Christopher Grant, Jr.

Not the same as Christopher Grant

From https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Crouch-813

Sarah Crouch was born in Massachusetts between about 1649-1650 to William Crouch and Sarah Lamson. Sarah had an out of wedlock child (a daughter) born b. abt Jan. 3, 1669 (N.S.) She named one Christopher Grant, Jr. of Watertown as the child's father. Grant denied the accusation and put the blame on Thomas Jones. However, it appears the court believed Sarah's account and Grant was legally named as the father. He then disappeared for about ten years. The fate of the child is unknown at the present time.

By 1677, records show Grant was back in Watertown, where he once again put himself at odds with the law. That year, he became involved with Cardin Drabston, one of his father’s servants, and she became pregnant. A grand jury in Watertown indicted Grant for fornication in 1678, but the charges did not stop there. “Drabston,” the account goes on to say, “brought forth a child into the world on the 30th of June last, which was murdered & kept five dayes & then buried.” Though the magistrates did not implicate Grant in the infanticide, they did charge him with concealing it. He pled not guilty, and officials soon acquitted him of the most serious charges — though it remains likely he suffered another public whipping. Grant died in 1692, just short of his fiftieth birthday.

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Under Household Government: Sex and Family in Puritan Massachusetts. (2012) By M. Michelle Jarrett Morris. Page 73.<GoogleBooks>

References

• Genealogies of the families and descendants of the early settlers of Watertown, Massachusetts, including Waltham and Weston : to which is appended the early history of the town. by Bond, Henry, 1790-1859; Jones, Horatio Gates, 1822-1893. Page 260. <Archive.Org>
• Under Household Government: Sex and Family in Puritan Massachusetts. (2012) By M. Michelle Jarrett Morris.
• "Incorrigible Sin,” by Daniel Crown April 28, 2017 The story of a seventeenth-century fornication trial in Massachusetts Bay. <link>