Josiah Crosby

Josiah Crosby was born in Billerica on August 5, 1704, the eldest son of Josiah Crosby and Mary (Manning) Crosby. On February 3, 1729-30 he married Elizabeth French, daughter of Deacon William French. Their children were Josiah (1730), William (1732-3), Elizabeth (1734-5), Esther (1736) and Alpheus (1739). Elizabeth died on November 27, 1739. Josiah died before his father: when the elder Josiah made his will in June 1743 he described his eldest son as "now deceased" and leaving four children, whom he had helped "largely" in his lifetime. Family tradition, as Hazen recorded it, held that he was killed by the Indians.

His son Josiah, born on November 24, 1730, served on the Connecticut River in 1748 and was one of the four men who escaped, by swimming the river, from the ambush near Fort Dummer in which three Billerica men were killed. He married Sarah Fitch in 1750, settled in the part of Monson that is now Milford, New Hampshire, was a captain at Bunker Hill, and was the grandfather of the physicians Dixi and Josiah Crosby, Judge Nathan Crosby of Lowell and the Dartmouth professor Alpheus Crosby.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 29, CROSBY 14
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 144: his son Josiah Crosby's escape on the Connecticut River, 1748
3. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), births pp. 44-45: Josiah, s. Josiah and Mary, Aug. 5, 1704; children of Josiah Jr. and Elisabeth, 1730-1739
4. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), marriages p. 257: Elizabeth [French] and Josiah Crosbey Jr., Feb. 3, 1729-30
5. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), deaths p. 350: Elizabeth, w. Josiah Jr., Nov. 27, 1739
6. Middlesex Probate case 5348: will of his father Josiah Crosby, 1743 ("my Eldest son Josiah who is now deceased and hath left four children")