Bound by the Soil of Canterbury:
The Lives of May Dearborn and Angie French
By Sue Russell, Historic Canterbury Women’s Committee
In the rural landscape of 19th-century Canterbury, New Hampshire, the lives of Mary “May” F. Dearborn and Sarah “Angie” French are intertwined through shared roots, and the exchange of the very land beneath their feet. Though their paths diverged—one seeking the cutting edge of medicine in the bustling streets of New York, the other quietly anchoring herself as an independent landowner in the town of her birth—both women carved out remarkable narratives of independence in an era heavily dominated by men.
In the mid-19th century, the West Road School District of Canterbury, New Hampshire, was defined by its sprawling family farms and the rigid, patriarchal traditions of New England land ownership. It was a world where a woman’s security was almost entirely dependent on her relationship to a father, brother, or husband.
The Lineage of Sarah Angie French:
Sarah Angie French was born on October 5, 1862, in Canterbury. Her lineage deeply connected two prominent local names: the Frenches and the Cloughs.
Her mother, Sarah Greenough Clough, belonged to a long line of Canterbury Cloughs tracing directly back to John Clough, a Puritan immigrant who arrived in Boston on the ship Elizabeth in 1635. Her father, Henry Augustus Langdon French, served as a 1st Lieutenant in Company F of the 12th New Hampshire Volunteers during the Civil War.
Tragedy struck Angie’s infancy. Her mother passed away on March 11, 1863, when Angie was only a few months old. Just months later, on July 2, 1863, her father was killed at the Battle of Gettysburg. Orphaned, the infant Angie was taken in by her maternal grandparents, Captain Thomas Clough and Hannah H. Hazeltine. Captain Thomas Clough officially stepped in as her legal guardian, raising her on the historic Clough Tavern Farm alongside her uncle Philip C. Clough.
Angie attended Center School until about the age of 14 years (Archives – Canterbury Historical Society).
The Lineage of Mary “May” Dearborn:
Born May 1, 1856 in Canterbury to John Dearborn and Emily Blake, May Dearborn grew up navigating her own family hardships. The Dearborn families are abundant in the founding of Northfield (originally part of Canterbury) and their roots go back to Hampton, N.H.
Her father passed away December 24th 1860 in a tragic railroad accident in Laconia, N.H. In the census of June 1860 May was just 4 years. Research is unable to reveal what May’s childhood was like or where she lived (tried as I may for hours/days).
May was the granddaughter of Tristram and Betsey (Glover) Dearborn, who built the house at 237 Old Tilton Road. When Tristram passed away, his will favored male heirs, leaving May and her female cousin Linnie Avery entirely out of the inheritance. Despite inheriting nothing from her grandparents directly, May possessed an independent spirit.
Divergent Paths: How Each Lived Out Their Lives
As the 19th century drew to a close, both women achieved exceptional feats of autonomy, though in entirely different spheres.
Angie French: A Pioneer in Medicine
Sarah Angie French, was forging her own path of fierce independence. Bypassing traditional expectations, Angie pursued an advanced education, ultimately breaking into the male-dominated medical profession to become Dr. Angie French Battey.
Angie left New Hampshire to pursue higher education, entering a medical field that was not usually open to women. She graduated from The Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary in 1887.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in America to receive a medical degree and practice medicine professionally, established a medical college that was years ahead of its time. The institution was renowned for implementing a rigorous three-year curriculum and establishing a college-affiliated hospital long before many elite, male-only universities followed suit.
Students at the college, such as Angie, were required to complete mandatory house calls in Manhattan’s poorest tenements. This early iteration of social medicine taught students the vital skill of treating patients within their own home environments. True to the college’s founding philosophy, Hygiene and Preventive Medicine were not treated as afterthoughts; they were foundational, heavily tested scientific disciplines. (You can read more about Dr. Blackwell’s pioneering work here.)
Practicing medicine as a woman in the late 19th century was a radical, pioneering act. Angie cemented her professional standing by joining the New York County Medical Society (1888) and the New York Medico-Legal Society (1888), eventually gaining entry into the prestigious New York Academy of Medicine in 1891. She was—and remains—a truly remarkable figure.
