In progress, greatly changed since first entered in August of 2015, last copyright 2022. Permission granted to FindaGrave for use here. Migrations outward have been tracked to determine which family elders were taken along, versus which remained in Norfolk County. Esther remained. . This writer's spouse descends of her spouse's grandparents, John and Grace French of old Braintree, also seen as Braintry and Braintrey in old records. This writer has had to do much work to find her and other women of the family, so will try to teach lessons useful, so others can find their missing ones at Elm Street or Central Cemetery. Note that the Elm Street Cemetery looks half empty, as so many stones are gone. A preservation plan by the city noted it had been declared full and burials stopped. It is now of park-like status, maintained by the city, no longer under the church across the street. That church, formerly town-supervised, bought the original land. In order to get a final deed, at a time of emergency, when an epidemic was causing the sick to bury the dead, a committee appointed to buy burial land had to let the prior owner keep grazing rights for his livestock. Decades of pasture grazing ruined many stones, plus others were tossed for easier lawn-mowing, according to the preservation plan's anthropologist.

Esther's spouse Moses was son of John and Grace's second-youngest, that Thomas French who married Elizabeth Belcher. Moses' father was among the first burials listed in in Rev. Niles diary. The Rev. said that he had also buried his servant Caesar, and that the Rev. had also almost died as well.

This writer's spouse is descended of an older son, that Dependence who married a Fenno. He was on the Committee arranging for the land. He would see multiple siblings and in-laws die in the epidemic which lingered, 1718-1719 and beyond, including his elder brother John and wife Experience Thayer.

Esther's future spouse Moses was a young teen at the time, third eldest in a very large family, some barely past toddling. Moses was selected by his dying mother to be estate administrator, along with older brother Thomas Jr. Some Belcher relatives bought some of the estate. Given he stayed, young Moses may have arranged to buy family farmland from his siblings or the Belchers. Youngest brothers Ebenezer and Abijah went north into Canton. A middle brother may have been the Jonathan French who married into the King's Church (in to what became the Episcopalians post-Revolution).

ABOUT ESTHER. She was a Thayer who married into the Frenches. Her family's infant-baptizing Frenches and Thayers had been long-time neighbors and church-goers. Her son Jonathan, named for a brother of Moses, became a minister and went north, but other sons and grandsons stayed near at least through the 1800 Census.

In her lifetime, she saw the separation of Quincy and then Randolph from old mother Braintree. Thus, addresses changed without people moving. That was in 1792-1793. Randolph is "long North-South and skinny East-West", mainly to follow the Cochato River uphill and southward, to the Plymouth County line. (What was left as Braintree was shaped to let the main river, the Monatiquot, which bends, be both inside and also at the west and south edges of modern Braintree. )

The river-oriented shapes meant she and many others lived close to the Randolph-Braintree boundary, once that split was done. As a widow, she lived on the Randolph side of a long new boundary, her grandsons mostly on the Braintree side. It was as easy to die in one town as the other, so the County is the safest answer for death place, as it allows for both possibilities.

Mother Suffolk County became too large to handle all court cases, so the lower inland rim outside Boston of what became susburbs separated, to become Norfolk County. That was also in 1793, the same year Randolph split from a shrinking Braintree.

BEWARE-- Some court records of the Thayers would remain where they were first filed, in Suffolk County. They were not moved over to the Norfolk offices. These included a "tell all" court case, in which the second wife of Ferdinando Thayer, an early land developer, sued him for support (he was some sort of cousin to Esther's father?). She told of his using alcohol to convince elders left behind to watch native villages to sign papers. The second wife did not approve. Looking back, that strategy for gaining land backfired, as the young men returning from winter hunts in the hills found the land their families had cleared for summer gardens taken away, less food for their children, new diseases bought in by the English. Old Mendon was attacked and burned, its records destroyed as well. Ferdinando and his son Jonathan, who had married Moses's aunt Elizabeth, were in the records as returning to the Braintree area (in time for the Revolution?), then apparently left again. Moses' uncle John and wife Experience Thayer apparently returned when Mendon was under attack and then stayed permanently at Braintree. Moses' aunt Elizabeth became a widow "out there", in Mendon,
remarrying , to a daughter's widowed father-in-law, a Mr. Wheelock

French-Thayer marriages thus had been common, Esther's to Moses French was not the first. The first? Probably Ferdinando's daughter Experience Thayer marriage at Braintree to John French the junior, the eldest uncle of Moses. When his son Jonathan Thayer married Elizabeth French, she was the youngest aunt on Moses' French side. These and other interlocking marriages were covered in an old book of 1833, dealing with "Fourteen Families", many of the Braintree area, that intermarried with some Aldens coming north from Plymouth Rock.

Looking at the testimony about Ferdinando, alcohol was a big thing in his life. His good side was that he had been generous with family. He was said to convey his Braintree land to a relative (His brother?), before he led a party of friends and relatives out to Mendon as its first English settlers. Some of the Baptists in the Thayer family were undoubtedly of that faith as seeking alcohol counseling for or protection from an intemperate spouse? The alcohol-avoiding Thayers tended to be high-minded in general, a set migrating out to southwestern Minnesota pre-Civil War, naming a son for Louis Kossuth, a Hungarian, whose abolition goal in the 1840s when going to Massachusetts to speak was eliminating serfdom, the challenges similar to eliminating slavery. Their branch had also named a son Wheelock Parmlee Thayer, so were connected to the Mendon set somehow. The father was a Baptist deacon who served in the Minnesota state legislature, followed in that service by his son Wheelock's father-in-law, John Bacon Norton. They wanted schools, rail service for their town, with an achieved goal to get an institution to which families could have alcoholic family members committed for brief periods. This would be replaced a century later by Hazelden and similar programs.

