John Shed

John Shed, later Ensign John Shed, was born on March 2, 1655, a son of Daniel Shed, who came to Billerica from Braintree by 1659 and settled on a house lot on the Township running down to the Concord River. His brothers Daniel, Zechariah, Samuel and Nathan also grew up in Billerica, and his sisters married into the Rogers, Farley, Dutton and Levistone families. On January 9, 1676/7 he married Sarah Chamberlain, daughter of Thomas Chamberlain.

He came of age in King Philip's War. When the town assigned its families to garrisons in 1675, "Daniel Shed Senr & his son John Shed" were ordered to the Rev. Samuel Whiting's house, "the maine garrison & the last refuge in case of extremity," and Hazen counts John Shed among the Billerica men whose service in the war earned them or their heirs shares in the "Narragansett" land grants fifty years later. The Indian wars came close to the family again in the 1690s: on August 1, 1692 his brother Zechariah's wife and two of their children were killed on the great plain toward North Billerica, and in the raid of August 1695 John and Thomas Rogers, who had married two of his sisters, were among the dead.

Shed served as a selectman in 1700, 1701 and 1705, and held the rank of ensign in the town's military company; the town's accounts of December 1714 pay "ens Shed for a coffin for S. Trull," among the costs of a funeral the town paid for. He was still on the tax list of 1733 as Ensign John Shed, beside his son, Ensign Benjamin Shed.

John and Sarah Shed had ten children. Sarah married Nathan Crosby; Elizabeth married Ebenezer Farley in 1703; Benoni died as an infant; Rebecca married Joshua Abbott; John was born in 1687; Mary married Abraham Chamberlain; Dorothy married Samuel Danforth; Hannah married her cousin Nathan Shed; Benjamin, born in 1696, became a captain and a selectman; and Jemima married John Wilson. Sarah Shed died on January 17, 1735/6, and Ensign Shed on January 31, 1736/7; his gravestone gives his age as about 84.

He is easily confused with a younger John Shed (1699 to 1754), his nephew, the son of his brother Nathan, who married his granddaughter Elizabeth Farley in 1724 and was called John Shed Jr. while the ensign lived. It was the younger man, later Lieutenant John Shed, who in 1727 bought the thirty-acre farm between the country road and the Concord River north of the town center, now the John Shed House at 329 Boston Road, and who received the old Hamlet homestead from his father-in-law Ebenezer Farley in 1728.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 130, SHED 1 and 3 (Daniel Shed; John, son of Daniel: birth, marriage, death, children)
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 110: Daniel Shed Sr. and his son John Shed assigned to the main garrison, 1675
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 117: John Shed among Billerica men sharing in the Narragansett grants
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 305: list of selectmen (John Shed, 1700-1, 1705)
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 201: town accounts of Dec. 1714, Ensign Shed paid for a coffin for Samuel Trull
6. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 204: tax list of 1733 (Ensign John Shed; Ensign Benjamin Shed; John Shed Jr.)
7. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 48, FARLEY 5: Ebenezer Farley married Elizabeth Shed, daughter of John 3, 1703
8. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 131, SHED 6 and 10 (the younger John Shed, son of Nathan, Lieutenant, d. 1754)
9. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), Marriages p. 313: John Shed and Sarah Chamberlain, Jan. 9, 1676-7
10. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), Deaths p. 392: Ensign John Shed, Jan. 31, 1736-7, aged about 84

Deed References Expand all

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