Joseph Jaquith

Joseph Jaquith (1745 to 1827) was a farmer on the old Farley homestead on the Bedford road southwest of Billerica Centre, the farm of the house now called the Abraham Jaquith House at 161 Concord Road. He was born on July 7, 1745, the youngest son of Abraham Jaquith and Hannah Farley, whose father Ebenezer Farley had given the couple his homestead in 1728. On January 16, 1770 he married Elizabeth Needham, a daughter of John Needham.

In 1775 his father sold him, for 266 pounds 13 shillings 4 pence, "one full half part of my Homestead with one half of the Buildings thereon standing", about fifty acres "being the Land of my late Father Farley", reaching west to the Concord River, with seven acres in Pond meadow; the deed was executed again on October 2, 1776, "in the first year of American Independance". Hazen records that he was at Lexington on April 19, 1775, and on the tax list of December 1776 he is at "the Jaquith place". When the pews of the new meeting house were sold on December 8, 1797, he paid $125.50 for one.

In 1794 he sold half of the homestead, from the road to Bedford "near the burying place" to the river, to his only son Joseph for 250 pounds, and the two worked the farm together for the rest of his life. His other children were Elizabeth (1772), who married Peter French in 1792, Prude (1774), who died in 1788, Judith (1777), who married Asa Abbot of Andover in 1798, Hannah (1779), who died in 1815, Nabby (1782) and Sally (1784), who died as children, and Abigail (1788), who never married and died in 1844.

His wife Elizabeth died on November 7, 1820, in her seventy-second year. By his will of June 16, 1818, with a codicil of 1824, he left $260 each to his daughters Elizabeth French and Judith Abbott; to Abigail, "in addition to what I have given her by deed", room in the cellar and barn, firewood and half his pew; and to his son Joseph, his sole executor, "all my lands wherever situated with my part of all the buildings", which made the son owner of the whole homestead. He died in March 1827: Hazen gives the date as March 7, and his gravestone in the Old South Cemetery reads March 16, at the age of 82. The will was approved that June.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 78, JAQUITH 6
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 249: tax list of December 1776, Joseph Jaquith at "Jaquith place"
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 263: the sale of pews in the new meeting house, December 8, 1797

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.