Jeremiah Crosby II

Jeremiah Crosby was born in Billerica on August 15, 1784, the eldest child of Jeremiah Crosby and Abigail (Jaquith) Crosby. His father, a son of Hezekiah Crosby, lost his first wife in 1810, married Lucy Winship later that year, and died in 1821.

On November 26, 1812, Jeremiah married Ruth Bowman, daughter of Abel Bowman. She died on October 11, 1830, at 44, and he then married Lucy Goodwin, a native of Hillsborough, New Hampshire, who died in May 1846 at 54. His children were Albert (1813), Leander (1815), the twins Ambrose and Abigail (1817), Abel Bowman (1822), Emily (1825) and Benslow (1833). The family farm lay east of Nutting's Pond, and Hazen noted in 1883 that Leander was still living "on his father's place."

Crosby served the town as a selectman in 1824 and 1825, and again in 1851, more than a quarter century later.

His lasting role was in the church. He was a deacon of the First Parish, the town's Unitarian church; his wife Ruth's gravestone in 1830 already calls her the wife of "Deacon Jeremiah," and his own stone says that "He was an active Deacon of the Unitarian Church for fifty years." Writing for the parish centennial in 1898, Mrs. M. H. Sage remembered "those good men, Deacon Jeremiah Crosby and Deacon James Faulkner," as the deacons in the years when families came long distances to the church and were "promptly in their pews."

Deacon Crosby died on November 18, 1872, at 88, and is buried in the Old South Cemetery, where his gravestone records his half century as deacon.

References

1. Vital Records of Billerica, births: Jeremiah, son of Jeremiah and Abigail Crosby, Aug. 15, 1784, with gravestone inscription on his fifty years as deacon
2. Vital Records of Billerica, marriages: Jeremiah Crosby and Ruth Bowman, Nov. 26, 1812
3. Vital Records of Billerica, deaths: Ruthy, wife of Deacon Jeremiah Crosby, Oct. 11, 1830; Lucy G. (Goodwin), wife of Deacon Jeremiah, 1846
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register: Crosby no. 30, Jeremiah (1760-1821), his father, and his birth
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register: Crosby no. 36, Jeremiah (1784-1872), marriages, children, death; no. 40, Leander on his father's place east of Nutting's Pond
6. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register: Cumings no. 2, Ruth Bowman married Jeremiah Crosby
7. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 307: selectmen list, Jeremiah Crosby 1824-25, 1851