Biographie Otis Francoise-Rose

Thought you might be interested in this: -Rose was captured by the Indians in the raid in 1696 and taken to Canada. She married in 1696 in Beauport, Canada and had 10 children. They were married for 33 years. She died when she was 52 years old.  

Excerpt from Foster's Daily Democrat, Dover, NH, Wednesday Evening, June 28,1989:  "A Tercentennial Story by Jim Aldrich, Special to the Democrat"  An eleven year old Dover girl taken captive by Abenaki Indians 300 years ago this summer -- and whose exact identity has always been a mystery -- has now been identified by a Canadian nun researching her family history. The Abenaki seized the child in the June 28, 1689, raid on Cocheco, now downtown Dover, New Hampshire, in what was the opening attack of the five French and Indian Wars. 

The Indians carried her across the vast northern New England wilderness to Canada where she was raised by a French family in a small village near the City of Quebec. She married there seven years later as a comely bride of 18, and spent the rest of her life in New France, much of it at a time when New England and New France were at war.  Although she has been well known by her French name, her precise English identity has remained a mystery to historians and genealogists alike. That is, until now. 

The discovery by Sister Annette Potvin of Edmonton, Alberta, made in the course of family research, clears up the mystery and establishes for the first time the true parental identity of "Francoise Rozotty," the name of the captive as it appears on an ancient French document.  The puzzle began over a hundred years ago when 19th Century researchers, seeking to discover the fate of hundreds of New Englanders carried captive during the 74 years of the French and Indian wars, found the name "Rozotty" on a Canadian marriage certificate. The certificate, written by the cure of the parish in Beauport adjacent to Quebec, certifies that on October 26, 1696, he married Jean Poitevin of nearby Charlesbourg and Francoise Rozotty, "English girl, living since her childhood in this parish."  The priest goes on to note that Francoise had been "brought from Boston, her native country, by the savages." Boston, in the parlance of 17th Century New France, included much of Maine and New Hampshire, territory claimed at one time or another by the Province of Massachusetts Bay.  Just about everyone in that region was known to the French as "Bastonnais", so far reaching was the political power of Puritan Boston. Francoise Rozotty's age at the time of her capture was established by the record of her death in 1729, listing her then as 52 years of age. This meant she was born about 1677 or perhaps `78, the way the calender was then arranged eleven years before the 1689 attack. It did not take much imagination for researchers to see in the name of Francoise Rozotty, first a French name of Christian baptism, then an English name of Rose Otis.  Anyone familiar with the captivity narratives knew the name "Otis" and immediately associated it with Dover. There were so many members of this family captured, or killed, in early Indian warfare that the name became almost synonymous with captivity itself. But there was a catch.  The original Rose Otis of Dover had been dead for about 15 years when the Abenaki attack was launched against the five Dover garrisons. Moreover, she had been born in 1629, much too early to be 11 years old at the time of the raid.

The names fitted, but the dates did not.  Who, then was the Rose Otis with the odd, almost Italianate name of Rozotty on the Canadian records? In order to adequately answer that question, we must first go to the original Rose, even though she was long dead when the Rose Otis who became Francoise Rozotty, was taken captive. The first Rose was Rose Stoughton Otis who came from England to Boston as a 14 year-old girl in 1643 when civil war raged between Puritans and royalists in old England. She was a relative of the influential and Puritan Stoughton family of Boston, and there, it was thought, she would be safe from the dangers she might face in war-torn England.  In Boston, or its immediate surroundings, Rose Stoughton met and married, about 1649, Richard Otis, then a 24 year-old blacksmith, four years her senior, and with a promising future. He had been born in Glastonbury, England, and probably had not been very long in the American colonies. About 1655 Richard moved his small but growing family from Boston to Cocheco where his talents might be profitably employed in shoeing the hundreds of oxen needed in the then fast developing Piscataqua mast trade that right up to the American Revolution kept "His Majesty's ships" afloat and sailing on the high seas.  Among their several children born in Cocheco was a daughter Rose, obviously named for her mother. Young Rose and her sisters were made captives when the French supported Abenaki attack against Dover came in the pre-dawn darkness of that fateful Friday in 1689.  French records of the day reveal that the gunpowder, and perhaps weapons used in the attack, were French supplied. The governor general of New France later claimed credit for the "success" of the raid and the rest of the Abenaki attacks in Maine and New Hampshire later that summer. 

