Josiah Brown

Born	1695-04-19 Billerica, MA
Died	1785-05-03 Billerica, MA
Select Board
In Office	1749 - 1751 1757 - 1759 1762 - 1763
Father	George Brown
Mother	Sarah Kidder
Spouses	Hannah Rebecca (m. 1739-11-29 ) Mary (m. 1749-03-01 )
Children	Rebecca Sarah

Josiah Brown (1695 to 1785) was a Billerica farmer who served five years on the Select Board in the middle of the eighteenth century and lived for nearly forty years in the old Shed house on the road to Bedford, south of the meeting house. He was born on April 19, 1695, a son of George Brown, who had settled in the east part of the town and died in 1738 as Captain George Brown, and of Sarah Kidder, daughter of James Kidder. His brothers included Joseph Brown, who lived beyond the Shawshin in what became Tewksbury, William Brown, and Lieut. Samuel Brown, who built a sawmill on Content Brook. On November 14, 1738, Josiah signed with his brothers a receipt for "our portions in full" of the estate of "our honored father George Brown."

He married three times. His first wife, Hannah, was the mother of Hannah (1731), Elizabeth (1732) and Josiah (1735), and died on December 15, 1737. On November 29, 1739, he married Rebecca, widow of Thomas Danforth, and they had two daughters: Rebecca (1740), who married William Patten, and Sarah (1742), who married Jacob Richardson in 1767. On March 1, 1749, at Needham, he married Mary Ellis of Needham, widow of Ebenezer Ellis of Dedham; she died on February 20, 1772. He outlived most of his children: Elizabeth died in 1755, Hannah in 1759, and his only son, Josiah, on March 10, 1762.

On the tax list of 1733 he was rated in the south part of the town, and in the seating of the meeting house about 1736 he had a place in the third seat below. Before 1745 he also held land in the northeast part of the town, near Content Brook and the Patten farm on Salem Road; a later study of that farm records that he sold about eighty acres of it to Reuben Kendall about 1747. On March 20, 1745, he bought from William Shed, cordwainer, for 75 pounds in bills of credit, "part of my Homestead lying on the East side of the Road that leads to Bedford," about three and a half acres "together with all the Buildings thereon standing," the old house lot of Daniel Shed, and he made it his home. In 1764 he sold four poles of it at the north end to the new minister, Henry Cumings, keeping the fruit of an apple tree there for six years. He also owned land east of the village next to the farm of Joshua Davis, which deeds of the 1760s and 1770s name as a boundary.

Brown was elected a selectman in 1749 and 1750, again in 1757 and 1758, and once more in 1762, serving in the later terms with Davis and Capt. Daniel Stickney in the years of the French and Indian War. On March 20, 1781, then in his late eighties and describing himself as a yeoman, he sold the homestead on the Bedford road, three and a quarter acres with the buildings, to his son-in-law Jacob Richardson and his daughter Sarah for 100 pounds in silver money; the Richardsons kept it for 56 years. The town recorded the death of Josiah Brown on May 3, 1785, and a deed of that September refers to land of "the heirs of Josiah Brown late of Billerica deceased."

Josiah Brown

Josiah Brown

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