Lieut. William French

1604-1681 · Billericay, Great Burstead → Cambridge MA → Billerica MA

Born 1604, Essex, England

Died 1681

Children include John

One of the first settlers of Billerica, and a signer of the petition that gave the town its name. He came out of England in 1635 in the company of Roger Harlakenden and the Reverend Thomas Shepard, the Essex minister who had been silenced by Laud and who founded the church at Cambridge, and he settled at Cambridge with them.

When Cambridge began granting out the Shawshin lands to the north he bought a part of the Dudley farm there. His house stood near what became the turnpike, east of the Bedford road, next to Ralph Hill senior, who calls him brother in his will. He was Billerica's first Representative to the General Court in 1663/4, and was chosen commissioner for making the country rate, which is to say he assessed the town.

He married in England a woman named Elizabeth whose surname is not recorded, and she died at Billerica on 31 March 1668 in her sixties. Fourteen months later he married Mary Lathrop, the widow of Lieutenant John Stearns, and had four more children by her, the last of them born when he was past seventy. He died on 20 November 1681, aged seventy seven.

Children

John French 1635-1712

Sources

Rev. Henry A. Hazen, History of Billerica, Massachusetts, with a Genealogical Register (Boston, 1883), scan historyofbilleri00haze at archive.org, French genealogical register number 1, the chapter on the naming of the town, and the mother-town chapter on Billericay in England

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Cite: Heirology, "Lieut. William French (1604-1681)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/lieut-william-french-1604-1681-a30de1.