William Rogers

William Rogers was a North Billerica farmer who owned the old Toothaker farm on the east side of the Concord River and built the brick-ended house that still stands beside the line of the Middlesex Canal. He was born on May 25, 1759, a son of Samuel Rogers and Rebecca (Farmer) Rogers. His elder brother Samuel died in the army in Virginia in 1781.

In April 1782, at 23, he bought from Roger Toothaker for 200 pounds 27 acres "with a Dwelling house & Barn standing thereon" and three acres by the mill pond, part of the homestead the Toothaker family had held since the seventeenth century (see Roger Toothaker House). His father's will of 1789 left him "the whole of my Toothaker-farm," with land in Chelmsford, Tewksbury and New Ipswich, New Hampshire, and made him and his brother Thomas executors. In 1791 the town set its north ward schoolhouse "in William Rogers' corner by John Rogers," and the school stood on Rogers land, without a deed, for most of the next century (see Mt. Pleasant Schoolhouse). He built the brick house now at 20-22 Rogers Street about 1807; family tradition says he paid for it with money earned digging the Middlesex Canal, which opened past his door in 1803 (see William Rogers House).

On November 29, 1787 he married Susanna Pollard, daughter of Jonathan Pollard; she died on February 25, 1789. On December 10, 1789 he married Hannah Farmer, daughter of Oliver Farmer. Their children were William (1790), a trader, who married Mary Howe of Medford and died there in 1862; Jeremiah (1792), who married Abigail Crosby and lived in Londonderry, New Hampshire; Calvin (1794); Hannah (1796), who married Charles Roundy of Salem; Charles (1798), who died in infancy; Rebecca Farmer (1800), who married Jabez W. Barton of Salem; Sukey (1802), who married Job Kittredge of Tewksbury and then Oliver C. Rogers; Harriet (1805), who married Samuel Burbank of Chelmsford; Louisa (1808); Elvira (1810), who died in 1830; and Augustus (1813), who settled in Guilford, New Hampshire.

In May 1828 he sold Calvin an undivided half of all his real estate for $1,200. He died on August 3, 1838 without a will, and in January 1839 his widow and the other children released the rest of the homestead, 170 acres "with all the buildings thereon standing," to Calvin. Hannah Rogers died on April 21, 1856.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 125, ROGERS 16

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.