ancestral chart father mother index home




vital records sources
go to Elizabeth French's page








top: Samuel's signature on an heirs approval in his father's estate file
bottom: His signature acknowledging payment of a mortgage


Although he was born after his father bought a homestead in Woburn, Massachusetts Bay, it's not clear he spent his entire childhood there. His father maintained this home until his death in 1727, but he had some sort of residence in Braintree, Massachusetts Bay, as well. Three deeds in April and July 1709 involving a particular piece of land in Woburn name John Vinton of Braintree as the grantee.1 One calls him a "forger." John was otherwise of Woburn, having bought his homestead there in 1695 and died in that town in 1727.
     It's plausible that Samuel was an apprentice to his brother in Braintree. John Adams Vinton says that Thomas was there in 1708 and probably several years earlier, but he gives no source for the claim and none has been found for this article.2 Vinton was careful with his research, so this statement may be based on an obscure source. His father had some sort of presence there in 1709, substantial enough for him to name Braintree as his residence in that year. Thomas was of Braintree, "bloomer," when he bought a homestead in 1713.3 If he was there as early as 1708, that was the year Samuel was of a normal age to begin an apprenticeship, and the whole family may have been in Braintree at the time, if only temporarily. The usual apprenticeship being seven years, Samuel may have either continued to live in Braintree or settled in Woburn. The latter is more likely since he bought all of his parents' real estate there on 14 April 1720 for £700.4 This was mostly in Woburn and included their homestead. There was a house, barn, other buildings, a quarter share in a saw mill near the house "with all the irons," the fifty-acre homestead land, a seven to eight-acre meadow and upland lot, a seventeen-acre wood lot, the right to wood and woodland in the Woburn commons and a ten-acre swamp and upland lot in Charlestown, which is now in the town of Stoneham. His father reserved the use of half of all these assets to himself and his wife for life. This area was redeveloped with the construction of US Route 95.
     Although John referred to himself as a bloomer or forger, he must have also farmed in Woburn, otherwise there would be no reason to have bought the property and make it his primary residence. There were no iron works nearby. This dual residency and apparent dual occupation might also apply to Samuel. Although he bought the Woburn homestead in April 1720, he married Elizabeth French, a Braintree woman, in March 1721.
     John and Hannah Vinton likely made this sale in anticipation of Samuel having his own family, but it's a mystery why they didn't sell the property to their oldest son, John, Jr., unless he didn't want it. John, Sr.'s, will shows he was compensated for it. Samuel and Elizabeth settled in Woburn on the family homestead and had four children there. Like his father, he may have had a secondary residence in Braintree and was a farmer in Woburn and a bloomer in Braintree.
     Samuel sold the Woburn farm on 29 May 1729 for £650.5 On 26 June 1729, a month after he sold the property in Woburn, he bought about 20 acres of the "Cocheto land" in Braintree.6 It was described as being on the east side of the Cocheto River and west of the "Middle Precinct line." About a week later he bought sixty acres with a farm on the west side of the Cochato river between it and "the road to Bridgewater," a name for North Street and it's continuation south of the village of Randolph called South Main Street.7 Both deeds calls Samuel a bloomer of Woburn.
     A deed the following 12 January 1729/30 in which he bought six acres adjacent to his homestead, he was "of Braintree."8 In the Braintree record of Samuel's children's births, he specifically asked for his three children recorded in Woburn to be recorded there. There are three of his children listed in the town records. Rebecca, born in July 1728, wasn't recorded, but is listed in Braintree as the last of four born in Woburn. The first of the Braintree births was another Rebecca, born on 15 August 1729. This and the deed records confirm the family's primary residence in Woburn before 1729. The first daughter named Rebecca has no death record in either town.
     Samuel was a co-purchaser with Peter Newcomb and Samuel Payne of thirty acres of "purchase land" in Braintree, described as woodland and swamp near Circuit Ordinary Brook.9 They signed an agreement about each of their shares in November 1730. Samuel's own land was to the south, but otherwise, the boundary descriptions in this and subsequent deeds don't help place this tract in relation to his other purchases, and the original deed of purchase isn't recorded. Newcomb sold his ten-acre share to Samuel in March 1734.10 Samuel bought thirty acres in Braintree from Benjamin Baxter in October 1730.11
     Samuel continued to purchase land around Braintree, but of particular interest is a transaction between he and Mary, widow of Jonathan Hayward of Braintree. On 20 February 1735/36 she sold to Samuel a 3/16 interest in a forge at "Quochecho" and the "ponds, dams, streams, flumes" etc. and a small house associated with it.12 This is in Jonathan Hayward's estate inventory, as well as a third share of the forge on Moore's River. The latter was the site of the main forge in Braintree, dating back to the mid 17th century.
