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Chapter 1: Origins — The World That Shaped Franklin and Nancy (1820s–1840s)

Franklin B. French was born in 1820, in Rome, Kennebec County, Maine, a region that was still carving itself out of the frontier. His father, Joseph Dea French, held the title of Deacon — a position of moral leadership and respect in the local church, likely Presbyterian or Congregationalist in tradition.

Joseph would have been a man of both scripture and action, tasked not only with preaching but with guiding his neighbors through life’s trials, delivering food to the poor, settling disputes, and maintaining the spiritual compass of the community.

Franklin’s mother, Mary Dearborn, came from one of the oldest colonial families in New England. The Dearborns had deep roots in New Hampshire, and her grandfather Moses French Sr. was a confirmed veteran of the Revolutionary War, serving with honor during the nation's founding struggle.

Such lineage, if confirmed, would have placed Mary within the proud tradition of families who claimed direct connection to the founding struggle of the United States. That pride, mingled with religious conviction, would shape the French family’s outlook: duty, hard work, and quiet patriotism.

Franklin grew up in a world still touched by the edge of wilderness. Mercer County, formally established just a generation earlier in 1800, was defined by rolling farmland, unpaved roads, and log cabins tucked into stands of oak and hickory.

Water-powered mills buzzed near streams, and families gathered on Sundays in modest churches that doubled as town halls. Town populations rarely exceeded 2,000; everyone knew everyone else, and a boy’s reputation could be made or ruined by a single act of character.

As a child, Franklin would have risen before dawn to help his father — splitting wood, tending to livestock, guiding a plow behind a mule. Winter chores meant hauling water, stacking firewood, and trudging through snow to attend church even when it meant crossing frozen fields. Faith was not optional — it was daily, public, and deeply personal.

The Second Great Awakening had swept through Pennsylvania in Franklin’s early years, reviving religious fervor and fueling movements like temperance, women’s education, and most notably, abolition.

Education came when and where it could. Many rural children, Franklin included, learned to read from the New England Primer and the Bible. Lessons were short, seasonal, and often dictated by the farm’s schedule. In one-room schoolhouses, boys and girls sat on benches and practiced penmanship on slates while a single teacher rotated between ages.

Those who could read, write, and cipher by age 12 were considered fortunate — and Franklin, born to literate parents, likely received more instruction than most.

By the 1830s, Franklin would have been aware — even as a teen — of the moral and political fires burning around him. Mercer County, while conservative in many respects, sat not far from Quaker enclaves and Underground Railroad routes. Slavery, though distant in practice, was hotly debated in pulpits and newspapers.

While we have no direct record of Franklin or his parents participating in abolitionist activity, the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1818 had already condemned slavery as a moral evil, and Joseph’s role as deacon would have required him to wrestle with the issue in church life.

Franklin likely heard stories of bounty hunters slipping into Pennsylvania, of runaway slaves sheltered in barns, and of preachers like Theodore Weld or Charles Finney whose words challenged silence.

Meanwhile, in Rome, Crawford County, about 30 miles northwest, Nancy Willard Cummings was born in 1825 into an even larger family. Her father, Samuel Cummings, was a farmer whose land yielded crops for subsistence and local sale. Her mother, Elizabeth Fisher, managed the household — a complex, never-ending enterprise.

Nancy was one of ten children, and by age six she was likely caring for younger siblings, stirring stew, and helping her mother preserve fruit in a cast-iron kettle over an open hearth.

Nancy’s early years were defined by domestic training. Rural girls like her were taught to sew, churn butter, spin wool, mend shoes, clean chamber pots, and preserve food. By age 12, she could probably bake bread without supervision, kill and pluck a chicken, and cut fabric to make her own clothes.

These were not occasional chores — they were survival skills, performed daily and without praise.

Yet education still found her. In the winter months, when farm labor eased and older siblings could babysit, Nancy likely walked to a nearby “dame school” — a local woman’s home converted into a classroom. There, she would have studied spelling, moral tales, and perhaps even basic geography.

If she showed promise, a traveling teacher or circuit preacher might have tutored her further, using letters and scripture to prepare her for a life not just of service, but of thought.

