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

Migration of Our Woodstock Families: Poland and Paris, and finally Woodstock

Woodstock is a beautiful, rural Maine town, dotted with lakes and stunning in the fall with hillsides a kaleidoscope of color. Bryant's Pond lies in the northwest corner and feeds the Little Androscoggin River. The people of Bryant Pond were the last to give up hand-crank telephones with a human operator in 1983. The old Grange and Masonic Lodge buildings feature three-story attached outhouses - well, technically they are "inhouses."  The 2010 Census showed 1,277 people and 371 families living in Woodstock spread over 47 square miles.

Woodstock hills in the fall

Bryant Pond

Three story "privies" of the Masonic Lodge and Grange

The Woodstock Historical Society manned by a dedicated staff has its home on Main Street close to the Pond. I had the privilege of spending a day in the fall of 2016 with a staff member, Joyce Howe, who took me around to our family sites and cemeteries - and we had the best pizza for lunch at a little store in "town."

Woodstock Historical Society

Our family line on the Nute side converged on Woodstock, Maine, in the late 1700s-early 1800s, finally emerging from that wilderness-taming experience when 2nd GGF Orsamus Nute moved his family out of Woodstock to Boston in 1864. From there, the family has dispersed around the country, from Connecticut, South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, Montana, Kentucky, Maryland, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan to California.

 

They came from the Watertown, Cambridge and Plymouth areas - the Brooks, Swan, Bryant, and Stephens families - Nutes from New Hampshire; Strouts and Davises from coastal Maine and Massachusetts. Even the New Hampshire Nute lived briefly in coastal Falmouth, Maine, before migration. By and large, the families followed a route progressively north and inland, along what is now Route 26 from the coast to Poland and Paris, and from there to Woodstock on a rugged road built in 1795 to connect the two settlements. The roads were all pretty rough in those days - no whizzing along freeways in air-conditioned and heated vehicles.

PARIS

The planning by proprietors for the “plantation” of this area of Maine took place in Watertown, MA, with Paris originally called Plantation Number Four, and incorporated as a town in 1795.

Paris roads were laid out in 1794, and the road to Woodstock in 1795. Even before the road to Woodstock opened, two Bryant brothers, Christopher and Solomon, were hard at work clearing land in Woodstock in preparation for their big move. Paris had 40 households in 1798, living in log and dirt cabins until sawmills were built. Solomon Bryant had 79 acres, William Swan 50 acres, and Samuel Stephens 100 acres. Samuel is listed as owning property, but didn’t move to Paris until a couple years later. 

The Bryants of Plympton migrated to Grey on coastal Maine after Solomon served in the Massachusetts militia in the Revolution, and inland to Plantation Number Four (Paris) by 1788. He was chosen surveyor of lumber, a task he continued over the next several years. In 1796, Solomon was named a hog reever for the town. Sons, Christopher and Solomon Jr., were first settlers in Woodstock and daughter Betsey eventually moved to Woodstock, but Solomon Sr. lived out his days in Paris.

Dr. Peter Brooks of Acton, Massachusetts, arrived in Paris with the families of Solomon Bryant and William Swan, Jr. and stayed about 4 years. He moved then to Poland, Maine, briefly to Woodstock in about 1798, and finished his years down the road in Mechanic Falls, Maine.

Cambridge born 5th GGF William Swan, a Revolution veteran of Bunker Hill, was appointed tithingman* at the first Paris town meeting in 1793. Two Swan daughters married the two Bryant boys, Emma married our Samuel Stephens, and most of the family relocated to Woodstock. 

Samuel Stephens of Plymouth bought a lot in Paris in 1798 and migrated there with his family by 1801.  Samuel signed a petition for division of the town in 1803 and was on a town committee in 1806. In 1812, Samuel is referred to as Captain and was paid $4.50 for casting balls.

*A parish officer elected to preserve good order in the church during divine service, to make complaint of any disorderly conduct, and to enforce the observance of the Sabbath.

