American Acorns

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John Conant of Brandon, Vermont: a mill owner who kept the family's story

The fullest version of the Oak family's story of its cabin-boy ancestor, printed in the 1906 family register, is attributed to John Conant, who had it from his mother and uncles. He was not an Oak by surname: he was Nathaniel Oak's great-grandson through his mother, Lydia Oaks. How his note has come down to us is told with the cabin-boy tradition. Here is the rest of his life.

Conant was born February 2, 1773, a native of Ashburnham, Massachusetts. He trained as a carpenter and joiner, and came to the town of Brandon, Vermont, in 1790. On December 23, 1796, he bought half the village's mill and water power from Simeon King and Joseph Hawley; by later purchases he came to own all of it. He built the stone grist mill in 1816, still standing at the head of the falls sixty years later, the brick mill below it in 1839, and in 1820 a furnace, long known as "Conant's Furnace," which the centennial history of Brandon printed in the Black River Gazette in 1876 credits with the village's growth and prosperity.

He took a public role in the town: he represented Brandon in the Vermont General Assembly, served as selectman and justice of the peace for many years, was the village's first postmaster after the office moved there (holding it until 1820), and was an elector in the 1840 presidential election. He was a Baptist deacon, "long an efficient member," who grew more liberal toward other evangelical Christians in later years; he bore much of the cost of building Brandon's Baptist church and its academy.

He married twice. At Ashburnham he married Chara, daughter of Wait Broughton, in December 1793 according to the Brandon history (the 1887 Conant genealogy gives November 19, 1794). They had nine children, all but one surviving him, before she died on December 12, 1851. About two years later he married Mrs. C. Phillips Bowman of Chicago, who outlived him. In 1823 he took two of his sons, Chauncey W. and John A., into the firm "John Conant & Sons," which ran the furnace, store and other branches for years afterward.

He died at Brandon on June 30, probably in 1856. The Gazette's centennial history gives 1857, and the 1887 Conant family genealogy, which cites that history, gives 1856. The Gazette's own figure for his age is partly unreadable on the copies read; if it reads "in his 84th year," it points to 1856, since a man born February 2, 1773 was in his 84th year in June 1856. Born on February 2, 1773, he was in his 84th year, aged eighty-three, in June 1856; by June 1857 he would have been in his 85th. A notice in the Vermont Chronicle of July 22, 1856 reports his death at Brandon on "30th ult.," "in the 84th year of his age."

His son carried the name forward

By 1876, his son John A. Conant was president of Brandon National Bank, had served in the Vermont legislature and as sheriff of Rutland County, and was a director of the Rutland Railroad for eight years, putting over $100,000 into it. He was president of the day for Brandon's centennial Fourth of July celebration that year. Conant Square, a street in Brandon, is named for the family.

About the evidence

Conant's birth, trade, arrival, marriages and public offices come from "Brandon: From Its Settlement to the Present Day," printed in the Black River Gazette (Ludlow, Vermont) on July 4, 1876, itself drawing on an earlier gazetteer of the county and on proof sheets checked with people who knew the town. The 1887 Conant genealogy cites the same Gazette issue but gives a different year for his death and a different date for his first marriage. How he came to be linked to the Oak family, as the man to whom the cabin-boy note is attributed, is told in Nathaniel Oak and the cabin-boy story.

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