John French abt 1612-1692

 First, a word of caution.  There are at least two other men named John French in Massachusetts during this approximate time period.  I "may" have written a blog post about Jacob French at some point in this blog career.  It is roughly correct, except that this John French is not known to be connected to Jacob French.  The John French men seen in Ipswich, Salisbury. Billerica, and other places are not ours. Ours is of Dorchester, Massachusetts for a short time, and then Braintree, Massachusetts for the rest of his life.

But just because we know where he was once he arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony does not mean that we know where he started his life, who his parents are, or who is wife is, other than Grace.  Most of the information I can definitely link to him comes from his estate, which leads to birth records for the adult children who were named there.  We don't know whether John married Grace in England, or after he arrived in the Colony.  We don't know anything about Grace's family.  Many trees say she is Grace Kingsley but others say that comes from a misreading of one document.  

We know that John and Grace had at least two children born in Dorchester in the early 1640s, and seven born in Braintree.  Some of the children married into families with surnames I recognize, but this is not a post about the family, yet.  It's going to be fun to figure out those relationships, if there are any.  

I've found little to help me put meat on the bones of this ancestor.  He assisted in an inventory in 1659, which shows that he was a person trusted by both the family and the court, and he owned property, land a a home and livestock.  Grace died in 1680 and three years later, when John was about 70 years old, he married Eleanor Thompson, the daughter of William and Abigail Skellecorne Thompson and the widow of William Veazie.  They actually have what we would call a pre-nuptial agreement, in which Eleanor was well maintained by what she brought into the marriage, and provided additional funds by John's will.

Braintree was not officially attacked during King Philip's War, and John was old enough that he could have been totally excluded from military duty by then.  Earlier, he would have participated in militia drills, as that was part of life in early Massachusetts.  I don't know what John's occupation was, other than farmer.  He had 40 acres of land and appears to have expanded the farm at some point.  When he died on August 6, 1992, his inventory was valued at a little over 317 pounds, mostly land, farm equipment, and animals. This may have put him above average for the town, but not approaching what we would consider "wealth". He may have given some personal items to his children earlier, and perhaps Eleanor was allowed the use of the more traditional household furnishings.  

That's as much as I can say for sure about John French.  I suspect that he was one of the John French men who was made a freeman, because he belonged to the local church and owned land, but I can't say that with certainty.  If he doesn't seem to have been a civic leader, also he doesn't seem to have tangled with the law.  America was made of men like John.

Our line of descent is

John French-Grace

Elizabeth French-Jonathan Thayer

Huldah Thayer-Benjamin Wheelock

Mary Wheelock-Ebenezer Thayer

Abigail Thayer-Jesse Holbrook

Amariah Holbrook-Molly Wright

Nahum Holbrook-Susanna Rockwood 

Joseph Holbrook-Mary Elizabeth Whittemore

Fremont Holbrook-Phoebe Brown

Loren Holbrook-Etta Stanard

Gladys Holbrook-Richard Allen

Their descendants