Michael Crosby

Born	1792-04-29 Billerica, MA
Died	1863-12-29
Select Board
In Office	1830 - 1831 1833 - 1834
Representative to the General Court
In Office	1834 - 1834
Preceded by	Thomas Sumner
Succeeded by	Daniel Wilson
Father	Michael Crosby
Mother	Asenath Blanchard
Spouses	Margaret Tufts (m. 1816-04-29 )

Michael Crosby (born 1792), known as Michael Crosby Jr. and, in the 1830s, as Capt. Michael Crosby, was a farmer in the south part of Billerica who served on the Select Board in 1830 and 1833 and represented the town in the General Court in 1834. He was born on April 29, 1792, the son of Michael Crosby and Asenath (Blanchard) Crosby, a daughter of Simon Blanchard, who had married the month before. Hazen's register says that he "lived on Vine brook."

On his twenty-fourth birthday, April 29, 1816, he married Margaret Tufts Farmer, born Margaret Tufts Richardson, a daughter of Asa Richardson and the widow of Cyrus Farmer, who had died in 1814 at the age of 23 after only a few months of marriage. Her brother was the Centre tavern and stage keeper William Richardson, and when he died insolvent in 1826 Crosby joined the Richardson brothers, "for his wife," in asking that Marshall Preston be appointed administrator; the next year he was one of the three men who set off the widow's dower. Michael and Margaret Crosby had seven children: Josiah Michael (1817), who later lived in Connecticut; Warren Brooks (1818); Lucretia Richardson (1820); Cyrus Farmer (1822), who settled in Somerville; Franklin (1824), who went to the Mexican War "and never returned"; Ann (1827); and Ellen.

In 1824 he bought the homestead farm of his great-uncle Josiah Crosby, about fifty acres on the roads running off the Boston road toward Joseph Blanchard's and the Lexington road. His land lay next to the homestead of his uncle Josiah Crosby II, and when that estate was auctioned in April 1833 the printed bill placed the School-house lot and the Guggins lot "between Capt Michael Crosby's and Mr Joseph Blanchard's." He bought the Guggins lot that April and, in May 1834, for $190.15, the eight-acre School House lot, on which stood the district schoolhouse later called the Little Red Schoolhouse, warranted free of encumbrances "excepting the School House privilege, if any."

He was elected a selectman in 1830 and again in 1833, and in 1834 the town sent him to the General Court as its representative, the Michael Crosby Jr. of Hazen's list. On May 1, 1837, describing himself as a yeoman, he sold the whole of his holdings to Jonas Merriam Jr. of Boston for $5,700: the Crosby homestead farm, the Waters land of nearly sixty acres reaching toward the Middlesex Turnpike, the Guggins lot, the School House lot, bounded "by the road leading from my house to Jos. Blanchard's," and the Ross land.

Michael Crosby

Michael Crosby

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