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Jean Papineau:  France/Massachusetts/New York

The man who served as Jean Papineau’s patron was Gabriel Bernon, a rich merchant born in La Rochelle, France in 1644.  His family had held high positions and possessed large estates for many generations.  He had conducted business in Canada but was evicted from there and imprisoned for many months because of his religion.  In 1686, after his release, Bernon collected money from many Huguenots in and around La Rochelle, possibly to get them and their money out of the country. His records show receipt of £55 from Papineau Conseillor Dubrois [du Roi] in La Rochelle, 10 May 1686 and £460 (a very substantial sum of money in those days) from M^r Papineau le jeune in Niort, which is about 40 miles to the east.[1]  This would have been Jean Papineau III, discussed above, the father of our immigrant ancestor.  Another name on the list was M. Grignon, later to be Jean’s partner in a chamoiserie (or wash leather factory) in New Oxford, MA.

Bernon soon left for Amsterdam, thence to London, where he arranged to purchase a 750-acre tract in Massachusetts as a permanent home for refugees. The first ten families, accompanied by their pastor, arrived later that year.  At that time there were only about 20 French families in Boston and a larger number in Frenchtown, a community at Narragansett in Rhode Island.  The following year, Bernon arrived in Boston accompanied by forty more refugees most of whom proceeded to New Oxford.  Bernon had a house built for him at New Oxford, which was primarily meant to be a fort for protection of the townspeople.  He spent most of his time in Boston, where he became a successful merchant, and in 1700 he moved his business to Newport, RI, then one of the major cities in the American colonies.

New Oxford gradually grew but suffered periodic attacks by Indians, mostly due to encouragement by the French in Canada who were intermittently at war with the English.  The community included a fort, a gristmill, a sawmill, and home for the 20 to 30 families (never more than 70 to 80 persons) that lived there.  In 1696, a severe Indian attack led to the abandonment of the community, with most of the families moving to Boston.

In 1699 New Oxford was settled again. This time it lasted for five years.  In February 1704, the Deerfield massacre, along with other attacks along the frontier, led the settlers to abandon New Oxford again, bringing that Huguenot experiment to an end.

Jean Papineau’s name does not appear in any known records until 1703-4 when he is mentioned several times in an account book of Gabriel Bernon’s mercantile business in Newport, RI.[2]  The account book indicates that Bernon was the principal "venture capitalist" of the chamoiserie, that Grignon had also advanced furs to be processed, and that Papineau was the junior partner in the operation. This wash-leather factory processed furs and skins and then shipped them to hat and glove factories in Providence and Boston. We don’t know if the chamoiserie existed in the first period of New Oxford or only in its last few years. 

New Oxford was an extremely unusual frontier town due to the middle to upper class backgrounds and abilities of almost all of its settlers.  One way of looking at New Oxford is to compare it to the early kibbutzim in Palestine, which were established by well-educated Russian and Eastern European Jews. They had no agricultural background but were motivated by religious or ideological zeal.   In addition to their food crops, they produced much of the political, military, and intellectual leadership of early Israel.

Here are some of the members of the tiny community of New Oxford: Andre Segourney, who bore the name of a locality in the province of Poitou, was Constable of New Oxford.  He was a distiller and after moving to Boston, he and his family became wealthy leading citizens.  Isaac Bertrand du Truffeau was the village Magistrate, as well as Bernon's agent.  He came from an important family in Poitiers  and, while in New Oxford, was married to Demoiselle Rochefoucauld, a lady said to be descended from one of the most noble families in France.  Benjamin Faneuil came from a prominent merchant family in La Rochelle.  His brother Andre, who was married to Bernon's sister, became one of the wealthiest merchants in Boston and built the famous Faneuil Hall as a market house.  François Bureau belonged to a noble family of La Rochelle, his brother, Thomas Bureau, was one of the principal French merchants of London.   François' daughter married Benjamin Faneuil.

The Baudouin family was one of the most important and ancient families of La Rochelle, and they possessed numerous seigneuries in the vicinity. Jean Baudoin of New Oxford, was the brother of James Baudoin of Boston, a distinguished merchant and member of the Colonial Council for several years.   James left the largest estate that had ever been possessed by one person in the province; his son, James Bowdoin, became Governor of Massachusetts, and gave his name to Bowdoin College.   Elie Boudinot had been a wealthy merchant in Marans, France.  Captain Charles Germain was from a Catholic family of high position, being the younger brother of Count Germaine.

René Grignon, partner of Jean Papineau in the chamoiserie, was also a silver and goldsmith.  A silver porringer that he made in 1692 is in the Yale University Collection.  Earlier, Grignon had been a member of the Narragansett settlement in Rhode Island, which lasted from 1686 to 1691.   From there, he went to New Oxford, where he remained until it was abandoned in 1696.  During 1696-1699 he was elder of the French church in Boston.  After New Oxford was again abandoned in 1704, he became master of a sailing vessel, and then settled in Norwich, Connecticut, where he was a successful jeweler and merchant until his death in 1715.  He brought the church bell from New Oxford and contributed it to the church in Norwich.[3]

The two ministers at New Oxford also deserve mention, since they were, perhaps, the most important leaders of the community. The first was Rev. Daniel Bondet, descended from a noble French family, educated at Geneva, and able to preach in French, English, and Indian.  Bondet served the New Oxford community from 1687 to 1695.  Later he became pastor of the French church in New Rochelle, New York from about 1697 until his death in 1722.

When New Oxford was re-established in 1699, its pastor was Jacques Laborie of Cardaillac.  He had completed the study of theology in Geneva in 1688, was ordained in Zurich, then went to London where he officiated at several French churches for about ten years.  In 1698 he went to America.  While serving at New Oxford he also served as missionary to the Indians.  After the abandonment of New Oxford in 1704, he was for two years pastor at the French church in New York City.  After that he practiced medicine and surgery, settling in Fairfield, Connecticut where he died about 1731.

Jean Papineau apparently went with him or followed him to New York.  The New York City Tax Assessment rolls show John Papineau in the East Ward in February and December 1706.  His assessment in each case is at the lowest level; he probably lost whatever assets he had when New Oxford was abandoned.  He is missing in the February 1707 roll and probably died before then.[4]

New York City, then as now, was a melting pot with a very diverse population.     There were substantial Huguenot communities in Manhattan, Staten Island, and New Rochelle.  The latter was totally Huguenot except for Negro slaves.  By the late 1600s the Huguenot church in NYC was half the size of the Dutch church but twice the size of the Anglican church.  A large number of Huguenots entered the mainstream of political and economic life by becoming “Freemen”: 84 between 1687 and 1700, 59 between 1701 and 1710.  Huguenots were merchants to a greater extent than the Dutch and English; laborers to a much lesser extent.  About 10% of the Huguenots were cloth and leather workers, probably including Jean Papineau.  Huguenot economic success would probably account for their extensive slave holding:  in 1703 37% of Dutch households, 44% of English, and half of Huguenot households had slaves.[5]

Jean Papineau was associated with relatively important and successful people according to the records of the French Church.  But he did not live long enough to make a difference.  He contributed little more than his name and his genes to the Poppino/Popenoe family.