Historic leaves, volume 2, April, 1903 - January, 1904

[13] escaped with him from France. There is no record of the mother of these children, and doubtless she died either in France or soon after reaching America. In 1702 we find that Jean purchased ten acres of land in Somerville of Jonathan Fosket, and proceeded to erect the old mill now known as the Powder House.

It is commonly believed that at this time occurred the marriage of Jean Mallet and Jane Lyrion, and that she died, and in 1712 he married Ann Mico. This I believe to be a mistake. Old Jean was then about sixty years old, and had evidently seen many hardships in life. Everything points to the fact that he built the mill to establish his two sons, Andrew and Louis, in business, they having been brought up as millers. His son John, evidently the eldest, and whom he mentions in his will as having started in life, I believe to have been that John who was a shopkeeper in Boston, and whose will was probated in Boston in 1741, and that he is the John who married Jane Lyrion, Ann Mico, and later Elizabeth Makerwhit, who survived him.

I have mentioned a John Mallet who married Johannah Larion in Fairfield, Conn. This Johannah Larion had a brother Louis, who was a refugee and settled in Milford, Conn. He became very wealthy, and, dying at a good old age, left a generous bequest to the French church in Boston, and also to the one at New Rochelle, N. Y. I believe Jane Lyrion, who married John Mallet, of Boston, to have been a younger sister of Louis and Johannah, and that her husband was a cousin of the Fairfield Mallet.

A homestead was built near the old mill, and old Jean probably removed here with his son Andrew and daughters Mary and Elizabeth. His son Matthew (who is also mentioned as being of Stratford, Conn., thus further proving kinship with the Connecticut branch) married at Cambridge in 1703 Abigail Linn. For some time they lived at the old mill, the family still retaining their interest in the French church in Boston, of which Jean still served as elder. This church was held in the Latin schoolhouse situated on School street, on the site now covered by a portion of King's Chapel, and down to the statue of Franklin in front of the city hall. Here the French Protestants worshipped for about thirty