After Esther's time, there was a big population increase from two sources, incoming famine Irish, peak arrival around 1847, too late to find farmland, and by rural residents, hoping to find city work. Farmland was increasingly in short supply. Sons and nephews moved to the edges trying to find "unused" acres. People could split parent farms into smaller ones, able to afford that, by combining income from "cottage industries" with farming, for example, silver-smithing, making boots in the winter, farming less land in the summer so the in-house work could continue, children and spouse assisting with everything. Some went a bit north into Canton, or followed Jonathan further north, above Boston, just as a prior generation followed Ferdinando westerly into Mendon, in future Worcester County. Some cousins to her sons would venture barely outside Randolph, across a west line into Stoughton (the part to become Avon later) and across a south line, into the varied Bridgewaters, especially what became Brockton. Avon and Brockton were among those with farmhouses supporting cottage industries apparent for her great-grandsons' generation, when the 1850 US Census asked for occupations.

We are fortunate that, earlier, in her 1800 US Census, Esther was named as a household head. That in her year of death. Only widows and solo women were named as heads, telling us she was a widow by then.

Names of seven sons and grandsons matched those of the French--surnamed heads explicitly named nearby. These were detectable, as they were in Braintree or Randolph, surnamed French, first names recognized due to infant-baptisms, children named with their parents in church records.

Randolph had begun not as a town, but a separate precinct when inside old Braintree, so had its own church cemetery beginning in 1719. It was not its own town until 1793, but her sons' and grandsons' names and birth dates were put into town records at time of baptism. Note that people unnamed but counted inside a house could be the head's children and grandchildren, but they could also be in-laws, employees or boarders, given names of non-heads and relationships to heads were unstated in early censuses).

Her branch had been long-time Braintree stayers. Few migrated away pre-Revolution. She died at 96. If she died at her own house, the address was Randolph. If she died while visiting an adult child nearby, the address was easily Braintree

====================================
DETAILS AND SOURCES.
From "Records of the Town of Braintree 1640-1793", published 1866 at Randolph, edited by Samuel A Bates, the city clerk of Braintree, that time period spanning the creation of three churches, until Randolph and Norfolk had both been created with added govt. offices. The 1640 remnant church is in what is now Quincy, its church declared Unitarian, pushing the others to figure out names for their denominations. Timings were such that she married at the first church, when it was still town-sponsored Puritan, but saw her spouse buried at the second church on Elm Street, financed by subscriptions, not by the town, and of his "too young to die" father and mother earlier, in the second cemetery's first burials 1718-1719.

The second declared itself Congregational, as did the third church, instead associated with Central Cemetery. They were the First Congregational of Braintree and the First Congregational of Randolph, respectively.
Congregational churches joined the UCC umbrella in recent decades. They were predominantly infant-baptizing, with parents promising to bring their children to church, but allowed adult baptism. Adult baptizers existed, especially those ethnically Welsh, but were of two sorts, integrated vs. separating. The Elm Street church could be larger, could support better record-keeping, with the integrated Wales family putting censuses of their children into church records. Randolph's adult baptizers instead mainly separated. Record-keeping was accordingly poorer for their children. One of the Spears at Randolph was noted as a Baptist elder and forming a separating Baptist congregation next-door or nearly so to what became Congregational.

RECORD SETS. The essentially Congregational records were collated into sets. After the two counties separated, modern Braintree's clerk Bates gathered those particular records written for the three churches when still joined under one town. That set ended at 1793, when towns and counties split, results published as a book in 1866, see below. He had a section for non-church sources, with one of the John Adams doing marriages and people bringing marriage certificates from other towns.

The second main set--A Waldo Chamberlain Sprague, beginning his about 1931, added records through 1850,. Apparently over 2000 pages were given to a New England historical society (NEGHS, Sprague's pages transcribed by a Frank Dyer, put on a CD in 2001).

Some of Sprague's materials on the Frenches are covered at FrenchFamilyAssoc.com. That site began in 2007.

Sprague came from the Mt. Wollaston section of "old Braintrey" (former location of Merry Mount trading post for seafarers, pre-Puritan era, inside what became Quincy, post-Puritan era). Mt. Wollaston, on a high point easy to spot as fishing ships approached. It was more easterly of old Dorchester, with Dorchester's "neck" an inland entryway into the old Boston peninsula (Dorchester and Roxbury westward, home to the "Praying Indians", both since annexed, in bits and pieces through the 1870s, to make south Boston, beginning with the Dorchester neck in 1804, but with parts separating as other towns, for example, Stoughton fell away in her lifetime, in 1726, Canton part of Stoughton until 1797, ).

Individual families also published books in the period between the Bates and Sprague sources. One is the two-part memorial of "Fourteen Families"(see below), by Elisha Thayer (Part I) and Samuel White Thayer (Part II)

"Esther, ye daughter of Ephraim Thayer & Sarah his wife was born ye 1, April, 1704." (p.685)

"By the Rev. Mr. John Hancock was marryed these following, viz. Moses French & Esther Thayer both of Braintree Dec 24 1730." (p.749)
====================================

In 1793, their new Norfolk County would split from Boston's Suffolk County, messing up land records 7 years before Esther died. An easier way to tell "who lived where"? The census-taker for their area wrote names in order of visitation, not alphabetic by surname. Between the 1790 and 1800 Censuses, old Braintree would split into Randolph, Quincy and Braintree towns (more like townships, hamlets with lots of farmland and acreage left as marsh or timber). Frenches were spread across two of the different towns in 1800, albeit barely across the town line from each other.

====================================================
From 1800 U.S. Census, Image, Norfolk County (handwritten record). NOTE: The 1800 Census took place shortly before widow Esther's death. She clearly died locally, having just been listed as household head, living barely across the town line from sons and grandsons, many of whom lie buried in the Elm Street Cemetery. Only the head of each household was named, not the other occupants.

Heads of households in geographic order, names of sons and grandsons in CAPS, one star for a son (*), two stars (**) for a grandson.

...Census at Randolph found eight heads surnamed French.
Joshua, ZENAS**
Jotham, Thomas, Luther, William
Nehemiah (no children present, adult or young),
ESTHER FRENCH*.

...In Braintree were ten heads surnamed French, more hers.
MOSES*, Caleb**, Silvanus**
Asa** ("Asa" barely legible in fading handwriting),
Elisha*, Elisha Jr.**, Silence,
Ahaz, Josiah, & James French.

