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John and Dependence, of the Braintree Frenches, were two Christmas Day twins born in 1714. Once they decided to leave home. most likely, the next thought was that both were going to Stoughton, finding spots near each other. This did not let both stay inside their parents' Puritan county. Dependence ended up below, in Plymouth County, old Pilgrim territory. (Pilgrims had been more radical by being "separatist", less tolerant, so deliberately removed themselves).
RELIGION. Britain went through stages on intolerance. There were "lollards" at first, then "recusants", then "separatists", then "nonconformists". When relief came via full "acts of toleration" in the 1800s, close to when Britain finally forbade slavery, the new laws made legal Scottish Presbyterians and Welsh Baptists and international Catholics, not just the Church of England's "Brit-only" faith.
PILGRIM VS. PURITAN. Pre-relief, after the Pilgrims left England, the King's officials, wanting a stronger nation, allegiance to one King, not to many little kings, essentially created a new "national religion" out of the previously regional variety. The King's Bishop Laud thus enacted so-called "conformity laws", or "Laudian reforms", around 1630. There would be no more "old tribes'" religious variety, no experimenters' new ideas, with the single form to be that of the King's group.
Braintree's Rev. William Tompson was not a Thompson; his kin always used the more Nordic spelling, no "h". A mildly non-conforming Brit, the sheer pettiness of some reforms affected him. He had studied at one of the few remaining "monasteries" back home, clearly was smart. (The old seminaries taught more than ministers, so were universities as well. Only 3 were left after most of the 300-some monasteries were closed down over a century earlier, so a certain prior King could pocket the monies from selling them to the nobility. Said King was careful to leave that few open, so the powerful around London would not complain. Perhaps somebody thought rurals were "pushovers" in big city business deals? "People like that" did not need libraries or educated advisors? At any rate, only Oxford, Cambridge and one other were left. Tompson was lucky, not just smart, to go. Look up Britain's history as a "class-based society" for clues.)
This Rev. who spelled his surname oddly merely wanted to hold a baby in his lap as he baptized it and, also, to use a pewter or wooden basin. These tiny variations became taboo. Fearing for his safety, he left.
FREEDOM. The colonies did not right away create freedom of religion. They merely let each town's freemen or proprietors vote on its sole church's rules, essentially tribal, though some tried to co-ordinate across towns.
Some colonial towns allowed variety (example: "union" churches). Some did not. In those allowing variety, some members still deviated by being vocally dis-respectful of others' choices, sometimes so awful they had to be kicked out of town, true both in Braintree and, near where the twin's mother Mary Vinton grew up, in Woburn. Histories written decades later showed local clergy clearly hoped to allow people of style X, but could not, as those of style X deliberately ruined things for everyone else.
MARE MOUNT. If there were intolerants among the more tolerant Puritans, would there also be tolerant people among the separating Pilgrims? Before old Braintree had its name, the original Pilgrims of Plymouth went up to Boston (did old Plymouth Road exist yet? It became Commercial St. inside Braintree). On the way, they saw old "Merry Mount" (a fun corruption of "Mare Mount", the big hill on the sea, the word Mare related to "marine"). The Mount was a fur trading post that advertised its rest stop to mariners of varied ethnicities fishing in the sea, by putting a big pole in front, and by offering festivities, feasting and dancing around a maypole on a holiday (no pinball machines yet). While many might want alcohol controlled, the Pilgrims, not having joy on their list, went beyond removing unauthorized liquor, and ripped the whole thing down. It wasn't even their land, but there they were, doing that. Thomas Mortimer, the post's operator, re-couped, went back to England and sold his memoirs. Ultimately, the Pilgrims lightened up, as their "Old Colony" was allowed to come inside the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony.
FAMILY HISTORY. The twin's mother, Mary Vinton, had been a poster child for religious tolerance. Did Braintree's "second church" allow her to sign a "halfway covenant", just to bring her in? Not doing so earlier meant her first daughter Mary had no birth record. The delayed "halfway" generosity let the twins and siblings, such as my husband's believed ancestor, Abiathar French, be baptized as infants, so their births would be of record at the "second church".
The second's members started organizing 1708-09, getting locals to "subscribe" (pay dues on top of taxes that subsidized only members of the "first church"; for the next 80 years freeing up private money for the first church's members "to do whatever")
Separated by sometimes impassable marshes and not just miles from the first, those subscribing to the second had no minister until 1712. Braintree's Rev. Niles was ordained in 1711, the year the twin's parents married. His first wife lived until 1716, making hers the first grave in the second burying ground.
At any rate, the Rev. relented, with others, permitting the halfway for that Mary. He remained minister there for 50 years, a rare thing, dying in 1762. (His good points were countered by personal faults. Rev. Niles, born in a slaving part of R.I., did not free his slaves, left that to his heirs or the state. In his journal, he recorded burials of nine enslaved, adults plus their children, so, two per decade. He wrote their names, dates, causes of death in his journal, alongside whites buried in the same cemetery. The preservation plan for the Elm Street Cemetery, financed by the city, gives details.)
True religious freedom would not happen everywhere inside Massachusetts until the state forbade town subsidies of favored churches. That was in the 1820s, with "first church" separating into own town of Quincy first, in the 1790s. Perhaps religious freedom, coming first, opened the door to other freedoms? Thirty years later, Mary Vinton's descendant in Ohio, Amelia Climena French, granddaughter to Mary's grandson, Abiathar French Junr., would marry an openly abolitionist attorney and politician, Andrew J. Williams. Did he vote her wishes, since she could not vote? By Julia Brown, Austin, TX, Copyright 2015, permission granted to Findagrave to use at this page.
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