Nancy’s household, like Franklin’s, was also touched by the rising tide of moral reform. Crawford County had growing abolitionist sentiment by the 1830s, and it’s plausible that Elizabeth Fisher — raising a large brood in uncertain times — warned her children of the sin of slavery and the suffering of those caught in its grasp.

Though records are sparse, many farming women supported anti-slavery societies by sewing blankets, donating eggs, or attending lectures when they could get away from home.

While Franklin and Nancy would not meet until their early adulthood, their childhoods were remarkably parallel — rooted in duty, steeped in faith, and shaped by the moral questions swirling just outside their door.

In two counties shaped by hardship and hope, two children were being prepared for lives of sacrifice, resilience, and quiet leadership — and for the war-torn century that awaited them.

Here is the updated Chapter 2 of Franklin and Nancy’s biography, now reflecting their confirmed wedding date of May 7, 1842, along with a slight adjustment to seasonal and cultural detail to match the period and region.

Chapter 2: Binding Lives — Courtship, Marriage, and the Making of a Family (1840s–1850s)

The 1840s were years of young adulthood, nation-building, and quiet revolution. For Franklin B. French, now in his early twenties, the rhythms of childhood gave way to the responsibilities of manhood. His days were consumed by labor—clearing land, splitting rails, plowing under stubborn stubble, and storing winter feed.

Yet these were also years of restlessness. The nation was expanding rapidly—Texas had been annexed in 1845, the Mexican-American War loomed, and railroads were inching ever closer to the Pennsylvania frontier. In churches and public squares, people debated slavery, Manifest Destiny, and the price of land in Ohio.

But for Franklin, another question defined this decade: who would he marry?

Though records do not preserve the moment they met, it’s likely that Franklin first encountered Nancy Willard Cummings at a community gathering—a church revival, perhaps, or a harvest celebration that brought together families from Mercer and Rome.

In rural Pennsylvania, such occasions were often the only opportunity for young men and women to socialize beyond the confines of family and farm.

Nancy, five years younger than Franklin, had entered her marriageable years with the quiet confidence of a woman raised to endure. At twenty, she could sew a full wardrobe, prepare a meal for fifteen from scratch, and oversee the birth and burial of a calf without panic.

Her hands were calloused from labor, but her spirit had been tempered by song, scripture, and sisterhood. Like Franklin, she was the product of faith, family, and the land—traits far more valuable in a wife than wealth or beauty alone.

Courtship in the 1840s was an intentional affair. Young men would call upon women at their homes, sometimes walking miles to spend a Sunday afternoon with a prospective bride under the watchful eye of her parents.

Letters, if exchanged, were earnest and unadorned—filled with updates about harvests, scripture, or shared sorrow over a neighbor’s passing. It was less about romance and more about rhythm: could this person endure the same weather, raise the same children, honor the same Sabbath?

Franklin and Nancy married on May 7, 1842—a springtime wedding that marked the joining of two deeply rooted Pennsylvania families. The ceremony, likely held in a local church or in the home of Nancy’s parents, would have been plain but heartfelt. Nancy may have worn her best dress—dyed dark blue or brown and adorned with a modest lace collar.

Rings were rare among working families, and the true covenant was spoken with clasped hands and vows before God.

After the ceremony, a modest wedding meal was likely prepared by the women of both families: boiled ham, fresh bread, pickled vegetables, and pies filled with last autumn’s preserved apples. There may have been fiddle music played by a neighbor, but no dancing—especially if the French or Cummings families held stricter views on Sabbath joy.

As the sun set on that May evening, Franklin and Nancy began a life not of ease, but of shared work, faith, and perseverance.

Their first home was almost certainly a farmstead, either on land given by Franklin’s father or purchased from a retiring neighbor. It would have been simple: a single-story wood-frame house, with a loft above and a fieldstone chimney anchoring the parlor. The kitchen, warm from the hearth, smelled of cornbread, rendered lard, and boiled beans.

Water came from a hand-dug well. Lighting was by candle. Heat came from split oak. Every comfort was made, not bought.