In progress, needs double-checking.
====================================================

Puritan names abounded. Names matching widowed Esther's descendants? Moses through the two Elishas, geographically together, and one, Zenas, apart. Esther's spouse, the first Moses among the Braintree Frenches, descended from the original John and Grace French, through that couple's second youngest son, Thomas. He married Elizabeth Belcher, both of whom died too early, leaving many young orphans, including Esther's spouse Moses and his bit older brother, both teens.

Not her branch? The next largest branch showed four heads clustered together, Jotham through William, perhaps including Silence, further away. These names match sons of a younger Thomas French, one who married a Silence Wild. His parentage was disputed by family historians Vinton and Sprague, related to too many people named Thomas French to keep them all straight. Call this one Silence's spouse.

Vinton's version made Silence's spouse a son to Moses' co-administrator, the Thomas French who married Mary Allen. Call him brother Thomas.

Sprague instead made him the son of a different Thomas French, the one who married a Mary Owen. He was a first cousin, son to Moses' oldest uncle (John French, eldest child of John and Grace French). Call him cousin Thomas.

Was Moses' brother Thomas or Moses' cousin Thomas father of Silence's Thomas? and thus grandfather to the second largest branch of Frenches to stay in Braintree, who made a point of naming no one Thomas? Vinton had family knowledge due to being an in-law to multiple branches of the Frenches. Sprague was unrelated to the Braintree Frenches and wrote decades later, using Vinton's material, but adding records from the Randolph church. About the Thomases, Sprague merely asserted Vinton as wrong, rather than citing reasoning or proof that he was wrong. Thus, the Thomases remain confused.

Female household heads, such as Esther, were rare in the old Censuses. Generally, they were widows not boarding with relatives, instead letting others live with them. She had one young adult male present, unnamed. Most other households had children present, adult or young, but be aware that cousins/grandchildren and unrelated children there for a visit would also be counted as at that address, with relationships never stated in the early censuses.

From Waldo Sprague, an unrelated party, in his coverage of the Frenches of this DNA, included both Randolph and Braintree Frenches. He relied on church and town records, but also consulted an older source, published in 1858, "The Vinton Memorial", written by an in-law's descendant.

From these two sources, Sprague and Vinton, the children of Moses and Esther, by birth year, with those names matching a French in the 1800 Census given a star(*) by this writer, grandchildren a double star (**):

Moses*, b. Sep.16,1731,
Elisha*, b. Jan.12,1733/4
Esther Thayer, b. Dec.21,1735, m. Richard Thayer.
Sarah, bapt. Jan.22,1737/8 (born Jan.15,- Vinton Mem.)
Jonathan, b. Jan.19,1739 (became minister, went to Andover)
Deliverance Emmons (daughter), Nov.18,1742, m.1775, Rev. Nathaniel Emmons of Wrentham (Franklin).

Esther's son, a third Moses French, had married a Vinton. Ordered by birth year, these grandsons of estherr, to stay around Braintree/Randolph were (on pp. 321-322):

Caleb** b.1757, Zenas** b.1760, Sylvanus** b.1763,
Moses**, b.1769 (the one marrying Eunice Vinton),
Asa**, b.1755, Charles, b.1778 (married a Lamb?, maiden name mis-listed as Lush, which we hope was not a "Freudian slip").

Two middle sons went to Boston, Abijah, b.1766, and Jonathan, b.1772. A pair of twin died as infants, undated by Vinton. A daughter named Elizabeth, b. May 13, 1760, ended name and place unknown to Mr. Vinton. Remember that, even though he did his thorough research a century ago, back when fewer records had been lost and fewer gravestones, toppled, he still wrote more than a century after these people had been born.

Jotham and Luther? were unusual names among the Frenches, narrowing theirs and other names caught by the 1800 Census to certain of the 11 children of Thomas French the Jr., who married Silence Wild. His parents were Thomas French the senior and Mary Allen:

Silence (if it's the son, then, b.1750. Could also be the mother, her b. & d. not known to Vinton), Thomas the junior, b.1751, Jotham, b.1760, Luther, b.1762, William, b., 1770).

Overall, the names were not alphabetic, but in geographic order. That was common if the census taker took names as he walked down the road. Listed last, did Esther live where the road changed from one town to the next? That would allow her to live in Randolph, yet perhaps not far down the road from her children in modern Braintree. If so, she lived in a part of Randolph that settled before the rest, the part closer to modern Braintree and older Quincy (once called Mt. Wollaston and the major fur trading post that the neighboring Pilgrims found scandalous upon their arrival, Mare Mount/Merry Mount), to the northeast, and further from newer Stoughton (the part near Randolph now called Avon) and Bridgewater (the northern part nearer Randolph, now called Brockton), to the southwest (both on the fringe of Pilgrim territory).

The 1800 list showed Esther French as age group "45 and older". Again, she was living in Randolph, not in Braintree, but perhaps just barely. The young adult male present was "16-26", perhaps there to do chores for a 96-year old woman.

Braintree image
FamilySearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-22824-1316-16

Randolph image
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RZ5-9KG

====================================
From Waldo C. Sprague,
"Genealogies of the Families of Braintree, MA, 1650-1850"
(NEHGS, Quincy Historical Society, publication possibly delayed until 1983)

"Esther Thayer, born Jul.24,1705, died Dec.13, 1800 a.97 [sic], dau. of Ephraim & Sarah (Bass) Thayer"

To note: (1) Sprague gave her a birth date deviating by one year from the official record, but both put her in the correct generation. (2) He noted Moses still had a gravestone, but said nothing about seeing a stone for Esther, indicating either that (A) it was already gone, and/or, (B) due to overcrowding, her coffin had been buried over his, as the city's preservation plan indicated that burying two-to-three deep was done. (C) With no room left on spouse Moses' perhaps already too fragile headstone, she may have been given a footstone. The plan says that most foot-style stones had been removed, perhaps piled at the side or in a shed? Alternatively, their kin may have assumed "everyone knew" his widow would be buried with him, so no stone was ever needed.]