Shortly after their capture, Rose and her sisters were rescued from the retreating, Canada bound savages, near Conway, New Hampshire.  This Rose later married one of her rescuers, John Pinkham of Dover Point and settled down to raising a family of her own.  Who, then, was the Canadian Francoise Rozotty? She was, obviously, neither mother nor daughter, the first being dead and the second never having set foot in New France. Researchers were puzzled.  Another possibility arose. After his wife's death, which probably occurred before 1675, Richard Otis married again, sometime prior to November of 1677. Some researchers have speculated that after Widower Otis wedded Widow Shuah (sometimes Susanna or Anna) Heard, he fathered a child whom they named Rose. New Englanders were known to do such things. Child mortality rates were so high that parents gave more than one child the same name, in hopes of assuring the name's perpetuation into future generations as sort of "nominal" immortality. 

A child born early in the marriage of Richard and Shuah would have been age 52 in 1729, as stated on the record of Francoise's death. It was a tempting thought and one supported by a number of persons.  Other researchers, however, speculated that this was not the case at all, that the Rose Otis carried to Canada was grandchild of Richard Otis, perhaps through Richard Otis Junior, like his father a blacksmith but located at Dover Point some miles from Cocheco where the raid took place. This was the thought of Emma Coleman when in 1925 she published in Portland, Maine, her authoritative two-volume study "New England Captives Carried to Canada." This work was the result of a lifetime of research, much of it as an understudy to that other devoted student of the fate of New England captives, C Alice Baker, whose book, "New England Captives Carried to Canada,' -intrigued so many New Englanders when published in 1897. Francis Parkman, Boston's celebrated historian of the French and Indian wars, told Alice Baker, "we are all your debtors" - a ringing tribute to her research.  Together, these two women poured over the Canadian and New England records, year after year, threading the captivity stories into an assembled patchwork of history, as lived by persons who would have been their friends and neighbors, had they lived in another era.  Coleman, in considering the Francoise Rozotty story, wrote: "Rose died 7 July 1729, and two years later Jean Poitevin, sometimes called Laviolette, took another wife. But who was (this) Rose Otis? Probably a granddaughter of Richard of Dover.

She has been called his daughter, but did he have two named Rose? One married John Pinkham in New England".  In the 64 years since Coleman published her work, no one known to this writer has come any closer to answering the question, "Who was Francoise Rozotty?" We know little of Francoise, only that in 1702 she still was "living in the region of Quebec", and was awarded. .30 "livres" (pounds) of the King's money, that in 1710 she became a naturalized citizen of New France, that she and Jean Poitevin in their 33 years of marriage had 10 children, and that when she died on July 7, 1729, she was 52 years of age.  From the origin of her name and period of captivity, we can conclude that she had been one of the 29 human souls, most of them women and children, who on the rain swept Friday morning of 1689 had trudged out of their burning town, acrid smoke in their nostrils, their hands probably laced behind them with rawhide, circulation cut off at the wrists, tied by their necks one to the other in a long line, prodded by spears, stumbling, their hearts heavy with grief and their eyes wet with tears, facing a long march into a grave and forbidding unknown. Most of what they loved was dead or burning. As the sun rose behind the clouds and the last musket shots were fired at the one hold-out garrison, the 250 Indians invvolved in the raid hustled their captives at a hurried pace along the Cart Way, the town's main thoroughfare, northward into the wilderness and on toward Canada. Look at Central Avenue today and picture the scene. Among the captives was this tearful, 11 year-old child, barefoot and frightened.

Death and carnage lay about her, her father probably killed at her feet, her mother with him, or, like her children, tied to the string of departing humanity.  We come now to the answer to the 300 year question. It does, however, require some further background to be understood. Richard Otis Senior had built two houses after he and Rose and their first born children came from Boston to Dover, those 34 years before the raid. Both structures are clearly visible on a circa 1680 map of the Piscataqua region.  The first was on a rise of land off what is now Central Avenue, then called the Cart Way. The second was built across the way near what is now the intersection of Milk Street and the avenue. Its foundations were uncovered during an excavation early in this century. Items found there are now with the Woodman Institute in Dover. Richard probably gave the first house to his son, Steven, probably upon completion of the second home.  The son's name is often spelled "Stephen", but for purposes that will become clear, we will stay with "Steven". In 1674 Steven married Mary Pitman, daughter of Wiliam Pitman of nearby Oyster River, today's Durham. They had, it is known, sons Steven and Nathaniel, and a daughter Mary. Until now there has been no records of other children. About 1684, probably in the spring and summer thereof, the elder Otis' new home and blacksmith shop were surrounded by a tall stockade, and fortified.  Several militia were probably stationed there, on a rotating basis. The palisade did no good. When the attack came five years later, Richard Otis was killed, as was his two-year-old daughter, Hannah. So was his son Steven, and others, many unknown. Most of the 23 deaths in the raid probably occurred at the Otis and the nearby Waldron garrisons. Members of both Richard's and son Steven's families were made captive.

