why should you care? If you want to visit his cemetery, look for Brockton. If you want to find him in any town records, however, they will be under Bridgewater.
AVON VS. STOUGHTON. The old towns started by the Puritans had been like Midwestern townships, in the sense of having multiple villages separated by farms and woodlands. Many decades after they died, twin John's nearest village would (5) split off from Stoughton Centre and become East Stoughton, around 1888, (6) renamed later with its modern Avon.
MOVING. Just as they had moved, their children would move. Why move? Frenches leaving their Braintree "hearthplace" might find, first, affordable land, especially important if their long-lived fathers were not yet old enough to retire. They would find, second, future marriage partners for their children who would not be cousins. Please remember, the twin's older sister had married their father's youngest cousin Josiah, technically a distant cousin, hut barely not a first cousin.
Inquiring minds would have been worried. Twin Dependence married a non-relative Mary Linfield. Who would his kids marry? This could explain why he made a point of attending a different church than his brother John, inside a different county. That gave his kids a chance to meet someone other than John's kids. It worked, nobody married a relative; there were so many others, it was easy to avoid marrying the Aldens, if inclined to believe Grace had been an Alden and to be careful.
Move with whom? Their support system. In a time of no EMS, no ambulances or hospitals, no fire depts., no child care, people made a point of moving with relatives.
NEW MOVERS. Distant cousin Josiah and older sister Mary's children went for land that let them stay together, post-move, keeping their support very strong. They went up to Braintree Vermont, finding land still vacant, as it was, sadly, poorer quality, too few acres allocated per head to merit each having a dairy farm, they only way besides logging to make that land "work".
Trying a different strategy, twin Dependence's daughter Elizabeth, who married a Bryant, went in the direction and the distance taken by the Abiathar Vintons, related though her grandmother, Mary Vinton. The ame strategy was taken by her uncle and cousin the Abiathar Frenches. (Umm, how do we know these people are related, even though the last names do not match? The odd name is often mis-spelled as Abiather, abbreviated as Abiath and Abaitha, and the best tonguetwister, Germanized as "Abiattur".) All three Braintree-descended sets, Bryant, Vinton, French, ended in Hampshire County, within a few hours ride of each other, but not together, as they were in different towns.
Those going to Hampshire County went to the Connecticut River Valley. The earlier residents never got along with natives or the French, frankly, never tried, but the warring was finally over, everyone "bad" chased off to Canada or the Great Lakes. Vacant spots were left, waiting for in-fill settlements, older residents willing to sell a contract for deed to newcomers with big down-payments. No grant system present (Braintree, Vermont appears to be the last set of grants, part of the Hampshire Grants), foreclosures could and would later be a problem.
OLDER MOVERS. Dependence and his twin John thus both left behind old Braintree, for new places further from Boston. By their era, a growing population increasingly filled in even the formerly "empty-ish" spots now called Randolph and Holbrook. Land there would become too expensive for young farmers to buy, causing further moves outward, further from Boston.
STAYERS. Some did not need to move, did marry cousins. One example? Dependence's older sister, an early Mary French. She married a "barely distant cousin" named Josiah French. Those two were able to stay in Braintree. Their shared ancestors were Grace and John French, with Mary among the two's older great-granddaughters, by their middle son, the first Dependence, whereas Josiah had been a generation higher, among their younger grandchildren, the last son of their youngest son, Samuel.
Land became available in a chain reaction as three of Grace and John's sons, plus some neighbors, died in a time of a common, killing sickness. Most of the deaths were spread over two years, 1717-18. The dead included Josiah's father, Samuel, and two of his uncles (all great uncles to Mary, whose own grandfather and their longer-lived brother, the very first Dependence, was spared). Josiah and Mary thus found land to buy inside Braintree, using his inheritance, and/or he had inherited his father's land, once he became of age. The couple later donated a sizeable acreage to the town for early buildings, now used as a park, called French's Common.