====================================

COMMENTARIES

Around 96 at death, she died eight years too late.

The book of vitals for old Braintree, cited above, ended its coverage at 1793, so omitted her last event, her death. Neither is there a stone to give us a more official record than local family history books.

Few stones are missing at the very first, "old burying ground", the one adjacent to the church where Esther married Moses, the "first church". Its cemetery was later renamed for the minister marrying them, but not until that minister's son became famous by signing the new US Constitution as John Hancock. (This is now Hancock Cem., closer to Boston, its associated old "north parish" now in the town of Quincy, a corner of old Braintree originally settled in 1639 as Mt. Wollaston, waiting for Braintree to officially form.)

One reason to check instead the "second buying ground"? With many stones missing, it's heartening to see the number still standing for Esther's direct line, but with a bias, male stones standing, females gone, perhaps as coffins were buried two deep in the over-crowding that brought complaints, so it would be "understood" that a widow dying second would be buried on top of "her man", no need to list her. Technically crowded, the second-oldest burying ground of old Braintree is now the "vacant-looking" front of Elm Street Cemetery. Its once sponsoring church still exists across the street (now called First Congregational, the church's history is at FirstChurchBraintree.com/our-story.html). Still surviving stones for her line are not just gravestones for her first heirs buried there, but "step-down" tombs at the rear, used by the last generations of her heirs, some of note, since filled with sand to reduce city maintenance costs.

That street was Iron Forge Road until 1760, then moved northward and renamed Elm St. Its church was by far the closest of the four with associated cemeteries that had formed before Quincy split off as its own town in 1692 and Norfolk County separated from Boston's Suffolk County in 1793, causing the book of records for old Braintree to end. Esther, first as Moses French's wife, then as his widow, lived a bit south of where Elm Street intersects with Washington inside modern Braintree, near the intersection of what is now Washington (formerly the old County Rd.) and Union.

The village served by the church and graveyard was called Monatiquot back then, named after the river whose big bend the village followed, along the outside of the bend. On the downstream part, parallel to Elm St/Iron Forge Road, with church and graveyard and, down by Commercial, the old homestead of John French and Grace, the fresh water river flowed into the salty, tide-widened Weymouth and then the Ocean. On the upstream part, instead flowing south to north, and instead parallel to Washington St., was Moses and Esther's house, eventually the Town Hall and Post Office and Thayer Academy, plus some cousins of Moses (Josiah and Mary? to donate land for public buildings, which, once not needed for that, became the park called French Commons). The village of Monatiquot thus ran around the outside of that big river bend, with corner marking the inside of the bend a place where B. V. Vinton would find land, also included in the town of modern Braintree.

A house built by the heirs later, one room used as the post office around 1825, still stands at 766 Washington. At the end of its occupation by heirs (1960s, says FrenchFamilyAssoc.com), a cousin bought it. It would later be donated to the Thayer Academy across the street, which, in 1999, turned it over to the Braintree Historical Society. The Moses French heirs "staying put" naturally used nearby Elm as a burial site, true through her great-grandson Jonathan, son of postmaster Asa French, each of which has a tomb, along with one of the Moses Frenches, and a tomb purchased, but perhaps never used by Benjamin Vinton French.

These two were only the church burying grounds pre-1750ish, with a third established 1750ish (Central, in Randolph), and a fourth, 1770ish, its church unauthorized (Union, in modern Holbrook). The pattern was roughly one church per generation, one graveyard per church, the addition of each justified in the minds of its new congregation as the next generation of the area's large families spread out, trying to farm portions formerly used for other purposes (ironworking, bog iron, lumbering, etc), thus finding it difficult to travel to a now too distant church.

Where inside that cemetery? That is harder to say, but her grave is definitely not in the newer parts to the rear, as they were plotted well after her death. After much thinking and checking, the best guess is over her husband's coffin, "planted" two-deep.

The now "vacant-looking" front section of Elm is the oldest part, the "second burying ground". Over 600 of its burials, most markers "long-gone", were named and dated by Rev. Samuel Niles, then of the "second church" across the street. The full list begins with his wife as a private burial in 1716 and then, in 1717, with the deed to the land now in church-town possession, the Rev. would list Moses' father, Thomas French, as maybe the sixth burial in the then new burying ground.

Rev. Niles' journal showing Elm Street burials was updated by him periodically through the year 1762. Post-Niles, past 1762, burials continued, with comments made about the need to stop burials due to overcrowding made well into the 1800s. Additions expanded Elm, at the side and rear, including the last, in the mid-1800s, nicely planned, but as a separately incorporated and private cemetery with a fund for perpetual care that lasted a long time, but, with no new burial plots for sale, eventually ran out. The last addition was added and then nicely done due to the persistence of Esther's descendent, Benjamin Vinton French. This B.V. French, both a grocer/trader up in Boston and a farmer-horticulturalist locally (grower of fruit trees and other plants), perhaps farmed on old ironworks land (bogs drained?) on the opposite side of the Monatiquot from the Elm Street Cemetery and from Moses French's land, located inside the giant bend. B. V. used his resources generously, to procure plans for landscaping and layout, with 14 of 16 planned tombs at the back then sold, multiple ones of them bought by him and other descendants of Esther.

Terms in at least one seller's deed (that given to B.V.'s group by another Thayer, according to Elm's preservation plan) stated that the seller's family be allowed to continue grazing cattle at the site. If Esther had her own headstone, family did not plant "Great-Grandma" " over her husband at death, then, if age did not wash Esther's stone clean, cow kicks broke it into bits?

