King Philip's War and the Destruction of Groton, MA 1676

[Christina Gardner]

Hi Leslie,

Yup, you're right. I don't have the exact facts down
but when Matthias was young in August 1704 he was
taken prisoner by Indians and carried off to Quebec.
On Jan 10, 1706 in Montreal he was baptized into the
Catholic faith at the Notre-Dame de Montréal Church
and on the record his name is listed as Mathias-Claude
Farneth. Seems like the Claude came from his godfather
Claude de Ramezay, Governor of Montreal. The Farneth
is an approximated spelling of Farnoth pronounced by
Matthias (he was about 14 when taken and had little if
any education). He later became naturalized in Montral
& on Oct 2, 1713 he married Catherine CHARPENTIER
(daughter of Jean & Francoise HUNAULT). Together the
couple had several children; one of my records says 9,
another 12. Either way they had a bunch.  :) The last
name Farnsworth in Quebec eventually evolved into such
names as Farnet, Farnef, Pharneuf, Phaneuf, Fanef,
Finuff and Faneuf. 

A couple good sites to learn about the story or
http://www.microtec.net/aphane/english.htm ,
http://www.farnsworth.org.uk/matt3.htm &
http://pages.globetrotter.net/aphane/math_3.htm . I'm
pretty sure you have to use a translator for the last
link. A fairly decent one that I use is
http://world.altavista.com . Not perfect but you can
get the gist. A coworker of mine who is a genealogy
nut was able to get a copy of his father's will and
other related stuff from genealogylibrary. The will
was pretty fun to read because Dad was not exactly a
well-educated man & everything was spelled out
phonetically in English. 

Matthias/Claude-Mathias is my 8th great-grandfather.
My descendecy from him goes Claude-Mathias-->Francois
PHANEF-->Claude PHANEF-->Charles
FANEUF-->Marie-Theotiste PHANEUF. 

If anybody can elaborate more on what I wrote above or
sees where I may have goofed please add on. It's a
pretty interesting story.

Christina in Virginia

--- Leslie Driscoll <Leslie.Driscoll at umb.edu> wrote:
> Hi, I didn't realize there was a farnsworth.org so
> this is just the place to
> be. I was reading Janice's notes on King Philip's
> War looking for a bit
> about Matthias F. because one of his sons was
> supposedly taken to Quebec by
> the Indians at the time of the Groton raids and he
> is my ancestor. Know
> where I can add to my understanding of this?
> Thank you.
> Leslie
>  
> ****************************************
> Leslie Hunt Driscoll, Managing Director
> Fiske Center for Archaeological Research
> UMassBoston, Anthropology Department
> 100 Morrissey Blvd.
> Boston, MA 02125
>  
> Phone: 617.287.6862    Fax: 617.287.6857
> leslie.driscoll at umb.edu
> <mailto:leslie.driscoll at umb.edu> 
> ****************************************
>  
> 


=====
Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/Pocahondas
-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices
http://auctions.yahoo.com/