♂Thomas French

Thomas French (died 1639) was a householder of Assington, in Suffolk, England, whose children went ahead of him to the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W and who followed them to Ipswich in the last years of his life. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Alice French (1610–1666).

Assington

Thomas French married Susan Riddlesdale at Assington on 5 September 1608. Their eight children, Thomas, Alice, Dorcas, Susan, Anne, Margaret, John and Mary, were all baptized in the Assington church between November 1608 and January 1624/5. In December 1621 the family was living in a farmhouse called “Garland’s“, which belonged to John Gurdon, Esq., of Assington; his will of that month left to his grandson John Gurdon “the messuage or farm house wherein one Thomas French doth now inhabit, called Garland’s.”

The children go first

The elder children left first. His son Thomas and his daughter Alice probably crossed in 1630 with the Winthrop Fleet^W, and both were early members of the church at Boston^W. On 11 June 1633 Thomas Gostlin wrote from Groton, in Suffolk, to John Winthrop the Younger^W about the maid he had sent over: “she is one of the goodman Frenches daughters of Assington. I have sent 2 of them, one for your father and the other for you.” Two of the French daughters had gone across to serve in the households of the governor, John Winthrop^W, and his son, the elder bound for three years and the younger for four. They were most likely Dorcas, admitted to the Boston church in August 1634 as “maid servant to our brother John Winthrop the elder”, and Susan, who served the younger Winthrop at Ipswich.

Ipswich

Thomas, his wife and the younger children followed. Their daughter Margaret was buried at Assington on 25 November 1635. By 25 July 1638 the family had settled at Ipswich, where the younger Thomas had gone with John Winthrop the Younger, and on that day a planting lot of “Thomas French the elder” was named as a boundary of land at the Reedy marsh.

He died at Ipswich before November 1639. On 5 November 1639 administration of his estate was granted to his widow, with the direction that “the land which he left is to be disposed of by sale, or otherwise, by advice of the magistrates of Ipswich, for the maintenance of his wife and the education of his children which are not yet able to provide for themselves nor were disposed of in their father’s life.” Susan lived on at Ipswich as a widow until 1658.

Notes

Sources for his life

His marriage, the baptisms of his children, the Gurdon will (made 6 December 1621), the 1633 letter, the Ipswich planting lot and the administration of his estate come from Walter Goodwin Davis, The Ancestry of Dudley Wildes (1959), pp. 63-64, “French, of Ipswich”. The Assington entries rest on the parish register, which John William Linzee, The History of Peter Parker and Sarah Ruggles (1913), pp. 412-413, prints from certified copies; Linzee also gives Margaret’s burial in 1635. That the son Thomas and Alice came in the Winthrop Fleet, and that the two daughters sent over in 1633 were Dorcas and Susan, is Davis’s judgment (“presumably”, “probably”, “doubtless”).

His origins

The Assington registers begin in 1598, which Linzee notes is too late to show Thomas French’s own baptism or his parents. Other Frenches appear in the same register, a Jacob Ffrench (buried 1615) and a John Ffrench, but no relationship to Thomas is shown.

Father and son

Earlier accounts, Linzee’s and Davis’s own Ancestry of Lieut. Amos Towne among them, ran Thomas French senior and his son Thomas together and took the Alice French who married Thomas Howlett to be the father’s widow. Davis’s 1959 account separates the two men and identifies Alice as the daughter.