On September 1, 1894, she married Dr. Sumter Beauregard Battey, a fellow physician. The couple remained in New York, raising two children, Bryan and Rosalind. Angie spent the rest of her life in the city, breaking barriers in healthcare until her death on July 26, 1917.
May Dearborn: The Independent Mill Worker and Homesteader
Franklin in the 1880s was a powerhouse of water-driven textile innovation. For the young women who flocked there, the hosiery mills were grueling, demanding eleven hours of labor a day amidst the deafening roar of mechanical looms. Yet, for May, the mills represented something revolutionary: a steady wage paid directly into her own hands.
By 1880, as a 24-year-old single woman, May was recorded living as a boarder in Franklin, New Hampshire, working in a local hosiery mill to support herself. The census lists many boarders in the same dwelling who worked in the mills in the town called, “Village of Franklin Falls”. One of these boarders was May Dearborn and another Charles W. Sanborn, whom you will encounter later in May’s life. Most likely this was the Sulloway Hosiery Mill on River Street in Franklin, N.H. By the 1880s, the mill employed about 100 workers and produced 300 dozen pairs of men’s and boys’ socks every single day.
Today the buildings have been transformed into a vast apartment complex.
May Dearborn Expands Her Land Holdings
In 1885, a young independent woman begins her land acquisitions of her grandparent’s home, the Dearborn Homestead on Tilton Road, and expands her land holdings. May was at the time living in Tilton.
A strange transfer of land through wills, deeds, probate and public auctions!
May’s grandmother, Betsey Glover had willed the Dearborn Homestead in 1881 to her husband Tristram. After his death in 1885, he passed his property to his son, Robert Foss Dearborn, named him executor, and to his grandson, Joseph McDaniels.
We can speculate that May visited her grandparents at the Dearborn Homestead growing up.
On July 8th 1885, at a public auction Robert Dearborn (son of Tristram and Betsey Dearborn) sold the 11-acre homestead to Philip C. Clough for $315.00.
Immediately after on August 19th 1885, Philip C. Clough (Angie French’s uncle) sold the homestead to Mary (May) F. Dearborn of Tilton for the exact price of $315.00!
Why did May’s uncle, Robert Dearborn, executor, not just sell the homestead directly to May?
Why did the transaction happen this way with deeds changing hands in a month’s time?
Here remains the mystery as to how May obtained that sum of money at the age of 29. Did she save from her years of working at the hosiery mill? Working as a mill worker in a Franklin hosiery mill in the 1880s provided a steady but meager living. Workers were paid low wages, typically between $6 and $12 per week. While this afforded basic survival, it would have been difficult to save money.
Did she inherit money from her father’s estate or a settlement from his railroad accident?
This is a likely scenario. In 1885, banks rarely granted mortgages to unmarried women, and her uncle likely needed the full $315 in cash. He made a decision to sell the family homestead and remain in Boscawen as a farmer with his wife and child. May, his niece, wanted the land but didn’t have $315 in upfront cash. The solution is Angie’s uncle stepped in as a private bank. Phillip Clough paid Robert $315 cash which we assume he needed. Within the month, Phillip Clough transferred the deed to the May, an unmarried woman, for $315. On paper, it looks like a cash sale, but behind the scenes, May and Angie’s uncle, Phillip Clough – a wealthy man with land holdings of his own – would have a private promissory note. She took ownership of the 11 acres immediately and may have paid back the loan in small monthly or yearly installments.
Sound good to you?
May was able to move back to her birth place, Canterbury, living in the home where her father was born and where her grandparents lived until their deaths.
Angie French—who had moved to New York—decided to part with her own land holding in Canterbury. This specific plot bordered the northern side of May’s existing property along the highway.
On July 7th 1886, the paths of the two independent women converged. Living as an unmarried woman in New York, Angie utilized her legal status as a *feme sole* (a single woman with full rights to manage property without a male guardian) to sell the 11-acre tract to May Dearborn for $101.02. The legal boundaries of the deed tied the property to the easterly side of the highway (now Old Tilton Road), marking the northernmost corner of an adjacent 8-acre parcel May had purchased from Philip C. Clough just a year prior. The old cellar hole on the French parcel could possibly have been the foundation for a tenant/renter. That is a whole other adventure!