Between 1844 and 1860, Franklin and Nancy brought at least seven children into the world:

● Charles (b. ~1844)

● William Sr. (b. ~1846)

● Josephine (b. ~1848)

● John (b. ~1850)

● Nancy Jr. (b. ~1852)

● Mary (b. ~1855)

● David (b. ~1859)

Each birth would have taken place at home, attended by Nancy’s mother or a neighboring midwife. There were no doctors unless things went terribly wrong. The risks were ever-present—hemorrhage, infection, infant death—but Nancy endured, body and spirit.

Between children, she ran the home, raised poultry, tended a kitchen garden, and taught her daughters to sew and read. Franklin, meanwhile, worked sunup to sundown, planting oats and barley, maintaining the barn, and helping build fences for neighbors in exchange for help during harvest.

Their faith remained central. Sundays were sacred. Dressed in their finest, the French family would travel by wagon to church—sometimes up to five miles away. Sermons warned of judgment but also spoke of grace, and hymns rang out in four-part harmony. Church was more than worship; it was community.

Baptisms, marriages, funerals—all passed through that wooden chapel with its potbelly stove and creaking pews.

And yet, these years were not untouched by fear. National debates over slavery reached their doorstep. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 inflamed tensions even in conservative corners of Pennsylvania.

Franklin, with his sense of justice and firm Christian ethics, likely stood among those who grumbled at the law’s cruelty, even if he never took direct action against it. Nancy, reading newspaper excerpts passed from neighbor to neighbor, would have wept at the thought of a mother losing her child to a Southern slave patrol.

By the end of the 1850s, the French family had grown, not only in number but in resilience. They had endured the loss of crops, the fevers of childhood, the coldest winters, and the slow ache of isolation. And they had done so not with fanfare, but with faith.

Their marriage was not flashy—it was forged like iron in the fire, hammered by work, bound by belief, and cooled in the waters of shared struggle.

They had built a home. They had built a family. And though they could not yet know it, they were about to be tested by a storm greater than anything they had faced before.

Excellent — here is the final revised Chapter 3 of Franklin B. French’s biography, integrating:

● The confirmed death of John E. French in 1862, before Franklin’s imprisonment

● The probable emotional impact on Franklin upon learning of it while still in service

● An imagined, historically grounded scene reflecting how he might have received the news

● The decline and death of Marcella after the war

● Realistic insight into Civil War correspondence delays and how Nancy likely endured long stretches of silence, with no formal notice of her husband’s capture or survival

Chapter 3: Through Fire and Silence — Franklin’s War (1861–1865)

On a frigid day in December 1861, Franklin B. French, age 41, left behind the rolling fields of Abbot, Maine, his wife Nancy, and their ten children to enlist as a musician in Company D of the 13th Maine Infantry.

At an age when most soldiers were fathers of fighting men, Franklin joined not for glory but duty, carrying with him not a rifle, but a drum — his signal and solace in a nation breaking apart.

He would go on to witness rebellion, emancipation, grief, captivity, and hunger. And for a time, his voice would vanish from the lives of those who waited for him.

Campaign in the Gulf: Slavery’s Collapse Up Close

By early 1862, Franklin and his regiment were stationed in Louisiana, part of the Union occupation following the fall of New Orleans. It was there that he likely witnessed something few Northerners ever saw: the real, desperate face of slavery.

Enslaved men and women fled plantations to seek protection behind Union lines, often barefoot, carrying infants, or clinging to scraps of hope. Some of these newly freed people were employed by the army — building fortifications, hauling supplies, digging latrines.

Franklin may have spoken with them as they passed through camp, listening to their stories while tuning his drum or practicing signals.

Some Union musicians were among the first to relay news of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in early 1863. Perhaps Franklin was one of them. “You’re free now, by the President’s order,” he might have said to a stunned man on the edge of camp. It was no speech — just the simple transmission of a truth long awaited.

Battle of Baton Rouge (August 5, 1862)

The 13th Maine’s first major engagement came on the banks of the Mississippi River.