     John Adams Vinton, in his Vinton Memorial, says "Quochecho" is the same as the Cochato River.13 He probably wasn't aware of the Hayward inventory. The Cochato and Moore's Rivers, which is now Monaniquot River, are not the same place, and the site of the forge on the Monaniquot wasn't very near where the Cochato River flows into the Monaniquot. I haven't found a deed in which Samuel sold this property and it isn't in his estate inventory. Also, there is no deed by which Jonathan bought the property or a reference to anyone but Thomas Vinton owning forge property in Braintree at this time.
     In November of 1736, Samuel bought a hundred acres of land in the South Precinct of Braintree, now in the town of Randolph.14 No house is mentioned. He must have had one built there, since this is where the family lived until Samuel and Elizabeth's deaths. The latter was in 1770, when the estate was divided among the heirs.15 The only obvious boundary of this property is that it was on the west side of the "road to Bridgewater." Running through the center of the village of Randolph, it is now North Street and South Main Street. The deeds of abutting property owners are complicated by the fact that they all owned multiple properties in the area, so placing the homestead on either of these streets would require more extensive deed research. In either case, there is no visible evidence of a substantial house from the early 18th century still standing on the west side of either the streets.
     Samuel may have encountered financial trouble. In June of 1743 he mortgaged the property to James Smith of Boston for an amount calculated in silver to cover a debt.16 He paid off the mortgage in 1748, only to mortgage it again to Smith the next year.17 That mortgage was paid in 1757 after Samuel died. If he did let Smith hold his homestead for collateral, it didn't prevent him from buying a half acre of land ajdacent to the homestead to the south in April 1744, by which time he referred to himself as "gentleman."18 In 1747 he also agreed to be a mortagee of land he sold in the same year.19 In this deed and others in the later 1740s and 1750s, he sold pieces of land by his own property, but more detailed research would be needed to place them in relation to the purchases mentioned above.
     Braintree town records mention Samuel beginning on 3 January 1730/31, when he was voted to be one of the town's surveyor of highways.20 He requested to have a boar penned on town property on 20 March 1731/32.21 On 15 April 1734 Samuel was elected to be a constable, whose duties not only involved peace-keeping but also to collect taxes. It was probably the most difficult town duty in various ways, which may be why Samuel refused the job, the penalty for which was to pay the town treasurer £5. Samuel gave a "note" for that amount after another was elected in his place.22 He was surveyor of highways again in 173723 and 1738,24 and a fenceviewer in 1745.25 He was also a tithingman (alms collector) in 1738.26 Later in life, Samuel was commissioned a captain in the local militia.
     The author of the Vinton Memorial was told by Rev. John Turner, a grandson of Samuel's, that Samuel was "rather stern and severe in his treatment of his children; on which account his eldest son Samuel ran away from home about 1739 when abt. 17."27 The family heard nothing from him afterwards. Oral history relates a story about Thomas Vinton, a Revolutionary War soldier from Braintree and cousin of Samuel, who is on record as being captured and held at Plymouth, England. Another man named Vinton from Braintree was supposedly a "bystander" when a prisoner roll call was taken and he heard Thomas's name. This other Vinton then came to his assistance. This is likely an implausible embellishment or convolution of information brought back by Thomas. Another tradition, perhaps influenced by the latter story, says that Samuel went to England and was prosperous there. He doesn't appear in any published or indexed records of marriages and burials in England. There were few options for a boy running away from home in the mid 18th century. He may have lied about his age (if he was 17) and signed on as a "greenhand" on a boat.
     Rev. Turner also said that Samuel, Sr., was a "...stout, fleshy man. On an excessively warm day he was pitching a load of hay, became very much heated and drank too much cold water."28 He died as a result. His widow Elizabeth is said to have operated an inn. If so, it was in the family home, since this is where she was living when she died. Her dower thirds, including the house, barn and four acres of homestead land were divided in 1770.29 Samuel didn't write a will. An inventory of his estate includes his dwelling house, barn, 63 acres, a sword and belt, 3 guns and a silver cup and spoon.30 His heirs were to divide the estate among them, including Samuel, Jr., if he was still alive. The heirs involved in the distribution of his and Elizabeth (French) Vinton's estates were David and John Vinton, Joseph Man and his wife Elizabeth, Seth Turner and his wife Rebecca, David Linfield and his wife Hannah.