Both Quincy and Elm had the cow kick problem, with serious damage at both, according to the preservation plans for each. Why does the first church's older graveyard (Hancock, up at Quincy) now have most of its stones, but Elm, newer, has well below half? One partial guess, members of the "second church" on Elm Street had for decades subsidized with tax monies the "first church", up at what is now Quincy, freeing cash for private use by those attending there. The subsidy undoubtedly, indirectly, helped to pay for private fencing around family plots and some stone re-carvings in their still private cemetery. Yet, even so, markers were lost. More importantly, President's Adams family was buried up in the "north" burying ground. As Quincy's old "first burying ground" AND the home to a dead President, Hancock thus saw its numerous missing stones researched and replaced by private benefactors, believed by others to be related to the Adams, done in possibly two rounds, in the early and then mid-1800s.

FAMILY BIOGRAPHY, BRAINTREE-STAYERS. Many Frenches married many Thayers. Some Frenches married Vintons. Some of these "marriage-combos" stayed, while others moved away.

The Vinton Memorial, written by a well-educated former Minister, John Vinton, buried at Elm, covered the Moses French and Esther Thayer branch, due to a Vinton marriage that produced horticulturalist, Benjamin Vinton French, with a monument at Elm, perhaps a cenotaph (body elsewhere, hard to say, tombs destroyed). The Memorial praised the family as worthy, not saying why. Looking at their histories, we'd give three reasons, (1) ministers on the wisdom-end of the spirit spectrum, not the passionate end, so well-educated and judicious, aiding rather than reacting, (2) interested in public service, as seen especially in B.V. Vinton, but also the two Asas, and others, (3) self-training and well-read. One deacon and one minister among Esther's sons, some female descendants produced more of the same.

Esther Thayer and Mose French married and stayed. Their daughter Elizabeth, her mother, this Esther, a Thayer, would marry another Thayer, Richard, a distant cousin, as that was how it might be for the children of people who stayed for multiple generations. Almost everyone there a long time became related somehow. They might have thought, "Who else would they marry, given that the land currently farmable was all taken, so no one new came to town?" Esther's great-grandson, B.V. French, horticulturalist, son of the Moses French (III), who married Eunice Vinton, grandson of church deacon Moses French (II) who married Elizabeth Hobart, would marry a first cousin, Caroline, a twin daughter of his uncle Abijah. She would die around the same time as her twin sister Catherine, with BV then marrying a Harriet Seger, father British, at Trinity Church in NY in 1848, but he did not have children by either wife.

Born locally, south of Boston, a child of the Ephraim Thayer who was son to the first Shadrach Thayer, Esther married into an orphaned section of the local Braintree Frenches. The immigrant Thayer brothers had been shipbuilders and land promoters. Her grandfather Shadrach had stayed local, while his brother Ferdinando Thayer left, to lead some in the Braintree-born "first generation" a bit westward of Boston, to emerging Mendon, including Moses' Aunt Elizabeth French Thayer, who had married a son of Ferdinando's.

The Braintree Frenches, in contrast, instead all descended from just one patriarch, the first John French. An immigrant who became a Puritan freeman in Braintree by 1640, John French "stayed put" until death, as did his wife, Grace, the mother of all his children, and thus the Braintree French's matriarch.

Arriving on a boat from England is not the same as having been born there. However, the Thayers possibly had pre-immigration paperwork in England, their family even then of means, as the father (her great-grandfather) could afford to bring multiple family members, and the brothers could thus immigrate without indenturing. This meant no traveling anonymously as "servants", obligated to repay for that passage by working for free until their freedom date, temporary slaves, dependent on the ethics of the masters for good treatment.

In contrast, though family mythologies may speculate as to connections, no pre-immigration paperwork or y-DNA tests connect male Braintree Frenches to England, Scotland, northern Ireland, nor to the Frantz's and Franks who "Anglicized" into Frenches. A family story, a tradition, from a modern William French is that John French deserted from the British Army while in Ireland. It turns out, a rogue British military leader did direct atrocities in Ireland at the right time, after earlier mis-representing to his troops that they were going to Ireland to fight "pirates" (The English praised the pirates on their own side., dressed up as "privateers".) Fellow English "big shots" were happy to gain control over and take land from the native Irish and from earlier English sent there, who had intermarried and otherwise sympathized (so-called "Anglo-Irish"). At first, they endorsed the rogue out of greed, but then hung him once he returned to Britain, as their greed for more land turned into fear of him.

No record of Grace's maiden name survives that had been written in her own era. Grace and John attended the same church as Esther's grandfather on her father's side, Shadrach. That was also the church of her grandmother on her mother's side. Sarah Bass was the daughter of Ruth Alden Bass. There may have been an early connection between the families, as Grace was believed by some to have been an Alden of Plymouth, was of the right age to have been a daughter two years older than the next eldest child of John Alden and Priscilla, and is buried in the same cemetery as Ruth Alden Bass.

Both sets of Esther's grandparents would thus have known Grace and John French, went to "first church" with them. This perhaps partly explains why Esther and Moses were wed by a minister from "first church", even though the "second church" requested by the Frenches and closer to their homesteads had been open for almost two decades. Shadrach Thayer's stone and Ruth Alden Bass's stones are standing, as are two stones for Grace French's stones, perhaps an Alden, but neither stone showing that name.

Esther's and Moses' line of Frenches followed John French's and Shadrach Thayer's examples, then Thomas French's and Ephraim Thayer's example, "stayed put" until death. Their heirs thus held farmland once owned by Moses' parents, Thomas French and Elizabeth Belcher, did so at least into the second half of the 1800s, which perhaps had been one of the many parcels acquired by the first John French. Moses' and Esther's land was was still in family hands at the writing of the biography of a descendent, Asa French (Asa the jurist, not his grandfather, Asa French, the trained engineer and first Braintree post-master. Did he keep the farmland and rent it out until his son Jonathon could farm it later? Or, did Jonathan have to find other land in town, maybe hard-to-do?

Perhaps many of their heirs' stones still stand, cared for longer than most, as this was more easily done as their heirs lived nearby? extending at least three generations past Esther's death?

GRACE'S & ESTHER'S STONES. Those coming out of the highly religious Puritan tradition generally wanted to be buried in their own church's graveyard. Due to Puritan innovations and the lack of church-state separation, many of these were actually combo church-town graveyards, their "church-ness" unofficial, but hinted to the discerning by their location right next to, or across the street from, the authorized church.