● Union troops: ~2,500

● Confederate troops: ~4,000 under General John C. Breckinridge

● Duration: Several hours

● Casualties: ~400 Union, ~450 Confederate

● Result: Union held Baton Rouge

Franklin was likely behind the lines, delivering drum or bugle signals amidst volleys of musket fire and smoke-choked air. He may have helped stretcher-bearers move the wounded. The battle was brutal, and the dead were buried by sunset. It was his first true confrontation with death on a scale few civilians ever knew.

Grief from Afar: The Death of John

That same year, in the quiet autumn of 1862, John E. French, Franklin’s 17-year-old son, died at home. The cause is lost to time — perhaps fever, injury, or sudden illness. He was Nancy’s boy, a strong farmhand, and Franklin’s second-oldest son.

We don’t know exactly when Franklin received the news. But we can imagine it:

A letter arrives two weeks late. The paper is smudged. The handwriting, shaky. He reads it under a makeshift tent by lantern light. The words blur as he reads: “John passed…” His hands go still. He folds the page, holds it to his chest, and walks alone past sleeping men. There is no grave to stand at.

Only a southern sky above and damp earth beneath. He does not sleep that night. Only remembers.

Fort Esperanza and Brazos Island (1863–1864) Following their transfer, Franklin’s regiment boarded the overcrowded steamer Clinton. According to an eyewitness account: “The morning of October 23rd dawned dull and gloomy as the men boarded the new steamer Clinton, which was so badly crowded there wasn’t room for the men to lie down.

Most spent the night sitting up…” (IMG_20250419_0068.pdf) Upon landing at Brazos Island, they were greeted with brackish drinking water and dense fog. Marching blindly through the sand, they reached Boca Chica Pass where: “There was only one small boat available for the nearly six hundred men...

The water was only about three feet deep but the bottom was covered with sharp oyster shells and few escaped without cuts.” (IMG_20250419_0068.pdf) What followed was a punishing “dry march” of more than twenty miles: “...there was no water and no vegetation but scattered bunches of prickly pear...

the men suffered the torture of thirst.” (IMG_20250419_0068.pdf)

After continued patrols, the regiment was transferred to Fort Esperanza, Texas — a remote Confederate fort on Matagorda Island. The fort was seized in late November 1863.

● Troops involved: ~2,300 combined

● Combat: Minimal, mostly skirmishes

● Result: Union victory

Conditions were severe — men camped on swampy beaches, built earthworks in freezing wind, and watched morale sink with each passing day. Franklin, older than most, would have stood apart by endurance alone.

From there, they were sent to Brazos Santiago, a windswept barrier island. It was here, or in the weeks following, that Franklin was captured — possibly during a supply run or coastal patrol.

The March to Camp Ford (Spring 1864) The route to captivity was not only long, but brutal. Franklin and his fellow prisoners were marched over 200 miles with little food or rest. Many were barefoot, drinking from puddles along the way. The wounded were left behind. This trek left men starved and broken by the time they reached Camp Ford.

Franklin’s captors forced him — and dozens of others — to march over 200 miles through the backcountry of eastern Texas, a journey that took up to three weeks. There were no wagons. Little food. No shoes for many. They walked until their legs gave out or until the guards whipped them forward again.

Franklin likely shared moldy cornbread with strangers, drank from muddy ditches, and watched men fall behind, never to rise again.

Camp Ford: Survival Behind Walls Conditions at Camp Ford initially allowed for some structure, but quickly worsened. A 1911 account confirms: “The prisoners here were an ingenious lot...

slaughtered the cattle for their own food; and from the hooves and horns they made effective combs, and carved beautiful sets of checkers and chessmen.” (IMG_20250419_0089.pdf) When the guards learned of the fall of Richmond: “They went to their homes, leaving the prisoners almost without supervision to make their way to New Orleans.”

(IMG_20250419_0089.pdf)

When Franklin arrived at Camp Ford, outside Tyler, Texas, he entered a nightmare. It was the largest Confederate prison west of the Mississippi, holding over 5,000 prisoners at its peak.