This transaction was only the beginning of May’s decades-long plan of acquiring good farm land and buildings for animals. May began buying out neighboring parcels.
On December 12, 1890, May expanded her borders further by purchasing a contiguous 5-acre tract from Charles Clough for $156.00, anchoring her northern and eastern flanks.
Then came her ultimate purchase. On May 10, 1893, May purchased a large 20-acre tract from Willis Buxton for $110.00. Formerly called the “Thomas Clough Pasture”. The Buxton tract was bisected cleanly by the main thoroughfare, giving May commercial and physical control of both sides of the highway or what is now Old Tilton Rd. This pasture was possibly used for grazing for May’s cows. There are tell-tale old trails that ran between the barn and the pasture.
By 1903, following a final minor quarter-acre boundary adjustment with her cousin Linnie Avery to settle a property line, May Dearborn had stitched together a cohesive 44 ¼-acre agricultural operation in the span of just 8 years.
For the next three decades, May lived and worked as an independent, single person on her farm. Her house sat proudly along what was then the primary regional highway connecting Canterbury Center northward to the industrial centers of Tilton and Northfield.
Censuses and directories show that Charles W. Sanborn, friend from their days as hosiery workers in Franklin, came to live with May in Canterbury. He is listed in the 1910 Census as a boarder with an occupation as a spinner in hosiery mill. Directories for the Town of Canterbury have him listed for the next 10 years as a farmer in the same home as May.
May broke social boundaries at home by living strictly on her own terms by staying single and living with a dear friend and companion until her death. Town directories consistently listed her as an independent resident living on Tilton Road, two miles from the town center. Though a 1920 census taker mistakenly categorized her as a widow, records confirm that May never married and remained single her entire life. She managed her farm, grew her estate, and operated as a respected, self-sufficient woman farmer in the Canterbury community.
However, as the 20th century dawned, the landscape began to change around her. The rise of the automobile demanded straighter, wider, and more direct state roads. The town eventually paved a parallel route to the west—the highway known today as Route 132. The winding, historic loop of road where May had built her life was bypassed by modern progress. Old regional maps that once listed her homestead as a vital marker on the “Tilton Road” were updated. The bypassed loop fell into quiet isolation, formally renamed “Old Tilton Road.”
The Final Deed: Charles Sanborn and May’s Legacy
When May felt her health failing due to intestinal cancer, she ensured that the land she spent her lifetime accumulating would be protected.
May’s will bequeath her entire built-up homestead—including the 11 acres she had purchased from Angie French so long ago—directly to Charles W. Sanborn.
May passed away on January 8, 1922, at the age of 65, and was laid to rest in Canterbury’s Center Cemetery. True to her wishes, Charles Sanborn inherited the property, holding onto it until his own passing April 1929. On April 9, 1931, the executors of Sanborn’s estate officially sold the historic “Dearborn Homestead” to Nelson and Helen Bosley. Charles is buried with May in Canterbury’s Center Cemetery.
Look closely at the four gravestones lined up side by side.
May Dearborn and Charles Dearborn share the same style and design of gravestone. May on the left and Charles to the right near the tree. While May’s parents, John and Emily Dearborn, rest beneath matching, simple markers between the two. How they all came to be resting together remains a mystery.
Today, the quiet canopy of Old Tilton Road hides the stone cellar holes of the families who once tamed the New Hampshire wilderness. Among them sits the buildings of May’s farm—a silent, enduring monument to a woman who refused to be denied her heritage.
The old Dearborn Homestead is the current home of Brian Braskie and Lenore Howe, 237 Old Tilton Rd. Lenore has provided extensive research of the homestead. Another cellar hole at 259 Old Tilton Rd. on the land owned by Angie French and sold to May Dearborn still remains a mystery but as with all cellar holes this was once a home with people living out their lives on this wonderful still dirt road that was bustling with farms, schools, mills and so much history!
Additional Read:
The story of Henry French’s death at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, is told by Sarah A. (Garland) Emery—wife of Charles Emery of Canterbury and a close friend of Henry. On the night of July 1st, Henry visited Sarah in a dream. It is a chilling, heartbreaking account of two friends who fought side by side through many battles in the 12th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
In August 1862, Henry A. L. French and Charles S. Emery, childhood friends and former neighborhood schoolmates, enlisted together in Company F of the 12th New Hampshire Volunteers. Both men left behind young wives in Canterbury: Sarah Garland Emery and Sarah Greenough Clough French. Here is the account of the dream as retold by Sarah Emery.