ANCESTOR LOCATIONS. Near the town hall and Historical Society in modern Braintree, French's Common lies along Washington, just west of Pilgrim's Highway, all seen on modern maps. The original Dependence was said to have lived a bit north of what is now French's Common, along Washington, near Union. There is still a French Street over there. On the other side of Pilgrim's, just east, but a bit north, between Washington and Commercial, all arrayed along Elm Street, lay the homestead where patriarchs John and Grace lived, now almost all in houses, with the "second church" and "second burying ground" still standing.
The graveyard is now a mysterious cemetery with cow-kicked, hog-rooted markers mostly gone in the front third, hidden tombs under sand in the back, and the church still catty-corner across the street, but now called First Congregational of Braintree. (See the old genealogy book called "Fourteen Families" to confirm locations.)
Were any of those streets or highways, Pilgrim's or Washington or Commercial, the old roadway leading down to Plymouth, and thus, to Bridgewater? The answer seems to be Commercial?
RELATIVES WHO MOVED, TOO. The Christmas Day twins reportedly began across the road from each other when they moved. Dependence then must have moved a bit south, while twin John "stayed put", with his location ultimately called Avon, Mass., also an old Stoughton corner, his tree documented at FrenchFamilyAssoc.com.
Their cousin Micah French, the first one to live to adulthood, definitely left Braintree for Bridgewater, too, at about the same time, had children in the new place, then moved or saw his boundary change to Stoughton proper. He and/or his sons, Micah Jr. and Bartholomew French, both of whom had sons they would name Micah, kept on moving. By the time the sons were of marrying age, their names were found up north, associated with the border towns of Athol and Royalston, at the top of huge Worcester County. They and/or heirs then moved up into future Vermont. Still colonial territory under the British King, Vermont was embedded in the west half of what was then called the Hampshire Grants, as its appointed Governor Belcher decided to divvy out or grant land to Massachusetts petitioners. Their half did not split off as the new state of Vermont until after the American Revolution, but would dispute boundaries with NY to the east and Mass. to the south, for a while.
COUNTRY TO CITY. The general lesson of the moves into the fringes of Massachusetts and then into Vermont? Too much of the land would stay inexpensive, as it was too poor for farming. The natives and French trappers who preceded them must have wondered why the still-British farmers were pushing them out, so violently, off of such poor land, only good for hunting and trapping. Many places so obtained, if staying rural, would, in just a few generations, depopulate. Those remaining succeeded by grouping smaller parcels into one, and then using the land for grassy pasture for a dairy farm. The larger dairy farms needed fewer farmers per 100 acres, but could provide them a decent living, while some areas might further depopulate after flooding or drought brought foreclosures. The other choice was to turn to the seasonal trades done in wintertime, when not making hay or harvesting in the fields, turning some into year-round occupations done out of cottages, then, later, turned into something larger.
"Cottage industries" turned into factories, while former farming hamlets turned into factory towns. These "custom shops" could "make a living" for many, in the rural fringes around Boston, not just in Vermont and NH. Censuses show a transition period when still-farming fathers named French live with or next to sons named French who instead declared non-farming occupations in tanning, curing, shoemaking, glove-making. All these created jobs for local salespeople to travel to bigger cities and sell what had been made, then as rail came along, arrange for shipping. The selling and shipping parts took some to new homes in Vermont's biggish cities (Montpelier and Barre), while some others returned from VT or NH to live in or near Boston.
Back home, from Boston to Bridgewater, running boot-making factories was something these Frenches did, employing relatives and in-laws and neighbors at first. No longer restricted to farming (by the refusal of old elites to provide full schooling for outlying areas), the need to move ever outward to find cheaper farm land went away.
Cousins named French would keep moving anyway. Micah III would end up farming good land in Story County, IA. Multiple sons of Bartholomew's different Micah instead founded successful retailing businesses in the booming railroad centers of Chicago and Milwaukee. Perhaps they sold boots and shoes made back in what used to be old Bridgewater?
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Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, July 2015, Revd. Aug. 2015. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page. |