POLAND

Poland was incorporated in 1795, but settled as early as 1769. Early settlers included the Bray, Fickett and Davis families who cleared land for farms and  “one named Cox who manufactured hair combs” may have been the father of Judith Sarah Cox, wife of Jonathan Fickett. These were followed in the 1790s by Davises, Strouts, and Dr. Peter Brooks.

Sixth GGF and sea captain Zebulon Davis was living in Poland, then called Bakerstown Plantation, as early as June 1776 when he signed the Bakerstown agreement setting up militia for the Revolution. He was a captain, taken prisoner by the British and confined for an extended time at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Wife, Mary Bray, and younger four children, including Aaron, moved from Gloucester to Poland with their dad.

4th GGFJonathan Fickett arrived in Poland from Falmouth, ME, soon after his marriage to Judith Sarah Cox in 1788. Judith Sarah died in 1800 and he married Solomon Bryant's daughter, Betsey, in 1804. 

The Strouts were seafaring families from the Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Falmouth and Cape Elizabeth, Maine areas. Our Strout is 5th GGM Thankful who married War of 1812 veteran Aaron Davis Sr.  Aaron Jr. married Lucinda Oraing Brooks, daughter of our Dr. Peter Brooks.

3rd GGF Samuel Nute moved to Poland bringing along his widowed mother, Rebecca Wentworth, sometime between 1810 when he is listed in the Falmouth census and 1816 when he married Betsey Fickett. 

WOODSTOCK

Fifth GGF Solomon Bryant’s sons, Solomon Jr and Christopher, first cleared land in spring of 1797 in what was called Number Three, later to become Woodstock. The brothers’ plan was to have ten town lots where the extended Bryant family could settle. Their sister, 4th GGM Betsey, married both 5th GGF Peter Brooks and 4th GGF Jonathan Fickett. Jonathan’s daughter by a different wife,  3rd GGM Betsey, was the mother of our Orsamus.  Gets complicated, huh? All these guys intended to take up residence in Woodstock from surrounding settlements. The Bryant brothers, got moved in by fall of 1798. Others followed the next year, including another Bryant brother, Samuel.

William Swan moved his family to Woodstock in 1802.  William’s daughter, Sally Swan married Solomon Jr.;  daughter Susanna married Christopher; and daughter Emma was the second wife of 4th GGF Samuel Stephens. William’s 17 year old daughter, Lucy, had an illegitimate son, Gideon, fathered by married, father of 9, Dr. Peter Brooks. Gideon was raised by William Swan and took the Swan name rather than Brooks.

While this preliminary settling was going on, the land which belonged to Massachusetts underwent various ownership/grant changes, finally incorporated into a town in 1815. An 1812 tax list shows those of our people living there were the William Swan family and the sons of 5th GGF Solomon Bryant - Christopher, Solomon, Jr. and Samuel. Peter Brooks and wife Betsey Bryant had come and gone.


The Aaron Davises, both Jr. and Sr., had moved in by 1815, Samuel Stephens by 1817, and Jonathan Fickett by 1818, settling on what was later the Nute farm.

Life was hard, everyone was poor, and the soil not conducive to farming. They had no stores or doctor, with the nearest "amenities" some distance over the hill in Paris. Fish was plentiful in the beautiful Bryant’s Pond, small game readily available in the forests, but winters were harsh, crops failed from drought, and fires burned through timber. Stories of privation are told that farm women dug up potatoes planted for next year’s crop in order to have something to eat.

Fickett - Nute farm, Woodstock

The Nute family moved to Woodstock by 1820, the same year son Orsamus was born. Samuel and Betsey were able to buy her father's hilltop farm with an amazing view.  They had 4 children, 3 daughters and Orsamus. When Orsamus left taking all his living family with him, no Nute descendants were left in Woodstock.

The tenacity, courage, and resilience DNA of all the above generations came together with the union of Orsamus Nute and Lovina Dunn Davis, the last of our Woodstock lines, and they left Woodstock for Boston with their infant son, our great-grandfather, Joseph Edson Nute, in 1864.

More stories to follow on these tough pioneers who rightfully deserve to be called our illustrious ancestors.