We do not know what happened to Steven's wife Mary. She too may have died in the attack, or have been carried captive.Their two sons, Steven and Nathaniel, boys when captured, later married in New France and spent the rest of their lives there.  What does all of this have to do, one might ask, with Francoise Rozotty Poitevin? A great deal.  In early January of this year, Sister Annette Potvin wrote to Robert Whitehouse, president of Dover's Northam Colonists, the city's historical society. Could he help her, she asked, trace the parentage of her captive English forebear, Rose Otis of Dover, who became Francoise Rozotty on the Canadian records?  Whitehouse sent the letter on to this writer whom he has helped for the past nine years in a study of several members of the Otis family and the Abenaki raid on Dover. An examination of nine years of records revealed the expected: Material was available on other members of the Otis family, but research had not turned up much on Francoise Rozotty. What we had, we mailed off to Edmonton, but it did not adequately address Sister Potvin's question. Sister Potvin continued her study of the old Canadian records. Then in mid- February --fast as historical research usually goes -- came a letter from her, dated the 12th of the month. Enclosed were a photocopy and a typed version of an until then unknown, French language, marriage contract -- not well known and already heavily pored over marriage certificate -- between Jean Poitevin and Francoise Rozotty, dated three days before their marriage in 1696 and spelling the rest of Francoise's name, not as "Rozotty" but clearly as "Rosotis."  But, there was more.

A part of that marriage contract, in translation reads: "Francoise Rosotis, daughter of deceased Stinodis, and of deceased Mary Otos, her father and mother, of English birth in the environs of Boston...." After three hundred years, yet another bit of that 1689 raid on Dover had fallen into place. The parental identity of the captive Rose Otis, long lost to history, was now on the record. The years of speculation were gone. It was a moment that Alice Baker and Emma Coleman would enjoy.  Sister Potvin, like any cautious researcher, wrote: "Now, if this is correct, if Francoise's mother is Mary, then Stinodis may be Stephen (Steven) Otis. We should be aware that for the French who did not know English, names like Steven and Rose Otis were mysteries. "If Francoise said that her father's name were Steven, the (French) Notary (who drew up the marriage contract) wrote what sounded to him as Stin. In French the "i" is pronounced like the English "e". He forgot or missed the "v" but the "n" standing for "en" (in Steven), is there.  Such mispellings of English names were not uncommon among French "notaires", village priests and other drafters of official documents. The name "Otis", for instance, has had no less than eight major variations on the French records. As Emma Coleman listed them: Otheys, Oteys, Otesse, Autes, Hautesse, Hotesse, Rozotty, and Thys. We may now add: Odis and Otos. To encounter "Steven Otis" as "Stinodis," (pronounced Stee en odis, with a French inflection) should therefore come as no surprise. 

The fact the Steven's name in the marriage contract is associated with the name of his wife, "Mary Otos," makes the conclusion that these two Doverites were Francoise's parents, almost inescapeable.  Coleman said of her work with Alice Baker that "the phonetic spelling of the (French ) registrars (of English names) made guessing imperative." There is not much to guess at here; it is all quite clear. Many New Englanders didn't spell their own names as well.  Undoubledly Sister Potvin's analysis, despite her caution, is correct. Francoise Rozotty - or Rose Otis - was the 11-year-old daughter of Richard Otis Senior's son Steven and Steven's wife, Mary Pitman Otis of Durham, when she was taken captive in this first assault of the first of the French and Indian wars.  The original Rose Otis - a refugee from war-torn England, and the first wife of the Dover blacksmith - was her grandmother. Six years after Francoise's death, the name of the Dover captive showed once again on the Canadian records. On November 14, 1735, as Sister Potvin notes in her February 12 letter, "Michel Potvin, son of Jean Poitevin and Rose Otice" married at Petite Riviere St. Francois Sister Povin plans a book on her early Canadian family. Perhaps it will tell us more of old Dover - so deeply interlaced, even then, were the lives of the people of New France and New England.  (Editor's note: The writer was a reporter and later managing editor of this newspaper. He is semi-retired from the U.S. Information Agency in Washington, DC, and resides in Woodbridge, Virginia. His interest in Dover history stems from years of "local history talks" with the late Philip C. Foster, his editor and an enthusiastic student of Dover's past.)  
  
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Texte provenant de Benoit Gallant, participant de NosOrigines