THE STORY OF THE NIGHT BEFORE GETTYBURG
Sue Russell – Introduction
This is the story of the night before Gettysburg, as told by Sarah A. (Garland) Emery, wife of Charles Emery of Canterbury, New Hampshire. That night, Henry French visited Sarah in a dream. It is a chilling, heartbreaking account of two friends who fought side by side through many battles in the 12th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
Both of these brave men ultimately sacrificed their lives for freedom. Charles succumbed to wounds received at the Battle of Cold Harbor, passing away after his wife, Sarah Emery, spent two months by his hospital bedside. Henry French had been able to take a short furlough to see his wife, Sarah Greenough (Clough) French, and their new baby girl. Tragically, just before the Battle of Gettysburg, his wife passed away. Henry was then killed instantly on July 2, 1863, leaving their 10-month-old daughter, Angie French, an orphan. She would go on to be raised by her grandparents, Thomas and Hannah Clough of Canterbury.
Following is the dream taken from pages 346-348.
Historian Twelfth Regiment Association Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion: by Asa W Bartlett. Published by Ira C. Evans, Printer, Concord, N.H., 1897. The book is on Amazon and in Internet Archives. https://archive.org/details/historyoftwelfth00bart
The photos of Henry French and Charles Emery come from the book.
“Did you have any presentiment of his death?” was the question asked by the writer of the widow of Lieut. Charles S. Emery who received his death wounds at the battle of Cold Harbor. With a quick and frightened look, accompanied by a sudden movement that startled the questioner, came the quick inquiry, “Why do you ask?” and then, after mutual explanation which brought out the reason of her surprise at being so unexpectedly asked a question concerning so strange and thrilling an experience that no mortal being ever knew or heard of but herself, she related for the first time in her life the following remarkable and mysterious chapter in her sad history, which is here given very nearly in her own words:
It was the night before the battle of Gettysburg, a night never to be forgotten by me, that I had the strange dream, or vision, for it did not seem like a dream, that told me plainer than tongue or pen, and as unmistakably as my own eyes, the fate that awaited my husband and his brother comrade, Lieutenant French.
They were, as perhaps you know, schoolmates together, and enlisted from the same neighborhood. I was then stopping here in Loudon with my own folks, and though expecting from newspaper reports that a battle would be fought in a few days, did not know that the two great armies were rapidly concentrating at Gettysburg, and that advanced forces were already engaged on that historic field. I therefore retired that night with nothing more than usual to worry or excite me. Here the narrator gives a general description of the house, the arrangement of the hallway and rooms on the first floor, as well as the chambers, in one of which she alone slept. Sometime during the night, I heard, as I thought, three or four plain and distinct raps on the outside of the front door. Changing my first impulse to arouse the other inmates of the house, I decided not to disturb them, as they gave no sound of being awake, but to answer the summons myself. Hastily dressing, I took the lamp I had lighted in my hand, and descending the front stairs unlocked and opened the door.
There, sad, solemn, and silent, but in perfect life like form, countenance, and attitude, and in full dress uniform, stood Lieut. HENRY FRENCH!
I spoke and extended my hand, but without heeding either, he passed in by me through the hallway into the sitting-room, the door of which he opened and closed after him. For the first time a feeling of dread chilled through my veins, and I hesitated to follow. But something stronger than my fears impelled me forward, and opening the door just closed, I entered the room after him.
Here, in the middle of the room, I saw two coffins, both open and empty, as I first thought, but upon approaching nearer I noticed that only one was empty, while the other held what now seemed the pale face and lifeless form of him who but a minute before stood and moved in life and strength before me. As I gazed upon the empty coffin, a small stream of blood ran out of the foot of it, and fell upon the floor, and something seemed to say: “This is for Charles who, too, must give his life’s blood for his country, but his time has not come yet.”
