John Sheldon

Born	1660-04-24 Billerica, MA
Died	1724-08-27 Billerica, MA
Select Board
In Office	1700 - 1701 1711 - 1716
Deacon of the First Parish
In Office	1711 - 1724
Father	John Sheldon
Mother	Mary Converse
Spouses	Deborah Hill (m. 1690-11-20 )
Children	Mary Samuel (b. 1694-04-09)

Deacon John Sheldon was born in Billerica on April 24, 1660, the son of John Sheldon and his wife Mary, the widow of Simon Tompson of Woburn, who had married at Woburn on February 1, 1658/9. His father was in Billerica by 1658 and signed the town's early agreements, but he and his brother William, whose grant of a mill lot the town declared forfeit, quarreled with the town, and the elder Sheldon lived for a time in Woburn until, in 1674, the town, "considering the unquietness of his spirit, and being willing he should again returne," granted him forty acres by his own lot. The father's house stood south-east of the Andover road, and he died on May 24, 1690, aged about 63.

On November 20, 1690 the younger John married Deborah Hill, daughter of Ralph Hill, and the next year the town laid out to John Sheldon six acres "next to the east side of his own home lott," bounded by the highway to Sergeant Jacob French's house, with a cartway reserved across it "to pass to the brick kills." Their children were John, born and died in 1691; Mary, born in 1692, who married Peter Hunt in 1715; Samuel, born April 9, 1694; Deborah, born and died in 1698; and Hannah, born in 1700. The family homestead on the north side of Andover Road, east of the Common, is remembered as the John Sheldon House at 28 Andover Road, which local tradition dates to 1698.

Sheldon was a selectman in 1700, 1711, 1712, 1714 and 1715, and for many years a deacon of the church; Farmer's 1816 list of the church's deacons names him after Joseph Tompson, James Frost, Joseph Foster and William French, and Hazen took him to be one of the three deacons the town named in 1712 to a committee regulating the new pews in the meeting house. The town's accounts of December 1714 show the kind of work he did for it: he was paid "for the Bridge," for his service as an assessor, and "for runing Andouer line & labor about Sam Trull's funeral."

In his last years he settled his land on his only surviving son. On November 4, 1718, "For & in Consideration of the Love & Affection which I have & do bear unto my Son Samuel," he gave Samuel seven and a half acres bounded on the north by his own land, "in part of his portion," and in February 1719/20 he bought a small slip of thirty-eight poles beside his home lot from Joshua Abbott. His will, made on August 28, 1723, left his widow the use of "the West lower Room" and part of the cellar, gave outlying lands at the pond and west of the Concord River to his daughters Mary Hunt and Hannah Sheldon, and provided that "my son Samuel Sheldon shall have and Possess my homestead and all the lands and Medows In Billerica," entailed on Samuel's male heirs. Deacon Sheldon died on August 27, 1724, and the will was proved on September 22. His widow Deborah died on January 11, 1729/30. Samuel, who had only daughters, broke the entail in 1771 so that the homestead could pass to them.

John Sheldon

John Sheldon

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