Thomas Patten

Thomas Patten was born in October 1636, a son of William Patten and his wife Mary. His father was in Cambridge by 1635 and was one of "the present inhabitants of Shawshin" who signed the Cambridge agreement of 1654-5, but he went back to Cambridge, where he died in 1668. Thomas stayed. His house stood west of Long Street and south of the common, near the house of Mr. Francis Richardson. On April 1, 1662, at Dedham, he married Rebecca Paine, a daughter of Thomas Paine of Dedham.

He was one of the towns first mill men. By about 1680 he had a saw mill on Content Brook at what became Pattenville & Morningside, and in 1682 the selectmen ordered a highway "on y^e East of Thomas pattins Saw mill." When King Philips War drove the town into garrisons, the selectmen and militia committee ordered on October 8, 1675 that his house be one of them, "to entertaine Goldin Moore, & Samuel ffrost, Jno Kidder, Roger Toothaker & John Trull" with their families.

Rebecca died on May 19, 1680, and on May 20, 1686 he married Sarah, a widow of Reading, whose name the records give as Didson or Dunton. Thomas Patten died on January 16, 1689/90, "aged about 54," and was buried in the Old South Cemetery. In his will of January 14 he gave Sarah half his dwelling house and barn with the orchard for her widowhood and directed that "my sons William and Kendall shall have their portions out of my homestead with suitable meadow to it," William to stay with his mother until he was twenty-one; his eldest son Thomas took the second-division lot and meadows and Nathaniel the land at Loes Plain. The inventory lists the house, barn and orchard on about an acre, seven acres behind Samuel Frosts house and "a quarter part of a saw mill." In December 1690 Sarah married Sergeant Thomas Richardson.

His children by Rebecca were Mary (1664); Thomas (1665/6); Nathaniel (1668); Deacon William (1671), who settled near the corner on the road north of the town center; Rebecca (1674/5), who married Deacon Joseph Davis; Sarah (1677); and Elizabeth (1680). By Sarah he had Mehitable (1686/7), who married William French, and Kendall (1689), who settled in Tewksbury. The Patten mills on Content Brook stayed in the family through the eighteenth century, and the village there still carries the name.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 108, PATTEN 2

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.