John Baldwin

John Baldwin (1665 to 1736) was a yeoman of Billerica and the eldest son of the settler John Baldwin and Mary Richardson. He was born in Billerica on September 25, 1665. He took the oath of fidelity before Jonathan Danforth on May 18, 1685, and in the list of polls and rateable estate taken on August 24, 1688, the year after his father's death, John Baldwin was entered with two polls. On February 5, 1689/90, by the town record (Hazen gives February 12), he married Sarah Heywood of Concord, probably a daughter of John Heywood of that town.

His farm lay on the easterly side of the County Road north of the meeting house: a house lot of about two acres, bounded north by Thomas Kidder and east and south by land that had been Jonathan Danforth's, with forty acres of plow land and meadow across the road running down to the Concord River. He also owned thirty acres west of the river at the Chelmsford line, a lot in the Great Swamp and a share of the Andover meadow on the Shawshin. The house on the lot, the John Baldwin House at 376 Boston Road, keeps interior work of about 1700, and it was his dwelling house when he divided the farm. In the tax list of 1733 he is "John Baldwin," with his nephew John Baldwin Jr. and his own son John, called John tertius, beside him.

On March 30, 1732 he and Sarah divided the homestead between their two youngest sons, selling to William and to John tertius, for 362 pounds 10 shillings each, "the one half of my now dwelling House and the one half of my Barn" and of the lands. On April 25, 1735 his son Thomas released all his share in his father's estate for 244 pounds. John Baldwin died on April 6, 1736, and Sarah on February 9, 1741. John tertius died on October 24, 1738, leaving William "all my Part of the Homestead that was formerly my Fathers," so that William owned the whole place.

Their children were Sarah (1690), who married William Simonds; Mary (1692), who married Joseph Brown; Judith (1695/6); Thomas (1697/8), who married Dorothy Kidder; Ruth (1699), later the wife of a Wyman; John (1701), who died that September; Elizabeth (1702), who married Joseph Johnson of Woburn in 1734; Abigail (1705), who married James Tompson in 1729/30; John (1707/8 to 1738); and William (1710 to 1762), who married Mary Farmer and kept the homestead.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 6, BALDWIN 2
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 191: oath of fidelity, May 18, 1685, before Jonathan Danforth; John Baldwin
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 194: list of polls and rateable estate, Aug. 24, 1688; John Baldwin, 2 polls
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 203: tax list of 1733 (minister's rate), John Baldwin, John Baldwin Jun. and John Ter.
5. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850, births p. 6: John, s. John and Mary, Sept. 25, 1665; his children
6. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850, marriages p. 220: John Jr. and Sarah Heywood of Concord, Feb. 5, 1689-90
7. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850, deaths p. 342: John Sr., Apr. 6, 1736; Sarah, wid. John Jr., Feb. 9, 1741

Deed References Expand all

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