this smaller stream, the bridge over which is at a considerable distance below the village of Oxford, had not attracted my particular notice. In passing it, nine years ago, seeing a boy near the bridge, I asked him, What is the name of this river? "French river," he replied. Why, I asked, is it called French river? "I believe," said he, "there was some French people once here". pointing up the stream. On my arrival at the village, I inquired of Mr. Campbell, the innkeeper, who gave me sufficient information on the subject to excite farther inquiry, and to reuder all the subsequent labor of investigation delightful. Mr. Campbell was of the family of the Rev. Mr. Campbell, formerly a respectable minister of Oxford. Having married a daughter of Mrs. Butler, who was ́a descendant of one of the French settlers, he referred me for information to his wife, who after telling me all that she knew, referred me to her mother. I waited upon Mrs. Butler, who obligingly told me all that she could recollect concerning the French emigrants.

Mrs. Butler was the wife of Mr. James Butler, who lives near the first church in Oxford; and, when I saw her, was in the seventy-fifth year of her age. Her original name was Mary Sigourney. She was a granddaughter of Mr. Andrew Sigourney, who came over when young, with his father, from Rochelle. Her grandmother's mother died on the voyage, leaving an infant of only six months (who was the grandmother of Mrs. Butler,) and another daughter, Mary Cazneau, who was then six years of age. The information which Mrs. Butler gave me, she received from her grandmother, who lived to about the age of eighty-three, and from her grandmother's sister, who lived to the age of ninety-five or ninety six years.

Mrs. Butler's Reminiscences.

The refugees left France, in 1684, or 1685,* with the utmost trepidation and precipitancy. The great grandfather of Mrs. Butler, Mr. Germaine, gave the family notice that they must go. They came off with secrecy, with whatever clothes they could put upon the children, and left the pot boiling over the fire. When they arrived at Boston, they went directly to Fort Hill, where they were provided for; and there they continued until they went to Oxford. They built one fort on Mayo's hill, on the east side of French river; and, tradition says, another fort on the west side. Mrs. Butler believed, they had a minister with them.

* Mrs. Butler's account was entirely verbal, according to her recollection, Mrs. Butler died in 1823, Ætat. LXXXI.

VOL. II. 44

Mrs. Johnson, the wife of Mr. Johnson who was killed by the Indians in 1696, was a sister of the first Andrew Sigourney. Her husband, returning home from Woodstock while the Indians were massacring his family, was shot down at his own door. Mr. Sigourney, hearing the report of the guns, ran to the house, and seizing his sister, pulled her out at a back door, and took her over French river, which they waded through, and fled towards Woodstock, where there was a garrison. The Indians killed the children, dashing them against the jambs of the fire-place.

Mrs. Butler thinks, the French were at Oxford eighteen or nineteen years. Her grandmother who was brought over an infant, was married, and had a child, while at Oxford. This fact would lead us to believe that the Sigourney family returned to Oxford after the fear of the Indians had subsided. It is believed in Oxford, that a few families did return. These families may have returned again to Boston in about nineteen years from the time of their first set tlement in Oxford, agreeably to Mrs. Butler's opinion; in which case, the time coincides with that of the erection of the first French church in Boston, 1704-5. Mr. Andrew Sigourney, who furnished the written materials for this Memoir, still lives on or near the place that was occupied by his ancestors.

Mrs. Butler lived in Boston until the American revolution, and soon afterwards removed to Oxford. Her residence in both places rendered her more familiar with the history of the emigrants than she would have been, had she resided exclusively in either. She says, they prospered in Boston, after they were broken up at Oxford. Of the memorials of the primitive plantation of her ancestors she had been very observant, and still cherished a reverence for them. Mrs. Shumway, of French extraction, living near the Johnson house, showed her the spot where the house stood, and some of its remains. Col. Jeremiah Kingsbury, about fifty-five years of age [1817,] has seen the chimney and other remains of that house. His mother, aged about eighty-four years, told Mrs. Butler that there was a burying place, called "The French Burying Ground," not far from the fort at Mayo's Hill. She herself remembers to have seen many graves there.

French Families.

Mrs. Butler named as of the first emigrants from France, the following families:

Bowdoin, and Boudinot came to Boston:-could not say, whether or not they came to Oxford.

Bowyer, who married a Sigourney.

Germaine :-removed to New York.

Oliver-did not know whether this family came to Oxford, or not; but the ancestor, by the mother's side, was a Sigourney.

SIGOURNEY. Andrew Sigourney, son of the first emigrant of that name, was born in Oxford, and died in 1763, aged sixty years He was the uncle of Mrs. Butler, my informant; of the late Martin Brimmer, Esq. of Boston, and Mr. Andrew Brimmer, still living; and of the late Hon. Samuel Dexter, of Boston.

No branch of the Bowdoin family is known to have been settled south of New England. Governor Bowdoin left one daughter, the lady of Sir John Temple, sometime consul general of Great Britain in the United States. Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John and Lady Temple, was married to the Hon. Thomas L. Winthrop, Esq. of Boston, a member of the senate of Massachusetts, and now (April, 1826) candidate for lieutenant governor. Mrs. Winthrop died in 1825. In that truly honorable lady were combined dignity with ease, intellectual with polite accomplishments, benevolence of temper with beneficence in action, Christian principles with the Christian graces. One of the sons, Francis William Winthrop, a young man highly distinguished as a scholar, and of very fair promise, was graduated at Harvard College in 1817, but died soon after he had finished his education. Another son, James, who, since the death of his uncle James Bowdoin, has taken his name, is the only representative of the Bowdoins, of that name, now living in New England.

