Plympton to Woodstock: Our Bryant Families

Our Bryant ancestry is complicated.

We had two colonial contemporary Bryant families unrelated to each other, both living in the Plymouth County area and united by marriage in the second generation. 

According to the Bryant Family genealogy, three brothers immigrated from Kent, England, in 1630 with their mother, Anne and stepfather, John Doane, a prominent Plymouth citizen and early settler of Eastham, Massachusetts. Of the three brothers, Thomas and our 10th GGF Stephen Bryant were bound out* to family friends, and the third, John, remained with Anne and stepfather Doane who went on to have another family.  John Doane, by the way, is also our 10th GGF through their son, Ephraim, in this second family.

*contracted to another family for housework and apprenticeships, as young as seven years old in some cases. Basically, indentured child labor.

Of these brothers, Thomas ran away from his master’s service. When found in the woods, he was whipped in front of the town council and William Bradford, governor of Plymouth colony and also a grandfather ancestor. This is the last known about young Thomas. John, who stayed with his mother and stepfather, went on to become a founding and prominent citizen of Scituate. The third brother, Stephen, fathered Abigail who married into our other Bryant line.

The Lieut. John Bryant who married Stephen Bryant’s daughter Abigail is not Stephen’s nephew, son of the Scituate John Bryant, but a Plympton John Bryant unrelated to the three brothers. And, no, it wasn't cousin marriage as many Ancestry.com profiles suggest. Indeed, the Scituate John Bryant married Mary Battles.

So it is that we have two unrelated Bryant lines in Plymouth County in the 17th century - Stephen who was one of the 3 brothers and Lieut. John whose parentage is unknown.

Present day Plymouth County

Stephen Bryant (1620-1693)

Stephen Bryant immigrated to Plymouth from England as a ten year old in 1630 and was bound out to our 9th GGF John Shaw, a friend of the Doane/Bryant family. The Shaws, Doanes and Bryants were all from Kent, Essex, England.

Stephen married the boss’s daughter, Abigail Shaw (1626-1694), in 1646 and among their nine children were two of our GGM’s, Abigail Bryant, who married Lt. John Bryant, and Mary Mercy Bryant who married Eleaser Pontus Churchill. 

John Shaw (1583-1638) and wife Alice Phillips (1592-1636) arrived in Plymouth by 1627 when he is listed as one of those drawing lots to tend the colony’s goats and cows. He acquired land and served on various town posts. By 1643, John’s son, Jonathan, and Stephen Bryant bought some acreage together. On John's death, he left substantial land to his former indentured child servant, Stephen Bryant.

Stephen purchased land in Plymouth in 1643  as well as various other parcels of land over the years.  He was admitted as a freeman of Plymouth in 1654. He served the usual community posts in Plymouth, including constable, surveyor of highways, and juryman.

Stephen and his brother-in-law, Jonathan Shaw, must have remained good buddies. In 1649, he and Jonathan were found guilty of working on Sunday - carrying barrels to the tar pits. While Stephen was given a warning, Jonathan was put in stocks.

Stephen and Abigail are buried in Burial Hill Cemetery in Plymouth in unmarked graves.

Lieut. John Bryant ( - 1731)

The family origins of 9th GGF Lieut. John Bryant are unknown, but he was living in Plympton at least by1650 when he received a grant of 100 acres close to father-in-law Stephen Bryant in an area of Plymouth later incorporated as Plympton.* He is listed as a First Settler of Plympton.

*Originally part of Plymouth, Plympton was first settled by Europeans between 1670 and 1680, incorporated as a town in 1707.  Plympton initially included all of Carver & Halifax as well as small portions of Kingston and Middleborough. Before incorporation, the area was called Western Precinct of Plymouth.

The origin of his title "Lieut." is unclear, but presumed to be from defense of the town during that period of conflict and threat from the Native American population in New England.

Lieut. John was a mariner involved in shipping between England and the New England coast which was extensive at the time. He built a house on the shore of Jones River Pond said to be the largest in Plymouth County. He held various customary posts in the community, including juror, road surveyor, and constable.

As mentioned, Lieut. John married Abigail Bryant (1646-1715) in 1665 and they had seven children whose births were recorded in Plymouth. A 36-year old son, Benjamin, also a mariner, drowned in 1724 while trying to make port at Plymouth during a storm. John died in 1708 and Abigail in 1714. Both are probably buried in the Old Cemetery at the Green in Plympton, now Middleborough, but there is not documentation I can find.

