John Shed

Lieutenant John Shed was born in Billerica on September 6, 1699, a son of Nathan Shed and Mary French and a grandson of Daniel Shed, one of the town's early settlers. While his uncle, Ensign John Shed, was alive he was called John Shed Jr. On September 6, 1724 he married Elizabeth Farley, daughter of Ebenezer Farley and granddaughter of the ensign.

On December 26, 1727 he bought from Nathaniel Rogers Jr., for five hundred pounds, "one messuage or house lot ... containing about thirty acres," bounded east by the County Road and west by the Concord River, "with all the buildings fences and trees thereon," the farm now known as the John Shed House at 329 Boston Road. The next year his father-in-law Ebenezer Farley gave him by an unrecorded deed the old Hamlet homestead near Bare Hill, the William Hamlet House at 570 Boston Road; in May 1728 Shed gave a bond to keep Farley's widow on a third of its income and to pay sums to Benjamin Farley and others of the family. The widow released her dower in that place to him in 1736, and in 1745 John and Elizabeth Shed sold its sixty acres on the County road to Woburn to Benjamin Tompson for 1,150 pounds old tenor.

He appears in the tax list of 1733 as John Shed Jr. and later held the rank of lieutenant. He died on January 3, 1754, aged 54. His estate began with "the Homestead about 31 acres with the buildings thereon," and the division of November 1754 describes "a Mansion House thereon standing and a Barn," setting off to his widow Elizabeth ten acres on the south side of the farm and "the east end of the house," and the rest to his eldest surviving son John, who lived there until 1797. His children were John, who died as an infant in 1725; Elizabeth, who married a Farnsworth; Rebecca, who married David Burge of Chelmsford; John, born 1732; Sarah, who died as an infant; Ebenezer, who married Thankful Fletcher of Chelmsford; Zaccheus, who died in 1758; and Mary, who married Jonathan Gates of Harvard.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 131, SHED 10 (John, son of Nathan: marriage, death, children)
2. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), Births p. 172: John, son of Nathan and Mary, Sept. 6, 1699
3. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), Marriages p. 313: John Shed Jr. and Elizabeth Farley, Sept. 6, 1724
4. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), Deaths p. 392: Lt. John Shed, Jan. 3, 1754, son of Nathan and Mary
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 204: tax list of 1733 (John Shed Jr.)
6. Middlesex Probate case 20211: administration and division of the estate of Lt. John Shed, 1754 (mansion house and barn)