Was I afraid, do you ask, and terror-stricken at the sight as I would have been if all had been as real as it seemed? No; the vague feeling of dread and apprehension that I remember to have possessed me before entering the sitting room, prepared me for the scene within, and changed to sadness and grief as the meaning of the vision was made known to me.
When I awoke the next morning, either from sleep or a trance, it all seemed so real and so little like a dream, that I lay for a long time, scarcely daring to believe that I was once more on the conscious side of the dividing line; and from that time to this have never been quite able to decide whether I actually got up and went to the door and rooms that night or not.
Having at length convinced myself that I was still in the flesh and rational, I arose before any others of the household were up, and it being not yet late enough to see well about the house without a light, I dared not go into the sitting room, but went to the front door and found it fastened. In answer to inquiries from the family, I told them that I awoke much earlier than usual and was unable to sleep again for thinking of the great battle that had just been fought; that Lieutenant FRENCH had been killed, and many others of his regiment, but Charles (meaning my husband) was as yet safe, or at least alive, and I should see him again if he was wounded.
To the many other questions of how I knew, if I had a dream, etc., I made little or no reply, except to reassert my conviction of the truth of what I had told them; and I further remarked that probably Mr.___ (one of the neighbors who usually went to the village or city every day when anything of importance was expected from the army, and therefore the first to get any news therefrom) would be in during the day and confirm my statement.
As the forenoon wore away my anxiety to hear from the front increased; not that I doubted in the least the truth of my prediction, but that I wanted the rest of the family to be assured that I was not mistaken, and to know myself such additional particulars as the newspapers might give. Before noon Mr.___ was seen coming over across the fields, and soon we were all eager listeners to the news he brought. He told of the great battle that had been fought, of the death of Lieutenant FRENCH and twenty or thirty others of the Twelfth Regiment, but thought my husband was all right, because his name was not in the list of killed or wounded. A day or two later and a letter from his own hand left no longer room for doubt that he had passed through the terrible carnage unscathed.
With such news to encourage and cheer me, my folks could not understand why I still continued sad, gloomy, and despondent. At first, they attributed it’ to the untimely fall of our early friend and schoolmate, Lieutenant FRENCH, but seeing no change as the days went by, they thought that I must be sick, as indeed I was, but it was a disease of the heart that no medicine could reach, and the cause of which they little knew. My husband was alive and well, but the empty coffin was constantly before me, and there was but little more doubt in my mind for whom it remained open, than there was whom I saw in the other one.
Thus, the fall and the winter came and went, and in the spring the regiment, as you know, joined the forces under General Butler, and was engaged in several of the battles and skirmishes between Petersburg and Richmond. Through them all my husband safely went, and I had almost begun to hope that I was mistaken in the interpretation of my vision when a letter from my husband informed me that the Eighteenth Corps, in which was his regiment, had been ordered by transports to White House Landing, whence it was then on the march to reinforce the Army of the Potomac under General Grant.
I now seemed to anticipate afresh that the sad end, so long delayed, was soon to come; and a nervous feeling of impending danger too plainly told me that the worst was about to be realized. A few days later and I received another and the last letter ever written by him for whose safe return I had so long waited and prayed in vain. It was written on the night and in the early morning before the terrible charge of Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864.
He had commenced the letter on the evening of the second and wrote that the morrow would again bring carnage and death into the ranks of the Twelfth, and that he felt that he should not again be among the lucky few who would escape unharmed. About midnight he wrote again, saying he was sure he should fall, but whether he should be killed on the field or receive his mortal wound he could not tell. Toward morning, and but a short time before the charge, he finished the letter, stating that in answer to his prayers he had then the assurance that although the bitter cup must be drunk for the redemption of his country, as his great Captain had drunk his for the redemption of the world, yet he should not be killed outright, but should live to see me once more at least before he died.
This was enough, for I knew his presentiment must prove true, and with a hasty preparation I immediately started for Washington and found my husband there in one of the large hospitals, prostrate and weak from the nervous shock and loss of blood from two severe wounds, one in his left arm and the other in his right thigh.
Now followed days and nights of watching and praying, while life and death seemed balancing in the scales, until at last the physicians spoke encouragingly, and thought the danger well-nigh passed. His arm had been taken oft’, and the stump was healing so well that he, too, was beginning to entertain strong hopes of final recovery and the enjoyment of many happy days with me in our pleasant cottage home.