Some future antiquary may perhaps trace the original name to the famous Baldwin, king of Jerusalem, who, according to French authority, spelt his name precisely as the first of this family in America, Baudouin. He died in 1118, and his remains were deposited in a church on Mount Calvary. Fleury, in his Histoire Ecclesiastique, Edit. 1779, gives an account of nineteen eminent persons, from the "compte de Flanders," A. D. 862, to Baudouin, "jurisconsulte," A. D. 1561, whose names are uniformly written Baudouin.

The Hon. Samuel Dexter, senior, father of the late Mr. Dexter, who married a Sigourney, was a member of the first provincial congress in Massachusetts, and founder of the Dexter professorship of Sacred Literature in the University in Cambridge. Soon after the commencement of the revolutionary war, he removed with his family to Woodstock, in Connecticut. He had a large library,

which attracted much attention at the time of its removal; and he was greatly devoted to the use of it in his retirement, to the close of his life. He was a gentleman of a highly respectable character, possessed of a handsome estate, and enjoyed, far beyond most literary men in our country, otium cum dignitate. He spent a few of his last years at Mendon, in Massachusetts, where he died in 1810; but his remains were interred, according to the directions of his Will, at Woodstock. I have seen the lot in which he was buried, not far from the first church in my native town; but no sign of his grave can be traced. It was his own directions, that his body should be interred in the exact centre of the lot, and the grave levelled on the surface, and the whole lot cultivated alike, that no distinction might be perceived. There is a good portrait of Mr. Dexter at the Library of our University. Mrs. Dexter I well remember while at Woodstock. She was a respectable lady, of dark complexion, with characteristic French features, and pronunciation.

Very soon after my visit to Mrs. Butler, I received a letter from her husband, expressing her regret, that she had not mentioned to me Mrs. Wheeler, a widow lady, the mother of Mr. Joseph Coolidge, an eminent merchant in Boston. Her maiden name was Oliver. She was a branch of the Germaine family, and related to "old Mr. Andrew Sigourney," in whose family she was brought up, and at whose house she was married. Mrs. Butler supposed, she must be between eighty and ninety years of age, and that, being so much older than herself, she had heard more particulars from their ancestors; but, on inquiry for Mrs. Wheeler in Boston I found that she died a short time before the reception of the letter. How much do we lose by neglecting the advice of the Son of Sirach!" Miss not the discourse of the elders; for they also learned of their fathers, and of them thou shalt learn understanding, and to give answer as need requireth."

Remains of the French Fort.

My first visit to Fort Hill in Oxford was 20th April, 1819. It is about a mile southerly of the inn, kept many years by the Camp. bell family, at the union of the two great roads from Boston and Worcester, about fifty miles from Boston. Mr. Mayo, who owns the farm on which the fort stands, believes, that his grandfather purchased it of one of the French families; and Mr. Sigourney, of Oxford, thinks it was bought of his ancestor, Andrew Sigourney. I measured the fort by paces, and found it 25 paces by 35.

With

in the fort, on the east side, I discovered signs of a well; and on inquiry, was informed that a well had been recently filled up there.

On a second visit to the Fort, in September of the same year, I was accompanied, and aided in my researches, by the Rev. Mr. Brazer, then a Professor in our University, who went over from Worcester, and met me, by agreement, in Oxford. We traced the lines of the bastions of the fort, and were regaled with the perfumes of the shrubbery, and the grapes then hanging in clusters on the vines, planted by the Huguenots above a century before.* Every thing here, said Mr. Mayo, is left as I found it.

We next went in search of the Johnson place, memorable for the Indian massacre in 1696. Mr. Peter Shumway, a very aged man, of French descent, who lives about thirty rods distant from it, showed us the spot. It is at a considerable distance from the village, on the north side of the road to Dudley, and is now overgrown with trees. We carefully explored it, but found no relicks. The last year (1825) I called at Mr. Shumway's. He told me, that he was in his ninety-first year; that his great grandfather was from France; and that the plain, on which he lives, is called "Johnson's Plain."

While Mr. Brazer was prosecuting our inquiries concerning a second fort, and a church, that had been mentioned to me by Mrs. Butler, he received a letter (1819) from Mr. Andrew Sigourney, informing, that captain Humphrey, of Oxford, says, his parents told him, there was a fort on the land upon which he now lives, and also a French meeting-house, and a burying ground, with a number of graves; that he had seen the stones that were laid on the top of them, as we lay turf, and that one of the graves was much larger than any of the others; that they were east and west, but this, north and south; and that the Frenchman who lived in this place, named Bourdine, had been dead but a few years.

In May, 1825, I visited captain Ebenezer Humphrey, and ob tained from him satisfactory information concerning the place of this second fort, and the meeting house, and the burying ground. Captain Humphrey was in his eighty-fourth year. He told me, that his grandfather was from England, and that his father was from Woodstock, and came to Oxford to keep garrison. He him

The following fact has been communicated to the writer of the memoir by Mr. Sigourney. A bill of lading, dated London, March 5, 1687, of a variety of merchandize, &c. shipped on board the ship John and Elizabeth, mentions among the rest, "two chests of vine plants, marked X 5 X," and were to be delivered "to Mr. Daniel Stading, or Petre a Sailes."