If they did not want the graveyard next to the church, their wills would stipulate otherwise.

Grace French's church had to be the first church, as the second had not been built yet, and lacked its church-town graveyard until 1717. So, she is in the first's graveyard.

Esther Thayer French married at first church, but there is no indication she ad Moses went there later. They would have gone to the second for its much greater convenience; she would have been buried at the second's grounds as her spouse Moses was buried there earlier. Elm Street became the French's cemetery in multiple ways, yet, most of two generations of French's bound to be there have markers missing.

Dependence French and those of his siblings and in-laws dying earlier than he, in the bad years of 1717-1720, should be buried there. Dependence was on a committee that ensured the "second church" had obtained the deed in time for the death of Dependence's brother Thomas (Moses' father). Thomas' death from "something bad and catching" happened in 1717, followed by the fatal illnesses of said siblings and two female spouses, including Moses's mother, Elizabeth Belcher, leaving ten children orphaned.

The first church had turned Unitarian around 1750ish, so we assume the Quincy cemetery, said to have been somehow private, not combo church-town owned, would be the same. Esther's son Jonathan, the Rev. who moved away, as ministers are apt to do, was decidedly non-Unitarian, even though not a rabid Calvinist either. It's hard to imagine her rejecting her son by turning Unitarian.

(To over-simplify, the Unitarians perhaps formed as a reaction against the excesses of Calvinism. Depending upon the person, these might include the Salem witch trials in Puritanism's first round, or, for Puritanism's second round, as "New Lights" split off from "old Lights", with the New Lights taking over churches by vote and their ministers then accused of turning away from communion way too many former members and their adult children. Some "New Light" preachers were alleged by victims' relatives of having caused suicides in depressed individuals by telling them they were pre-determined as already condemned by God, thus, the non-elect, their depression due to being filled with Satan, so had zero hope of ever feeling better. There was also a negative reaction to revivalist New Lights promoting the personality of "God as spirit" in a new different way, as emotional and passionate, rather than as the older view, calm "Sophos", a source of wisdom and strength and inspiration. These New Lights thus were drifting further away from older views emphasizing wisdom over passion that had lasted thousands of years and that continued inside the old traditions, Jewish, western rite Catholic, or remained part of the newer ones that were Anglican/Church of England, the King's Church, as the colonists called it, or, one not yet experienced by the colonists, Lutheranism.

In reaction, some rejecting any extremism, Calvinist or otherwise, might think Unitarians went too far by totally rejecting the Trinity. To keep the Sophos aspect of the Trinity, they could promote a modified, less radical Calvinism via the Old Lights. They might, instead, try to stay Protestant post-American Revolution, a war which Esther would live through, by keeping the Trinity as seen inside a Methodist-Episcopalian tradition that replaced the Church of England in the colonies, then separating later into Methodists and Episcopalians. Other choices were also possible. In total, however, the revivalists, while pictured and praised as increasing attendance (temporarily), probably caused lots of splintering in the long run as the price paid.

We don't know which grave is Esther's as the stone is illegible or lost. Amazingly, two stones survive for Grace French in the yard for the only church authorized at the time of her death (Hancock Cem.). One stone, newer, plainer, more deeply engraved, saying less, is a restoration stone in a series done cemetery-wide by a benefactor thought related to Pres. John Adams, buried nearby. The other, ornate stone is the original, resurrected in readable condition as its carvings were apparently sheltered from erosion part of the time, perhaps deemed "missing" in one of the 1800s' restorations at Hancock if tossed grave dirt had covered it.

Esther's marker is missing. Is her grave one of the many at Elm Street with a marker that no longer exists? Ironically for a cemetery so crowded that coffins were said to be two or three deep in places, so closed to later burials, Elm Street Cemetery now looks half-empty, multiple generations of stones gone. The destruction of stones by old-time cow kicks and hog rootings has been too thorough, but perhaps the city preservation plan, if financed, will at least be able to name the unmarked graves.

Esther's spouse died before her, as did all ten of her siblings. A sign her generation's children still let parents' cemeteries be used as cow pastures? Only three of the eleven siblings still have stones remaining: *James, at her own family's cemetery, Elm Street. *Abigail Thayer Richards, buried with her spouse a town east, old No. Weymouth. *Christopher, up north, past the NH/MA line.

Esther's brother, that younger Shadrach Thayer born 1701, donated the land for Dyer Cemetery in time for his own daughter's burial there. He would most likely be there, but there is no marker left for him either.

Yet, Elm Street was clearly the family cemetery for those who stayed. They stayed through their area's towns splitting off as the new Norfolk County, letting Boston keep Suffolk County. It would be awhile, but the smaller towns of new Norfolk County that at first were farms and villages would become Boston's southern suburbs, causing Esther's descendent, Benjamin French Vinton, to arrange for a park-like plan for the last addition, to expand the Elm Street Cemetery at its rear. With all the prior destruction of markers, you'd think there'd be no more cow pasture, but the Thayer who sold the land kept some grazing rights. Vinton's solution was to substitute step-down family tombs, since filled with sand and grassed over to make maintenance less expensive.

Tracking those born at the old homestead, in Moses' direct line, listing just those with stones at Elm still standing: *Her husband Moses. *Daughter Esther French Thayer (yes, having only distant cousins to marry was a problem for those who stayed). *Son Deacon Moses French, his stone bearing his title at the second church as someone who assisted the minister, without actually being one, plus, he was a local militia Capt. in the American Revolution. *Grandson Asa French, who would run Braintree's first post-office at a house over on Washington Street, with descendants of Moses' land-owning cousins living along that street, also buried at Elm. *Great-grandson Jonathan French, listed at death as a farmer. write about all this in his biography would be Jonathan's son, a namesake, another Asa (b. Oct. 21, 1829), well-educated, judge/jurist, saying he too had been born at the homestead 1829, and that the farm was still in the family (from the 1910 book, "The National Cyclopædia of American Biography: Being the History", Vol. 14, p.257, By George Derby, James Terry White).

