John Wilson

John Wilson was a Billerica soldier of the Continental Army who died in New Jersey in January 1778. He was born on March 19, 1757, the son of John Wilson and Alice Totman, a great-great-grandson of the Lieutenant John Wilson who built the corn mill on Vine Brook. His sisters included Alice, who married Solomon Manning, and Rebecca, who married Nathaniel Cumings.

Hazen's list of Billerica soldiers gives him service in 1775, when the minute-men turned out and the army gathered at Cambridge, and in 1776, and places him among the men who enlisted in 1777 "for three years or the war" in the Continental Army. He died on January 17, 1778, "in the war, at the Jerseys," as the town record puts it, in the winter after the campaigns around Philadelphia.

His name is on the Revolutionary War plaque that the Billerica Historical Society placed on the Meeting House Site Memorial on the Town Common in 2001 (dedicated on October 27 of that year), which names the fourteen Billerica soldiers known to have given their lives in the war.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 164: John, son of John Wilson (6), d. 1778 "in the war, at the Jerseys"
2. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850, deaths p. 403: John, s. John and Alice, 1778, "in the war at the Jersys"
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 245: list of Billerica soldiers in the Revolution ("Wilson, John, 1, 2, 4, *")