♀Alice French

Alice French (baptized 9 April 1610 – 26 June 1666) was an early member of the church at Boston, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, who married Thomas Howlett, one of the first settlers of Ipswich, and was the mother of his seven children. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Samuel Howlett (died 1720).

Assington and Boston

Alice was baptized at Assington, in Suffolk, on 9 April 1610, a daughter of Thomas French and Susan Riddlesdale, who had married in the same parish in September 1608. When she was eleven her father was living in a farmhouse at Assington called “Garland’s“, which belonged to John Gurdon, Esq., of Assington.

She went to New England ahead of her parents. She probably crossed in 1630 with her elder brother Thomas in the Winthrop Fleet^W, the company of ships that carried John Winthrop’s colonists to Massachusetts, and like him she is said to have been among the earliest members of the church at Boston^W. Her parents followed later and settled at Ipswich, where her father died in 1639 and her mother in 1658.

Ipswich

She married Thomas Howlett about 1637. He had come over in 1630 and was one of the small company allowed to make the first settlement at Ipswich in 1633. Their children, Thomas, Sarah, John, Mary, Samuel, William and Nathaniel, were born from about 1637 onward. On 16 June 1644 the Boston church, “at her own desire”, granted letters of dismission to the church at Ipswich to “Our sister Alice French the wife of Thomas Howlett of Ipswich”, still entering her under her own surname. By 1651 her husband had built a house on a farm he bought at Topsfield, near the Ipswich line.

On 27 February 1657/8 John Robinson, a wheelwright of Ipswich, made a will that left everything he had to the Howletts: ten pounds to “Alles howlett the wife of thomas howlett”, his chest and all his tools to Thomas Howlett junior, and the rest of his estate to her husband, whom he made his executor. The records do not explain what tied him to the family. Two months later, on 28 April 1658, her son Nathaniel died at Ipswich.

Alice died at Ipswich on 26 June 1666. Her husband afterwards married Rebecca Smith, the widow of Thomas Smith.

Notes

Sources for her life

Her baptism, her parents’ marriage and the “Garland’s” farmhouse (in the will of John Gurdon, made 6 December 1621) come from Walter Goodwin Davis, The Ancestry of Dudley Wildes (1959), pp. 63-64, which rests on the Assington parish register; John William Linzee, The History of Peter Parker and Sarah Ruggles (1913), pp. 412-413, prints the register entries. Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, vol. II, pp. 1026-1027, gives her baptism from Davis, quotes the Boston church’s letter of dismission, and gives her death at Ipswich on 26 June 1666 and the seven children “with first wife”. John Robinson’s will, dated “The 27 of february 1657” and proved at Ipswich court on 30 March 1658, is printed in The Probate Records of Essex County, vol. 1.

The crossing

That she came in the Winthrop Fleet is Davis’s judgment (“probably came with her brother Thomas in the Winthrop fleet in 1630”). Davis also writes that Thomas and Alice were among the earliest members of the Boston church and that four of Thomas French’s children came to New England before their father, who was at Ipswich by 25 July 1638; administration on his estate was granted to his widow on 5 November 1639.

Dates that differ

The marriage is entered here as about 1637, following Anderson (“By about 1637”). Davis gives about 1634, “either just before leaving Boston or soon afterward”; George Francis Dow’s History of Topsfield places it at Ipswich about 1644. Davis dates her dismissal from the Boston church to 10 September 1643, where Anderson gives 16 June 1644, and gives her death as 6 June 1666 rather than 26 June.

Daughter, not widow

Earlier accounts, Linzee’s among them, took the Alice French who married Thomas Howlett to be the widow of Thomas French senior. Davis corrected this: she was his daughter. In his chapter on Thomas Howlett, Davis names her mother “Alice (Riddlesdale)”; his own chapter on the French family and the Assington register give Susan.