Most of these are weather-worn, yet standing, probably will not remain legible much longer.

Those children who moved, changed residence, have markers or tombs in other places: *Rev. Jonathan French, grave in Andover, where he studied for the ministry and then ministered. Harvard had, by then, like the First Church, turned Unitarian, so it was no longer used by those ministers still in the Calvinist vein, though Jonathan was said not to have been extremist or strident or rigid in his Calvinism. *Abijah French, tomb in Boston, who had been a blacksmith, living and working on Orange St., apparently sharing a shop. He was important to his father Moses as a namesake for a beloved brother, the one who had only been ten-ish when orphaned by their parents.

FARMWIFE, MARRIED TO ORPHAN. She married Moses French. He had been orphaned a decade earlier. Perhaps they played together as children. Perhaps his relatives on his mother's side (Belcher/Marsh) played matchmaker, after so many of his aunts and uncles on the French side died in the same epidemic as did his parents. At any rate, they knew each other and married.

They raised their children at a place with memories for him, where he had been raised, where he may have been at his parents' bedsides, as they died. Did he make promises to them? Even though a mere teen, third oldest, when they died too close together, too young, leaving their ten children orphaned? He waited twelve years to marry. His youngest siblings were grown to their era's idea of maturity when he married.

ESTHER'S WEDDING CHURCH. The year of their marriage, 1730, makes sense for Moses, his youngest siblings now "mature", but the location is a puzzle. Moses and Esther married back at old Braintree's "first church", as implied by its Rev. Hancock officiating at their wedding. In that era, "banns", the intentions to marry, might be announced at either the bride's or groom's church, or both. However, the bride's church usually held the actual wedding.

Having been the a long time, Esther's parents maybe continued at the first church after the second opened. Perhaps her father worked down by the Frenches, but had a house closer to the first church, so the family could walk there or preferred the better services it offered after so much subsidy by the rest.

Maybe Moses had relatives still at the first church (the formerly ironworking families , Marshes and Belchers), more attached than normal after he and siblings became orphans, especially after so many uncles and aunts on the French side died. If they lived closer to "first church" that was another reason to wed there.

ANCESTRAL SOURCES.
Report of an Alden descent for Grace came from a descendent of Esther's brother-in-law, the first Abijah French (settled also south of Boston, northwest-ish of Braintree, whose son David went to NH, that David's grandson David then went to VT, had a son Orvis French then off to Chicago and becoming wealthy in retailing and hoteling). Wealthy enough to have the means to travel, that Abijah's Orvis French did a great service by specifically interviewing over 200 cousins, not sticking to the Braintree area, but covering later generations of those migrating to NH and VT, etc., many to places with poorer-than-average record-keeping.

Again, good records for Braintree ended by 1793, when new Norfolk County split from Suffolk, and as separation of church and town/state continued through the 1820s. By using over 200 interviewees, Orvis French stepped around the "retrospective" errors typical when relying upon just one interview or just one family Bible.

Orvis used a sociological method by surveying so many, so could detect inconsistencies across the different interviews. (Common ones-- Rounding off the age of the elderly deceased to the nearest five or ten years, when somebody else has a precise date written down. Substituting the place where someone grew up, "came from", for the actual birthplace. Marriages with nothing official recorded imaginatively put always one year before the first child's birth, even though the later children are spaced very widely apart. Otherwise substituting precision for vagueness. Rarer example-- "He was French somehow", due to anti-Catholic bigotry among some of the Puritan-descended, would magically turn into "He was a French Huguenaut", a Protestant group inside Catholic France that truly existed, but was TINY, despite no one in the ancestry having begun their American experience attending one of the accordingly rare Huguenaut churches in the colonies. Commoner example--Substituting details true for a relative vividly remembered, for those of a cousin long deceased and thus only vaguely remembered. )

Other ancestral sources are: Sprague (good for all the first generation of Frenches, as he used Rev. Niles' diary to note burials). "The Vinton Memorial" (best-covering of the Frenches who married Vintons and of the related ironworking/blacksmithing families, finding and working the local "bog iron"; this source best covered the line of Mose's uncle, the first Dependence French, via son John French and daughter Elizabeth French, who both married Vintons). "Fourteen Families" (covering the fourteen families that intermarried with the Aldens, so Moses' line)

Because of their era, late 1800s, libraries were becoming available, stocked with books on Kings and Queens, but none listing ironworking families or farmers or lumberjacks, a seasonable occupation in Braintree when the ground was to frozen to turn. Many families doing genealogies, matching names to one-sided books would then include a mythology of where the family originated back in England, despite surnames not yet being inherited, but changeable, despite matching names not meaning matching DNA. Until a DNA test is done by an alleged family member still in the old locations, any mythology (pre-1550) should be regarded as unlikely. To signal they weren't doing this, family historians put Memorial in their title. Historians who were ministers were least likely to "drink the Kool-Aid". The Vinton Memorial is in this category, mythology-free.

========================

Moses' father was Thomas, a French. Moses' mother was Elizabeth, a Belcher. Many of Moses uncles and aunts on the French side, all associated with the second church, had died with his parents in the epidemic, roughly 1717-1720. That left Elizabeth's Belcher/Marsh side, if protected from that round of contagious deaths by being distant, to provide supervision and encouragement and some cash. Some of the Marshes did indeed buy some of the estate property. If at decent prices, the deceased parents' debts could be re-paid, with the orphaned children keeping the rest "free and clear". You'd also hope they'd act to prevent bad guardianships and bad indenturings, which, while good when an apprenticeship was kindly provided, could be cruel when the situation reduced to a cruel temporary slavery with no escape for the child until his/her release date. It speaks volumes that Moses's brother Abijah, orphaned at ten, would produce a grandson also named Abijah, who made a point of being a guardian to orphans while raising his own family up in NH.

None of the Frenches and their wives who died in the 1717-1720 epidemic has markers. Their timing and place of death make the front of the Elm Street Cemetery their doubtless burial place, as it was the freshly opened "second burying ground" at the time they died and the one missing the majority of its markers.

