When Dr. Josiah Converse was born on 25 April 1704, in Woburn, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States, his father, Capt. Josiah Converse Jr, was 43 and his mother, Ruth Marshall, was 41. He married Converse about 1729, in United States. He died on 25 October 1774, in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States, at the age of 70, and was buried in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.
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English: nickname from Old French convers literally ‘converted’, used to denote someone converted from secular to religious life in adult age, or, earlier, a lay member of a convent. The Cistercian and Augustinian conversi were men living according to a rule less strict than that of the monks or canons, engaged chiefly in manual work, with their own living quarters and their own part of the church. They were numerous among the Cistercians in the 12th and 13th centuries, often outnumbering the monks and were, by rule, illiterate. These lay brothers were employed on the monastic manors and granges, where they were liable to fall into the sin of owning private property. They acquired a reputation for violence and misbehaviour (at Neath, in 1269, they locked the abbot in his bedroom and stole his horses) and they were gradually replaced by more manageable paid servants.
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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