Thomas Richardson

Thomas Richardson Jr. (1675 to 1718) was a Billerica farmer and trooper, the eldest son of Sergt. Thomas Richardson, who had come from Woburn and held the tenancy of the Church Farm, and of Mary Stevenson. He was born in Billerica on December 30, 1675. He married a wife named Abigail, whose family name is not recorded, and the births of their first children were not entered in the town records. Their children were Abigail (1700), who married Nathaniel Dunton of Charlestown in 1715 and afterwards Samuel Hill, Thomas (about 1702), John (about 1704), Andrew (1707), Martha (1708), who married Thomas Hosley, Anna (about 1710), who married Samuel Bailey of Lancaster, Mary (1711), Ruth (1713), who married William Tarbell, Susanna (1715), and Sarah (1717), who married Francis Crosby.

On March 18, 1717/18, "being weak in body", he made his will and signed it with his mark. He left his wife the use of the homestead, the buildings and his personal estate until their youngest child Sarah, "now about seven months old", should reach fourteen, for the bringing up of the children while she remained his widow; if she married again, his son Thomas and his brother Andrew Richardson were to take the estate and the care of the children. His outlands, and "what is Coming to me from my fathers Estate", he gave to his two sons and two eldest daughters, the eldest son to have a double part, and once the youngest child was fourteen the estate was to be divided among all the children, John to have forty pounds more than any of his sisters. According to Hazen he died the same day, in his forty-third year and three years before his father. The will was proved at Cambridge on April 17, 1718, and his widow took the executorship.

The inventory taken on April 9, 1718 by Ephraim Kidder, Enoch Kidder and George Brown valued the homestead, about 120 acres of upland, swamp and meadow "with the buildings", at 560 pounds, besides fifteen acres south of Nutting's Pond, twelve and a half acres near Prospect Hill, two acres at the great swamp and about eight acres west of the great river. With his household goods were "his trooping arms and hors furniture", a weaver's loom and its tackling, several books and a gun, and on the farm a horse and colt, a pair of oxen, six cows, young cattle, sheep and swine. His father's will afterwards gave his son John several parcels valued at 210 pounds. The widow rendered accounts in 1719 and 1734, and in 1732 she and the children of age, with Thomas Kidder as guardian of the minors, asked the court to have the estate divided; the division was made by Josiah Richardson, Joseph Hill, Samuel Danforth Jr., Simon Crosby Jr. and Jacob Walker. Abigail died on June 4, 1758.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 117, RICHARDSON 3