Whatever killed Moses's parents, slowly, but steadily, made its rounds. It took his uncles John and Samuel in 1718, plus John's wife. It took his aunt Temperance in 1720.

In contrast, on Elizabeth Belcher's side, there seemed to be no similar string of deaths, perhaps as they lived further away from the cause of the contagion. The Belchers had been closely connected to the Marsh's, two reasonably well-off families who might have stayed at the old "first church" due to their location. If they stayed healthy, all the children, including Moses, may have been over there a lot, so the first church may have become home, temporarily.

MOSE'S LAND. Moses's land passed down to Esther and Moses' grandson, Asa French, a postmaster and not just a farmer, then to their great-grandson, Jonathan, in Braintree, a farmer whose son, another Asa, perhaps early to see "the writing on the wall" as an emerging suburb increasingly took over farming land, would instead go to Yale and become a judge/jurist. (The latter's occupation was still declared "farmer", in his death record.)

Modern Braintree is smaller now, a suburb of Boston, so the farms are gone. Grandson Asa's house address, perhaps different than the original homestead, is of record, with the largish house still standing at 766 Washington Street, a room there doubling as the very first post office for modern Braintree in 1825. (House photo at FrenchFamilyAssoc.com/FFA/ARCHITECTURE/AsaFrench.htm. Mara French, whose Frenches are of a different DNA, researched that first Asa among the Braintree Frenches. With Julia Woods, she sponsors the French surname page at FamilyTreeDNA.com. They've labeled Moses' and Asa's line, for their study only, DNA Group 25, out of the over 50 unrelated DNAs detected for surname French.)

MORE STORY FOR ESTHER.
======SCRATCHPAD--The following was too long July 2015, parts then pared and/or moved Aug 2015. Following Needs to be reorganized or blended in

Why was 1793 the cut-off? Norfolk as a new county split off from Boston-dominated Suffolk County. Braintree's churches were finally separating from the state. There would be no more subsidy, by all town taxpayers, of the single "first church" of old Braintree, its congregation forty years earlier having decided to turn Unitarian and now, by 1793, to be inside its own smaller town, Quincy. There would be no more of churches keeping records for their town's use. It took awhile, however, for governments to start tracking vital events adequately, although Massachusetts would be doing better job than would newer states along the expanding frontier. Esther's death record thus became lost an "in-between" period when good records were not kept.

TWO ANCESTORS, ALDEN & THAYER. Esther's mother was Sarah Bass, daughter of Ruth Alden and Mr. Bass, but her father, Ephraim Thayer, was son of Shadrach. Since the mother often teaches her religion to the family, this Ruth, as Esther's mother's mother, may have "started the ball rolling" which led to Esther and Moses' son, the Rev. Jonathan French, going up to Andover to train and then he and, later, his son preaching in NH near Rev. Timothy Alden.

Ruth was of the Plymouth Aldens, described in many places. Her own mother, Priscilla, was the only survivor of a large family that came with the Pilgrims and then died quickly. (The Pilgrims were a separatist group who came a decade ahead of the less religiously radical, non-separating Puritans, such as the Frenches and Thayers.) Ruth's father, John Alden, was cooper (barrel maker and repairer) for the ship bringing the Pilgrims. Being an employee, he arrived without parents and not for religious reasons.

On Esther's father's side, Shadrach Thayer arrived from England with his brothers, often called "gentlemen", so paying their way to the colonies, maybe bringing servants, never being servants, as John French may have been and John Alden certainly was. Their departure place was known, not true for many of the early Puritans.

===

Esther's mother was the Sarah Bass born in 1672 to Ruth and Samuel Bass, with Esther's grandmother buried in Hancock cemetery as Ruth Alden Bass. Esther's Sarah Bass was daughter-in-law of Shadrack Thayer, not of Ferdinando Thayer. The latter and his sons had gone off to Mendon, where one would marry an earlier Sarah Bass of Mendon, born in the 1650s.

Esther's father was Ephraim, who had many children by Sarah. Esther thus grew up in a huge family, closer toward the end than the beginning, so had not been a second mother to young siblings. If like many in this situation, she would have enjoyed always having playmates, and may have wanted the same for her own children.

Esther Thayer married in to the second generation of the Frenches of Braintree when she married Moses French. This writer's husband descends from Moses' uncle Dependence, with his son John the same generation as Esther's spouse Moses, John's son Abiathar the Sr., of the same generation as Esther's sons (Deacon Moses and Rev. Jonathan), John's grandson Abiathar Jr, the same generation as Esther's grandson, the first Asa, postmaster both born in Braintree, but Abiathar the Jr. would die elsewhere. Asa's grandson would be remarkably educated, attending Yale. Abiathar's Jr's great-granddaughter Climena French Shearer, would be judged intellectually remarkable by her school superintendent husband out in Monterey California. Her uncle, A.O, began the college experience out in Michigan, but was stopped by the Civil War, did start to major in agriculture though, which would have pleased Benjamin Vinton French, noted for his practical library.

FINDING ESTHER. Esther lived too long. At 95ish, she died around 1800, eight years too late to be included in the official record book for "old Braintree", which ended at 1792.

Before selecting Elm permanently as her gravesite, a search for Esther's grave would normally include locating her childrens' end places, then seeing if she was ever of record with them in those places. However, due to finding her as a household head in the 1800 Census mere months before death, with someone living with her to help out, and an old handmade map showing related household locations that does not contradict, we rule out burial in a child's cemetery as of Aug. 28, 2015. We are next adding son Abijah's and Caleb's lightly used tomb at Central Burying Ground in Boston, but rule them out as being too late, 1801 and after. The odds are overwhelming but not 100% that she is buried with spouse and heirs at Elm, as why transport a body far when her body could put in a coffin over her husband's? People tend to be buried where they lived and died, especially next to kin. It's not always true, however,, so we will always keep an eye out for the other tiny percent.

=======================================
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, June 2015, Revd. July & Aug. 2015. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page. ...Back To Top
...To Commentaries
...To Census Names