Joshua Davis

Born	1714-10-20 Billerica, MA
Died	1777-01-18 Billerica, MA
Select Board
In Office	1753 - 1757 1759 - 1765
Deacon of the First Parish
In Office	1776 - 1777
Father	Joseph Davis
Mother	Rebecca Patten
Spouses	Hannah Jaquith (m. 1739-10-24 )
Children	Joshua (b. 1743-10-25) Benjamin (b. 1753-06-26) Timothy (b. 1756-04-28) William (b. 1761-03-28)

Joshua Davis (1714 to 1777) was a Billerica farmer who lived on the old Davis place north of Fox Hill, served ten years on the Select Board, and in the first years of the Revolution sat on the town's committees of inspection and safety, becoming a deacon of the church shortly before his death. He was born on October 20, 1714, the youngest son of Deacon Joseph Davis, who had come from Reading, married Rebecca Patten in 1691 and in 1699 bought the Fox farm north of Fox Hill, where he made his home, "long known as the Davis place." Joshua succeeded him there after his father died in 1747, and the tax list of 1776 places him at the Davis place on the Long Pond road.

On October 24, 1739, he married Hannah Jaquith of Wilmington. Their children were Joshua, who died as an infant in 1740; Hannah (1741), who married John Farmer; Joshua (1743); Joseph and Rebecca, who both died in March 1750; a second Joseph (1751); Benjamin (1753); Timothy (1756); Jonathan (1758); and William (1761). On the minister's rate of 1755 he was assessed in the east part of the town, and he was often called on by the probate court to appraise and divide the estates of his neighbors, among them the Danforth homestead in 1759 and the estate of Oliver Farmer in 1762.

He was elected a selectman from 1753 to 1756 and again from 1759 to 1764, through the years of the French and Indian War, serving with Josiah Brown and Capt. Daniel Stickney. In the 1760s he enlarged his farm by buying from his neighbor Thomas Kidder the old Dutton farm on the road toward Long Pond, the house now at 28 Pond Street: on February 11, 1765, eleven acres and seventy poles of orchard and pasture "together with a Dwelling House thereon standing and also a Frame of a Barn," with a right of way "westerly down to the watering place from his Pasture," and on January 1, 1767, the adjoining 34 1/4 acres, bounded by the highway "that leads from said Daves's to Edward Farmers."

As the quarrel with Britain deepened, the town put him on its Revolutionary committees. On December 19, 1774, he was chosen to a Committee of Inspection "to see that the Resolves of the Continental, and Provincial, Congress, be adhered to," and in January 1775 he was one of the twelve "Conservators" chosen to "prevent and Discountenance all Disorders, Mobs, and Tumultuous Assemblys" while the courts were closed and to settle disputes between neighbors. At the March meeting of 1776 the reconstructed Committee of Correspondence, Inspection and Safety named "Dea. Joshua Davis" among its members, the first time the town records give him that title.

Deacon Joshua Davis died on January 18, 1777, aged 62, four days after his son Joseph, who was 25. He left no will. His widow and his eldest son declined the administration in favor of the son Benjamin, and the inventory of June 1777 listed a homestead of about 134 acres with its buildings and a second farm of 45 acres with a dwelling house and barn, the former Dutton place. In the division of 1777 to 1778 the widow's thirds were set off in the east end of the main house, and the two thirds were divided among Benjamin, Jonathan and Timothy, the eldest son Joshua "being well settled in a neighbouring town"; Timothy received the Dutton farm and sold it in 1785. Hannah Davis died on August 8, 1800, aged 82. Both are recorded on gravestones in the Old South Burying Ground.

Joshua Davis

Joshua Davis

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