Thomas Dudley

Thomas Dudley (1576 to 1653) was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, its deputy governor in many years and its governor four times, and the man whose grant of 1,500 acres on the Concord River, the Dudley Farm, became the first home of most of Billerica's first settlers. He was baptized at Yardley Hastings, Northamptonshire, England, on October 12, 1576, and was steward to the Earl of Lincoln before he sailed for New England in 1630 with John Winthrop's fleet as deputy governor of the colony. He was one of the founders of Newtowne, now Cambridge, later lived at Ipswich and at Roxbury, and was elected governor in 1634, 1640, 1645 and 1650. As governor in 1650 he signed the charter of Harvard College. The poet Anne Bradstreet was his daughter.

On November 2, 1637 the General Court granted Dudley a thousand acres, and Governor Winthrop the same, in land not yet given to any plantation. In January 1637-8 the two men came down the river from Concord to choose their farms, and at the place where Dudley's was to begin they named two great stones on the bank the Two Brothers, "in remembrance that they were brothers by their children's marriage": Dudley's son Samuel had married Winthrop's daughter Mary. On May 2, 1638 the Court fixed Dudley's farm on the northerly side of the stones and Winthrop's on the southerly side. Later grants raised Dudley's farm to 1,500 acres, and on October 15, 1651 he asked the Court to record that it ran two and a half miles along the river.

Dudley never lived on the farm. On February 28, 1651-2 he sold it for 110 pounds to Thomas Chamberline, James Parker and Isaac Learned of Woburn, to be paid at his house in Roxbury in cattle and in wheat, rye, peas or corn. Divided into twelve shares of 125 acres, it became the farm on which Ralph Hill, John Stearns, George Farley and the other first families settled, and the share became the unit by which all later rights in the town's land were measured. Dudley Road and the Governor Thomas Dudley Park beside the river keep his name.

Dudley died at Roxbury on July 31, 1653, and was buried in the Eliot Burying Ground there.

References

1. Wikipedia: Thomas Dudley (baptized Yardley Hastings Oct. 12, 1576; died Roxbury July 31, 1653); deputy governor and governor of Massachusetts Bay; Harvard charter
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 3-4: grants of November 2, 1637 and May 2, 1638 to Winthrop and Dudley; the Two Brothers named, January 1637-8
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 10: Dudley's petition of October 15, 1651 and his sale of February 28, 1651-2 to Chamberline, Parker and Learned of Woburn
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 31: the Dudley Farm divided into twelve shares of 125 acres; the ten-acre lot; the holders of the shares