● No shelter: Prisoners had to build their own cabins from saplings, clay, and scraps of clothing

● Daily rations: Cornmeal, occasional pork, often spoiled

● Sanitation: Nearly nonexistent — disease ran rampant

● Medical care: None

● Duration of captivity: Estimated 6 to 8 months

Franklin likely shared a dirt-floor hut with four or five men, huddled for warmth at night. Inmates sang hymns, bartered tin cups for bread, carved chess pieces from bones. He may have lost weight rapidly. His eyes became sunken. He aged ten years in a single season.

Silence at Home

Nancy’s last letter to Franklin may have arrived months before his capture. After that, no letters came back. The mail was censored, infrequent, or completely blocked. Nancy would have continued writing — news of crops, of the children, of sorrow.

But no notice came from the Army, no formal message of his capture. Just silence. She may have read a brief line in the paper: “Maine regiment suffered losses near Brownsville.” She would not know if her husband was alive, wounded, or buried in an unmarked trench.

She buried John alone in 1862.

And in the final year of the war, her daughter Marcella, just 24, fell ill. Whether consumption, infection, or grief—she too faded. By the time Franklin returned, she had only months to live.

Return and Recognition (Spring–Fall 1865)

In spring 1865, Franklin was released — likely part of the prisoner exchange or after the final Confederate collapse in Texas. He boarded steamers and trains north, pausing at military hospitals for food and rest.

He arrived home in May or June 1865, unannounced.

Nancy opened the door and did not recognize him at first. His cheeks were hollow. He had no drum, no uniform worth keeping, just the remnants of a haversack and a worn letter folded in his shirt. She pulled him inside. He collapsed in her arms.*

He was officially discharged September 14, 1865. The war had ended. But so had part of him. In 1881, Franklin filed a General Affidavit stating he was: “...now disabled from manual labor by reason of wounds and service to the United States.” (IMG_20250419_0036.pdf) That same year, he appointed Clinton W. Burnell of Washington, D.C.

to act as his pension attorney. (IMG_20250419_0040.pdf)

He had left with ten children. He returned to find nine, and one fading fast. He and Nancy would never forget the war — not the battles, not the silence, not the homecomings shaped by absence and endurance.

Here is the Epilogue to the biography of Franklin B. French and Nancy Willard Cummings, bringing their story to a close with clarity, respect, and reflection. It concludes the five-chapter narrative with their passing and the lasting imprint of their lives.

Chapter 4: Life After War — Rebuilding and Bearing Witness (1865–1890s)

When Franklin B. French returned to Abbot, Maine in 1865, the war was over, but its impact endured. He had been gone four years — serving with the 13th Maine Infantry as a musician, surviving disease, battles, and captivity. Two children had died during his absence.

His wife Nancy, who had managed the household in silence and uncertainty, barely recognized the man who returned to her.

Franklin resumed life without ceremony. He was officially discharged in September 1865, and returned to the land, the family, and the familiar labor of daily survival in rural Maine.

The 1860s–1870s: Rebuilding from Loss

In his mid-40s, Franklin returned to a household that had endured absence and grief. He worked the land again — farming, repairing, and likely supplementing with work in town. His children were now older, some beginning families of their own.

Nationally, the country was navigating Reconstruction. Though far from the Southern conflict zones, Maine was not untouched. Franklin, having seen slavery firsthand in Louisiana and Texas, may have followed the debates in Washington closely, reading news aloud at the table as children listened.

By his 50s, Franklin had lived through the invention of the telegraph, the rise of steam travel, and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. The world was moving faster.

The 1880s: The Rise of the Modern Age

As he entered his 60s, Franklin witnessed the early signs of the modern world:

● Electric lighting began appearing in cities like Portland

● Telephones were patented and demonstrated — still rare in Abbot, but gaining ground

● Typewriters and bicycles became common

● Veterans’ organizations like the G.A.R. began formalizing Decoration Day traditions, and Franklin likely participated locally, as so many Union veterans did

He stayed rooted to the land but could not ignore the shift. The once-silent country had begun to buzz.

The 1890s: Adapting with the Times

Now in his 70s, Franklin applied for and was granted a pension for his Civil War service, under certificate #213459 .

The world around him continued to evolve:

● Electricity lit Main Streets across New England

● Streetcars and long-distance rail brought people and goods into places once isolated

● Phonographs carried music into homes without musicians

● Newsprint and catalogues began to arrive more quickly and frequently

Franklin remained active in his routines, even as the world around him began to change dramatically.

