Francis H. Reynolds Sr. (1770–1854) and Abigail Jolls Reynolds (1774–1844)

From New England Roots to the Michigan Frontier

Francis H. Reynolds Sr. was born on March 27, 1770, in Connecticut, a place and time still deeply marked by the American Revolution. His future wife, Abigail Jolls, entered the world just a few years later on June 3, 1774, in Bristol, Rhode Island, the daughter of Ebenezer Jolls and Mary Wheaton. Both came of age in a young nation that was learning to define itself, and together they would go on to shape their own legacy of pioneering courage and family devotion.

The couple married in the 1790s, and soon their home was filled with the voices of children. Their firstborn, Levi, arrived in 1796, followed by Susan (1799), Joseph (1801), and Clarissa (1803). As the family grew, they moved westward into New York, where more children were born: Chauncey (1805), Ira Allan (1808), Francis Jr. (1810), Maria (1812), and Lucinda Manville (1815). In all, Francis and Abigail raised a large family of nine children—each one a part of the great migration of Americans pressing westward in the early 1800s.

By 1810, census records suggest they may have been in Smyrna, Chenango County, New York, though they would later be found in Cazenovia, Madison County, New York (1820). These were years of farming and community-building, raising children on what was still considered a frontier. Their lives revolved around the rhythms of work, worship, and family life, with Abigail at the center of a bustling household.

At some point in the 1830s or early 1840s, Francis and Abigail joined the growing tide of settlers moving further west, this time to Lyons Township, Ionia County, Michigan. It was here that they would spend the last chapters of their lives. By 1840, the census shows them in Lyons, their children now grown and beginning families of their own.

Abigail’s life came to an end on April 26, 1844, in Ionia County. She was only 69 years old, but her legacy as the matriarch of the Reynolds family in Michigan was secure. In fact, she was the very first person buried in Spaulding Cemetery in Pewamo, Lyons Township, a quiet country burial ground that would come to hold many more pioneers in the years to follow.

Francis outlived Abigail by a decade. In 1850, he was recorded living with his eldest son Levi in Lyons, Michigan, a widower surrounded by family. He passed away on December 16, 1854, at the age of 84. He, too, was laid to rest beside Abigail in Spaulding Cemetery, where their stones still stand as markers of the couple who had carried their family from New England, through New York, and into the heart of Michigan’s wilderness.

Together, Francis and Abigail Reynolds represent the spirit of their generation: people of courage and faith who left the familiarity of the East to forge new lives on the frontier. Their children and descendants carried forward their legacy, planting the Reynolds name firmly into the soil of Michigan.

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