We had talked over our trials in the past and our hopes for the future; he had told me of the battles he had been in, and of his narrow escapes; and several times spoke of the great battle of Gettysburg, and the death of Lieutenant French, and of how he had saved the national colors of his regiment from capture in that battle. When told that I had never before heard anything about his saving the flag, he seemed surprised, and wondered that Adjutant Heath, who went, you know, from the same town, had never written home about it.
He then related to me briefly the circumstances and said: “If I should not live to get home, Heath, I have no doubt, will make known the facts about it and see that full justice is done me.” He also talked to me freely all about the strange premonition he had the night before he was wounded, how deeply it impressed him, and how glad and thankful he was and ought to be that he was not killed, like so many of the brave boys around him, but was still alive with the chances daily increasing of his seeing his native hills once more, and there living to enjoy the blessings of peace which he had given his own blood and limbs to secure.
During all this time, nearly two months, I said nothing of my own warning more than a year before, and, although it was almost constantly in my mind, I carefully avoided saying or doing anything to awaken in his mind a suspicion that I did not share with him his often expressed and most sanguine hopes of his final recovery.
And, to tell the fact, he had lived so long and improved so much, that, at times, the desire to have it so was so strong, I thought I could see a silver lining to the dark cloud of fear and doubt that had for many months hung over me; but it would soon disappear and leave a still deeper shade of gloom, that no ray of hope could penetrate or dispel. But the days and nights of anxious waiting and watching were at last nearly numbered, and the final, fatal hour was fast approaching. As well and hopeful as usual, my husband had closed his eyes in peaceful, quiet rest; but something of the same dread feeling of impending danger that I had felt once or twice before, as you will remember, came over me, and I could not sleep.
Soon I was summoned lo his bedside, and I knew, even before I could get there, that the dread messenger had come. I found him, slowly but surely, bleeding to death! Secondary hemorrhage from his wound in the groin, caused by the sloughing open of one of the femoral arteries, had broken out, and there was no power in medical skill to stop it. Just as he breathed his last, a stream of blood ran from oft’ the foot of his bed upon the floor, just as I had seen it run out the foot of the empty coffin, and the realization of my vision was then and there sadly and solemnly consummated.”
Sources
Primary Historical Records
- James Otis Lyford’s “History of the Town of Canterbury, New Hampshire, 1727–1912” (published 1912) is the definitive two-volume resource detailing the town’s history from its charter to the early 20th century. It covers colonial, Revolutionary, and economic history, featuring extensive genealogies and town records.
- History of Northfield, New Hampshire, 1780-1905. In two parts with many biographical sketches and portraits; also pictures of public buildings and private residences by Cross, Lucy Rogers Hill, Mrs., 1834- publication date 1905 in Concord, N.H., Rumford Printing Co. https://archive.org/details/historyofnorthfi00cros
- Town Directories, and Census Data: Census Data for Canterbury, Laconia, and Tilton.
- Ancestry.com: searches for births, marriages, deaths, censuses and family background.
- Rockingham and Merrimack County Registry of Deeds: for wills deeds and probate.
Secondary Sources and Documents
- Lenore Howe: her extensive research on the Dearborn Farm on Old Tilton Rd., Canterbury, N.H. provided detailed information that is incorporated in this story.
- Historian Twelfth Regiment Association Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion: by Asa W Bartlett. Published by Ira C. Evans, Printer, Concord, N.H., 1897. The book is on Amazon and in Internet Archives. https://archive.org/details/historyoftwelfth00bart
The photos of Henry French and Charles Emery come from the book. https://archive.org/details/historyoftwelfth00bart
- The story of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell: Is there a Doctor in the Village? Yes, and Her Name Was Elizabeth Blackwell – Village Preservation
Exceptional!!! Thank you, Sue, for the time and effort involved in the research and penning the narrative. An obelisk at the Center Cemetery memorializes LT Henry French (whose body was most probably buried on the battlefield at Gettysburg) and is the final resting place of his wife, Sarah.
added information – The French Family burial plot is located in Floral Park Cemetery in Pittsfield, NH. ~ John Goegel, Canterbury Cemetery Trustee