Samuel Bryant Sr. (1673-1750)

8th GGF Samuel Bryant, the fourth child and oldest son of Lt. John and Abigail, was born in Plympton and, like his father, was a mariner as a young man. He was a deacon of the church, and landowner at the time of incorporation of Plympton in 1707.

Samuel married Joanna Cole (1672-1736) in 1698 and they raised seven children on a farm in Plympton. Widowed at age 63, Samuel married secondly widow Elizabeth Sampson Cushman. Samuel died in 1750, age 77, and both are buried in Hillcrest Cemetery in Plympton (Row 1-P10-S9).

Hillcrest Cemetery, Plympton

Bryant Plot in Hillcrest Cemetery in foreground

Joanna, wife of Deacon Samuel Bryant

Inscription

HERE LYES YE
BODY OF JOANNA
BRIANT WIFE TO
DEACON SAMUEL
BRIANT WHO DEC.
DEC YE 18th
1736 IN
YE 65th YEAR
OF HER AGE

IN MEMORY OF

DEACn SAMUEL

BRYANT WHO

DIED MARCH 3d

1750

IN ye 77th YEAR

OF HIS AGE

Deacon Samuel Bryant

Deacon Samuel Bryant, Jr. (1699-1774)

7th GGF Deacon Samuel Jr. married Tabitha Ford (1702-1773) in 1723, and they had 11 children. Following in family tradition, Samuel Jr. was an ocean-going ship captain, and as the eldest son he inherited half of his father’s land in Plympton.

Seventeen year old 10th GGF William Ford (1604-1676) arrived in Plymouth from Surrey, England with his widowed mother and two siblings in 1621 on the ship Fortune. He settled in Marshfield where he established Dunham’s Mill. William married Anna Eames in1632. William and Anna are GGPs of Tabitha; all generations lived in Marshfield until Tabitha’s parents moved to Pembroke.

Samuel and Tabitha died in Plympton within 9 months of each other, he nearly 75 years old and she age 71. Both are buried in the Bryant section of Hillcrest Cemetery In Plympton.

Deacon Samuel Bryant Jr. and wife Tabitha's gravestones in Hillcrest Cemetery

Samuel Jr.’s daughter, Lydia, married Consider Fuller and, after Consider’s death in 1759, moved her family to New Gloucester, Maine, where she joined a Shaker community. Her son, Consider Fuller, Jr., married a first cousin and moved to Paris, Maine in 1801, living in a log cabin near his uncle, Solomon Bryant (see below). The Consider Fuller families were later to end up in Woodstock. Another Deacon Samuel’s granddaughter, Jane, moved with her husband to Paris, Maine. Thus, by the turn of the 19th century, we had a nidus of Plympton Bryant’s living in Paris.

Solomon Bryant (1746-1826)

Our 6th GGF Solomon Bryant was the youngest of Deacon Samuel’s and Tabitha’s 11 children who were born over a period of 21 years. Samuel and Tabitha were still having children in their 40’s. 

At age 20, Solomon married 15-year-old Elizabeth Randall Curtis of the prosperous Curtis family in nearby Hanover, Massachusetts and they started a family the same year. 

Records of the First Congregational Church in Hanover show Solomon and Elizabeth were married at the church in 1766 and admitted to full communion by 1767. Their first five children were baptized at the First Congregational. 

Solomon and Elizabeth had four children over the next four years - Elizabeth, our 5th GGM Betsey, Solomon Jr., and Christopher - but their baby making was slowed by Solomon’s service in the Revolution.

A fifth child, Lydia, was born in Hanover during Solomon's Revolution service and another five children were born over the following 16 years - Lydia, Samuel, Susannah, Abigail, Joanna, and Martha - for a total of 10 children. Three were born after the family move to Gray, Maine and the final two in Paris, Maine in 1791 and 1794.

Solomon was among the hotbed of Hanover Revolutionaries, a Minuteman under Captain Turner and other regiments with deployments throughout the war from April 1775 to January 1779 when he was discharged. His enlistment describes him as 5’7” with dark complexion.