Chapter 5: Legacy in Motion — The Final Decades (1900–1912)

At the dawn of the 20th century, Franklin stood as one of Abbot’s oldest living veterans — a man who had lived before the steam engine reached Maine and now watched the rise of automobiles and motion pictures.

Bringing the Telephone to Abbot

In 1904, at age 84, Franklin signed a local petition to bring telephone lines to Abbot — a forward-looking gesture that placed him among the small group of residents advocating for modern communication in the town. Though he never owned a phone himself, the act reflected his willingness to embrace the future — even in his ninth decade.

The 1905 Photo and a Military Legacy

A photograph taken around 1905 captures Franklin and Nancy standing in front of their home. He stands with arms crossed, worn but resolute. Nancy, wearing a white apron, stands beside him. In the background is a young boy — likely William Franklin Dunn Sr., their grandson, who would go on to fight in World War I.

That boy’s son would fight in World War II, and his grandson in Korea, continuing a legacy of service that began when Franklin first picked up a drum in 1861.

Community Admiration and Enduring Routine

That same year, a newspaper article noted Franklin’s remarkable health. At age 84, he was still walking over a mile to work each day, even as Nancy was described as frail and housebound. The article quietly honored a life of persistence — not heroics, but routine, the kind of endurance that marked Franklin’s generation.

Witness to a Century

Franklin lived through the following transformations:

● In his 30s: the expansion of railroads, the rise of abolitionism, the outbreak of the Civil War

● In his 40s: the fall of slavery, Reconstruction, and his own return from war

● In his 50s: the growth of national industry, the first streetcars, early electric light

● In his 60s: the arrival of telephones, typewriters, and national veterans’ celebrations

● In his 70s: widespread electrification, organized labor movements, pensions for aging soldiers

● In his 80s: automobiles, aviation experiments, motion pictures, and long-distance communication

Though rooted in Abbot, he was never detached. He read, signed petitions, participated in civic life, and passed on stories that would define a family’s memory.

Epilogue: Rest and Remembrance

In the final years of his life, Franklin B. French moved more slowly. His hearing faded, his eyesight dimmed, and his walks into town became less frequent. Yet his mind remained sharp. Neighbors still greeted him with quiet respect.

Children — grandchildren and great-grandchildren — came and went, growing into adults as Franklin took his place as the family’s quiet patriarch.

His wife, Nancy Willard Cummings French, had stood beside him for more than six decades. She had married him in 1842, raised ten children with him, endured his absence through war, and outlived two of their children herself.

In her final years, she grew frail, but remained mentally present — a woman remembered for her calm strength and enduring loyalty.

In October 1908, Nancy passed away at the age of 87. She was buried in Abbot Village Cemetery, where two of their children, John and Marcella, had already been laid to rest. Her grave was marked with a simple stone — her life measured not in fame or wealth, but in faith and perseverance.

Franklin lived nearly four more years without her.

He died on May 25, 1912, at the age of 91, after a lifetime that had spanned the presidencies of James Monroe to William Howard Taft, the rise and fall of slavery, and the transformation of the United States from a young republic to a global industrial power.

He was buried on May 28, beside Nancy, beneath a clean white marker bearing his name and regiment:

Private, Musician, Co. D, 13th Maine Infantry

A veteran’s flag was placed at his head. The town had not forgotten.

Franklin’s legacy lives in the records — enlistment logs, pension filings, census entries — but it also lives in memory. In a photograph taken in 1905, he stands upright, arms crossed, with Nancy beside him and a young boy behind him — William Franklin Dunn Sr., who would fight in the First World War.

His son and grandson would follow that path in World War II and Korea.

Through them — and through the family that gathered in 1902 for the French reunion — Franklin and Nancy’s story carries forward. It is written in shared names, weathered stones, yellowed documents, and family traditions passed from one century to the next.

They lived quietly but fully. They endured tragedy but kept going. They watched the world change — and helped shape the generations that would inherit it.

And in the town where they had loved, waited, worked, and forgiven — they are still there.

Together.