LARA CLAYTON.

One of the notable citizens of Revolutionary times was Colonel Louis
Ansart. He was a native of France, and came to America in 1776, while
our country was engaged in war with England. He brought with him
credentials from high officials in his native country, and was
immediately appointed colonel of artillery and inspector-general of the
foundries, and engaged in casting cannon in Massachusetts. Colonel
Ansart understood the art to great perfection; and it is said that some
of his cannon and mortars are still serviceable and valuable. Foundries
were then in operation in Bridgewater and Titicut, of which he had
charge until the close of the Revolutionary War.

Colonel Ansart was an educated man--a graduate of a college in
France--and of a good family. It is said that he conversed well in seven
different languages.

His father purchased him a commission of lieutenant at the age of
fourteen years; and he was employed in military service by his native
country and the United States, and held a commission until the close of
the Revolutionary War, when he purchased a farm in Dracut and resided
there until his death. He returned to France three times after he first
came to this country, and was there at the time Louis XVI was arrested,
in 1789.

Colonel Ansart married Catherine Wimble, an American lady, of Boston,
and reared a large family in Dracut--in that portion of the town which
was annexed to Lowell in 1874. Atis Ansart, who still resides there, in
the eighty-seventh year of his age, is a son of Colonel Ansart; also
Felix Ansart, late of New London, Connecticut, and for twenty-four years
an officer of the regular army, at one time stationed at Fort Moultrie,
South Carolina, and afterwards at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he
remained eight years, and died in January, 1874.

There were five boys and seven girls. The boys were those above named,
and Robert, Abel, and Louis. The girls were Julia Ann, who married
Bradley Varnum; Fanny, who died in childhood; Betsey, who married
Jonathan Hildreth, moved to Ohio, and died in Dayton, in that State;
Sophia, who married Peter Hazelton, who died some twenty years ago,
after which she married a Mr. Spaulding; Harriet, who married Samuel N.
Wood, late of Lowell; Catherine, who married Mr. Layton; and Aline, who
died at the age of eighteen years.

Colonel Ansart was trained in that profession and in those times which
had a tendency to develop the sterner quali