children of Samuel Vinton and Elizabeth French:31

i. Samuel, b. 5 February 1721/1722, Woburn
ii. Elizabeth, b. 8 December 1723, Woburn
iii. David, b. 14 March 1726/1727, Woburn
iv. Rebecca, b. 11 July 1728, Woburn, death not recorded in either Woburn or Braintree
v. Rebecca, b. 15 August 1729, Braintree hereafter
vi. Hannah, b. 12 June 1732
vii. John, b. 11 February 1734/35 (recorded as 1734, but baptism records in sequence show the right dual year)
viii. William, b. 22 January 1738



vital records sources: Samuel's birth date comes from Vital Records of Malden Massachusetts to the End of the Year 1849 (Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1903), 94. His marriage is in Records of the Town of Braintree, 1640-1793 (Randolph, MA: 1886), 745. His death date comes from his gravestone in Central Cemetery, Randolph, age 61, and is cited in Waldo C. Sprague's manuscript of Randolph records held by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. This is the only known record of his death.

1. Middlesex Co., MA, deeds 15:30, 54, 170.
2. Vinton, John Adams, Vinton Memorial [hereafter VM] (Boston: 1858), 30.
3. Suffolk Co., MA, deed 28:86.
4. Middlesex Co., MA, deed 20:630.
5. Ibid, 28:209.
6. Suffolk Co., MA, deed, 46:66.
7. Ibid, 43:233.
8. Ibid, 46:293.
9. Ibid, 58:256.
10. Ibid, 61:234.
11. Ibid, 61:237.
12. Ibid, 61:235.
13. VM, 36.
14. Ibid, 61:234.
15. Ibid, 117:7.
16. Ibid, 66:96.
17. Ibid, 78:6.
18. Suffolk Co., MA, deed 71:221
19. Ibid, 74:97
20. Records of the Town of Braintree, 1640-1793 (Randolph, MA: 1886), 141.
21. Suffolk Co., MA, deed 143.
22. Ibid, 183.
23. Ibid, 7 March 1736/1737, 199.
24. Ibid, 7 March 1738, 290.
25. Ibid, 3 March 1745, 270.
26. Ibid, 5 March 1738, 215.
27. VM, 37.
28. VM, 37-38.
29. Suffolk Co., MA, deed 117:7.
30. Suffolk Co., MA, probate case 11313.
31. Vital records of Woburn, MA., Births, Deaths, and Marriages From 1640 to 1873, vol. 1 (Boston: 1891), 266; Records of the Town of Braintree, 1640-1793 (Randolph, MA: 1886), 778.

all text and photographs © 1998-2023 by Doug Sinclair unless where otherwise noted