Soon after the his war service, Solomon and Elizabeth moved their family to Gray, Maine. The motivation to leave an area where they had long standing family roots is puzzling. Being the 5th son and 11th child in line likely meant there wasn’t much land left for inheritance, but he came from a sea-going family and a shipping community. Being the 11th child with parents in their late 50’s may have meant he was apprenticed out as a teen to someone in Hanover to acquire a trade, perhaps to his future father-in-law, Mr. Curtis. Information in Maine indicates he was a house builder and lumber miller.

In any event, sometime between the birth of daughter Abigail in Gray, Maine in 1787 and the 1790 census, the Bryant family relocated even again inland to Paris, Maine, then known as Plantation Number 4. Solomon was an early settler and one of the first millers in South Paris.

Solomon was active in the Paris community, serving posts of surveyor of lumber, hog reeve, land tax assessor. He and son, Solomon Jr., signed the petition for incorporation of Paris in 1792. In a land purchase in Paris in 1800, he is referred to as a “housewright,” the term for a timber house builder in Colonial times. Another reference to Solomon in History of Paris indicates he was a “millman,” i.e., he ran a saw mill.

Two of Solomon’s sons, Christopher and Solomon, Jr. were the first settlers of Woodstock, Maine, known at that time as Plantation No. 3 until incorporation as a town in 1815. Along with their brother Samuel, who was still a teenager and several brothers-in-law, Christopher and Solomon had the intent to make Woodstock a family settlement. Bryant’s Pond is named after the brothers.

Solomon Sr. and wife Elizabeth moved in 1808 to Woodstock where three sons and several daughters had already settled, but by 1810 the couple returned to Paris and Elizabeth died the same year, age 60. She must have been just worn out.

The 1820 census shows Solomon is head of household living in Paris with a young couple and two children under age 10. He died in 1826, age 80. What a guy!

The burial site of Solomon and Elizabeth in Paris is unknown.

Betsey Bryant (1769-after 1854)

Our 5th GGM, Betsey Bryant was the 2nd child of Solomon and Elizabeth. She would have been about 10 years old when the family moved to Gray, Maine and 19 years old when she became the second wife of our 43-year-old 5th GGF Dr. Peter Brooks. Dr. Brooks had the distinction of abandoning his wife and eight children in Ashburnham, Mass, and the further distinction of fathering an out-of-wedlock son while his wife was pregnant.

Dr. Peter’s proclivity for young women continued with Betsey as she was only 19 years old at marriage and had her first child, our 4th GGM Lucinda Oraing Brooks, seven months later.

Betsey and Dr. Peter lived in Plantation No. 4 (now Paris) from 1788 until moving to Poland in 1792, then known as Bakersfield Plantation. According to Woodstock history, the family lived briefly in Woodstock in 1798, perhaps as part of the Bryant plan for a family settlement, then moved to nearby Greenwood. Dr. Peter died at age 55 in 1800, said to have been caused by inhaling poison from rattlesnakes that he gathered for his medical practice. He is buried in a small cemetery in Mechanic Falls.

Betsey was a 31-year-old widow with four children when Peter died. Four years after Peter’s death, Betsey married Jonathan Fickett, a farmer and widower with four children, in Poland, Maine. They moved to Woodstock in 1818, joining the rest of her Bryant siblings. 

Jonathan and Betsey settled on what was known as the Nute farm in Woodstock. Jonathan’s daughter Betsey by his first wife Judith Cox, was wife of our 3rd GGF Samuel Nute.

Betsey and Dr. Peter’s oldest daughter 4th GGM Lucinda (1788-1839) married Aaron Davis, Jr. and they were grandparents of our 2nd GGM  Lovina Dunn Davis, wife of Orsamus Nute. Betsey's sons, William and Charles, by Peter Brooks were residents of Woodstock. Betsey's youngest child by Peter Brooks, also Betsey, lived throughout her life with mother Betsey and stepfather Jonathan, dying in 1859 with tuberculosis she'd had since a child.

Betsey’s husband, Jonathan, died in 1850 and Betsey’s signature was on court papers as late as 1854 asking to sell part of their land for her support. Other than this we don’t know exactly when Betsey died. Per Libby's notes, Jonathan and Betsey are buried in the Nute-Stevens cemetery in Woodstock. 

Sources:
1. The Bryant Family, Researched by Edna Bryant Cole, online