John Stearns II

Born	1686-11-25 Billerica, MA
Died	1776-08-02 Billerica, MA
Select Board
In Office	1732 - 1733 1735 - 1736

John Stearns, known in the town records as Lieutenant John Stearns, was born in Billerica on November 25, 1686, the son of Capt. John Stearns and his first wife, Elizabeth Bigelow of Watertown, and a grandson of the elder John Stearns, one of the first settlers of Shawshin. He married Esther Johnson, daughter of Edward Johnson of Woburn, and while his father lived the births of their children were recorded under the name of John Stearns Jr. They had ten children between 1716 and 1737: Esther, who died in infancy, John, a second Esther, Isaac, Joanna, Edward, Benjamin, Josiah, William and Timothy.

The family farm lay at the south-west corner of the Dudley Farm, along the Concord River, on land the first John Stearns had bought from James Parker in 1665. On February 21, 1727-8 Capt. Stearns gave his son "The place or scituation That I now Dwell upon," about two hundred and fifty acres bounded west by the river, "with all The Buildings fences and Trees Thereon," the son "not to be in ye possession of the same untill after my Decease." The captain died that October, and the lieutenant spent the rest of his life at the old homestead, the house now called the Captain John Stearns House at 96 Dudley Road, with its saw mill on Mill Brook.

He was chosen a selectman in 1732 and again in 1735, and the minister's tax lists of 1733 and 1755 carry him as "Lt. John" Stearns. As his sons grew up he divided the farm. On March 20, 1752, "for and in consideration of the love good will and affection" he bore his son Isaac, he gave him one hundred acres running along the brook "down to Concord River," "together with all the building thereon," Isaac to have half at once and the whole after his father's death; the father kept the right "to pass and repass to the saw mill" and to dig "in the old gravel pits." On October 23, 1761 he sold Isaac for one hundred pounds a second tract of about one hundred acres on the east side of the river, north of the homestead, again "not to come into possession ... till after my Decease." That tract is the farm of the Lt. John Stearns House at 77 Dudley Road; the deed names no buildings, and the house that now bears his name first appears in the records in 1810.

Several of his sons made their mark. Isaac Stearns (1722-1808), who received both farms from him, was a soldier in the French war and later a representative, senator and, in Hazen's words, a "leading business man." Edward (1726-1793) took command of Captain Jonathan Wilson's company at Lexington on April 19, 1775, when Wilson, his cousin's husband, was killed. Josiah, born January 20, 1731-2, graduated from Harvard in 1751 and was ordained in 1758 as the first pastor of the church at Epping, New Hampshire, where he served until his death in 1786; an ardent friend of liberty, he sat in the New Hampshire convention at Exeter during the Revolution, and his son Samuel became the pastor at Bedford. Timothy served at Lake George in 1757 and died in 1762.

Lieutenant John Stearns died on August 2, 1776, having, as the record of his death puts it, "almost Compleated his 90th year." His widow Esther died on April 18, 1786, aged 93, and her gravestone stands in the Old South Cemetery.

John Stearns II

John Stearns II

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