Oliver Crosby

Oliver Crosby (1744-1825), deacon, town clerk and Revolutionary officer, was born in Billerica on September 17, 1744, the son of Oliver and Rebecca Crosby and a great-grandson of Simon Crosby, the early settler and innkeeper. His father died on February 27, 1746-7, when Oliver was two years old, leaving also a daughter Rebecca, later the wife of Malachi Allen of Carlisle, and a younger son, Josiah. On March 17, 1768, Oliver married Rachel Stickney, daughter of Daniel Stickney. They made their home east of Bare Hill, and in 1782, when the town fixed the bounds of the centre school squadron, "the house of Oliver Crosby" marked its line on the Boston road.

He served in the Revolution as a lieutenant. Hazen's list of Billerica soldiers names Lieut. Oliver Crosby in its first two groups: the service of 1775, which included the minute-men, the men at Lexington and the army at Cambridge, and the service that included the battle of Bunker Hill and the siege of Boston. On March 10, 1777, as the calls for men grew harder to fill, the town chose him with Capt. Solomon Pollard, Capt. Edward Farmer, Capt. Jonathan Stickney and Lieut. Jacob Richardson as "a committee of five persons to Indent with persons to Inlist into the Continental service," allowing them fourteen days to procure the men. He later bore the title of major, by which John Farmer named him in 1816 and his daughter's gravestone in 1795.

After the war he became one of the town's leading officers. He was chosen town clerk in 1785 and kept the town's records for fourteen years in all, through 1796 and again in 1803 and 1804, and he sat on the Select Board for fifteen years between 1786 and 1804. Billerica sent him as its representative in 1799, 1800 and 1801 and again in 1804. He was also a deacon of the church: when the pews of the new meeting-house were sold on December 8, 1797, "Deacon Oliver Crosby" bought pew 41 for $120.50, and Farmer listed him among the deacons of the church in 1816.

Of his children, Oliver, born on March 17, 1769, graduated from Harvard College in 1795, studied law and settled at Dover, New Hampshire, in 1798, where Farmer in 1816 described him as an attorney and justice of the peace; in 1822 he moved to Atkinson, Maine, where he had acquired large land interests, and he died there in 1851. Michael, born in 1771, married Asenath Blanchard. Josiah, born in 1777, married Betsey Hartwell of Littleton, and his daughter Elizabeth married Rev. Bernard Whitman, brother of Billerica's minister Nathaniel Whitman. A daughter, Rachel, died on November 12, 1795, aged nearly sixteen. Deacon Crosby died on his eighty-first birthday, September 17, 1825, and his gravestone gives his age as 81.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 30, CROSBY 24
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 239 (committee to enlist men for the Continental service, 1777)
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 244 (list of soldiers in the Revolutionary War: Lt. Oliver Crosby)
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 263 (sale of pews, 1797: Deacon Oliver Crosby, pew 41)
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 304 (lists of town clerks and representatives)
6. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 306 (list of selectmen)
7. Farmer, Historical Memoir of Billerica (1816), p. 28 (deacons of the church)
8. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850 (1908), deaths p. 352 (Deacon Oliver Crosby, Sept. 17, 1825, a. 81)

Deed References Expand all

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