Oliver Farmer

Oliver Farmer was born in Billerica on July 31, 1728, the son of Oliver Farmer and Abigail Johnson, daughter of William Johnson of Woburn, and a grandson of Edward Farmer, who had settled in Billerica in the early 1670s. His father "lived on his father's farm" and died there in 1761. His brothers were Edward Farmer, a captain in the Revolution and for fourteen years Billerica's representative, and Lieut. John Farmer, a selectman in the 1790s. While his father lived he was "Oliver Farmer Jr." in the town books; on the minister's rate of 1755 both men appear on the east list.

On April 5, 1757, at Pepperell, he married Rachel Shed, daughter of John Shed of that town. Their children were Rachel, born in 1758, who married Nicholas French; Oliver, born in 1760; and John, born in 1762. Rachel died on September 23, 1764, and on July 3, 1766 he married Hannah Abbot, daughter of Jeremiah Abbot. She bore Hannah, who married her cousin William Rogers in 1789; Rebecca, who died in 1792 at twenty-three, and on whose death Dr. Timothy Danforth wrote a poem; and Jeremiah, born in 1771. John settled in Chelmsford and later in New Hampshire, and his son John Farmer (1789-1838), born at Chelmsford, became the leading New England genealogist of his day and wrote the "Historical Memoir of Billerica" (1816).

Oliver was a farmer on the east side of the county road from Chelmsford to Boston, now Boston Road, south of the town center, where the Oliver Farmer House still stands at 336 Boston Road. Hazen, annotating the tax list of December 1776, placed him "South of his brother Edward." His homestead of about fifty acres lay between the county road and land of William Patten, with Edward Farmer to the north and Timothy Foster and Solomon Pollard to the south, and he also owned land across the road running down to the Concord River and a lot on Fox Hill. Hazen's list of Billerica soldiers in the Revolution names an Oliver Farmer, distinct from his son "Oliver Jr.," among the men in service in 1775 and in 1777, the year his brother Captain Edward Farmer marched with thirty-two Billerica men to reinforce the Northern Army against Burgoyne.

In his old age he passed the farm to his youngest son. By a deed of January 11, 1796, "for love good will & affection which I bear my son Jeremiah Farmer," he gave Jeremiah half of "my homestead containing fifty acres more or less with a dwelling house and barn thereon," and on June 11, 1798 he conveyed "the other half of all my lands and buildings," the first piece being "that whereon my buildings stand lying easterly of the county road." Jeremiah was a selectman from 1813 to 1815 and town clerk in 1814 and 1815. The elder son Oliver, who married Hannah Sprake in 1786, is the Oliver of the brick-ended Oliver Farmer II House on Colson Street in North Billerica.

Oliver Farmer died on February 24, 1814, at eighty-five, and, as his grandson's memoir put it, "d. on the paternal farm." His widow Hannah died on September 13, 1819, aged eighty-three. Their gravestone record is in the Old Corner Burial Ground.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 50: Oliver Farmer no. 9 (birth, marriages, children, death)
2. Hazen, Genealogical Register p. 49: his father Oliver Farmer no. 5 and his brothers Edward and John
3. Hazen, History of Billerica p. 205: 1755 minister's rate, Oliver Farmer and Oliver Farmer Jr. on the east list
4. Hazen, History of Billerica p. 244: list of Revolutionary soldiers ("Farmer, Oliver, 1, 3" and "Farmer, Oliver Jr., 8")
5. Hazen, History of Billerica p. 248: tax list of December 1776, residence "South of his brother Edward"
6. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850, births: Oliver, son of Oliver and Abigail, July 31, 1728, and his children
7. Vital Records of Billerica, marriages: to Rachel Shed of Pepperell (1757) and Hannah Abbot (1766)
8. Vital Records of Billerica, deaths: Oliver Farmer, Feb. 24, 1814, aged 85; Rachel (1764) and Hannah (1819); gravestone in Old Corner Burial Ground
9. Memoir of John Farmer, New England Historical and Genealogical Register vol. 1 (1847): his grandfather Oliver "d. on the paternal farm," 1814

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.