Joshua Abbot

Joshua Abbot (1722-1807), deacon, town clerk and benefactor of Billerica, was born in Billerica on October 28, 1722, the son of Deacon Joshua Abbott and his second wife, Dorcas Whiting, daughter of Oliver Whiting. His father, a son of John Abbot of Andover, was himself town clerk and deacon, and his brothers Oliver and David also raised families in Billerica; his aunt Anna Whiting was the first wife of Deacon William Stickney, alongside whom he served for years on the Board of Selectmen. On March 6, 1746, he married Sarah Stearns, daughter of Isaac Stearns Jr. Their only child, Joshua, born in 1747, died in 1752 at the age of four.

Abbot was chosen a selectman in 1757 and was re-elected almost every year until 1784, twenty years in all by Hazen's count. In 1769, the year of his father's death, he followed William Stickney as Town Clerk, and he kept the town records until 1784, with one year's break in 1781. His years in office spanned the Revolution. In June 1774 he was named to the town's Committee of Correspondence; in December 1774 to the Committee of Inspection, formed to see that the resolves of the Continental and Provincial Congresses were obeyed in Billerica; and in January 1775 to the twelve Conservators of the peace. In March 1776 he headed the list of the Committee of Correspondence, Inspection and Safety, and in October 1776 he sat with Rev. Henry Cumings and others on the committee that drafted the town's reply on setting up a new frame of government for the state.

Like his father he became a deacon of the church, and he bore the title by December 1797, when "Deacon Joshua Abbot" paid $152 for pew number 10 in the new meeting-house. John Farmer, writing in 1816, said that he had "enjoyed the confidence of his fellow townsmen through a long series of years," and that his gifts for public uses would keep his memory alive. Hazen records that he gave a bell and a clock for the meeting-house. His wife Sarah died on September 7, 1803, and Deacon Abbot died on August 8, 1807, "almost" eighty-five years old.

His will provided a town clock, which was received in 1808, and left the residue of his estate, $1,400 paid over by his executor James Abbot, as a fund whose interest was to support a school "for disseminating a knowledge of church music and psalmody." The Abbot Singing Fund paid for the town's singing school and was still carried on the town's books at $1,400 at the end of the nineteenth century.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 2, ABBOT 1-2
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 230 (Committee of Correspondence, 1774)
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 237 (Committee of Correspondence, Inspection and Safety, 1776)
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 263 (sale of pews, 1797: Deacon Joshua Abbot, pew 10)
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 306 (list of selectmen)
6. Farmer, Historical Memoir of Billerica (1816), p. 21 (death of Deacon Joshua Abbott; his bequests)
7. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850, deaths p. 343 (Deacon Joshua, Aug. 8, 1807)
8. Town Treasurer, Abbot Singing School Fund, 1887

Deed References Expand all

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