Reuben Kendall

Reuben Kendall (1724 to 1805) was a farmer in the northeast part of Billerica, on the Wilmington road just west of the Shawshin River, who served nine years on the Select Board during and after the Revolution and sat on the town's first Committee of Inspection in 1774. He was born in Woburn on May 20, 1724, a son of Ephraim and Judith Kendall. His father died in 1728, when Reuben was four, and in November 1732 his mother, then Judith Johnson of Woburn, "alias Judith Kendal of Wilmington," asked the probate court to make her brother Samuel Walker of Wilmington guardian of her three young children, Ezra, Reuben and Judith; in May 1739, in his fifteenth year, Reuben chose Walker as his guardian himself.

As a young man he settled in Billerica, on land in the Content Brook and Shawshin neighborhood that, according to a later study of the Patten farm, he bought from Josiah Brown about 1747. On April 20, 1749, he married Judith Brown, daughter of Joseph Brown of the Shawshin district of Tewksbury and niece of Josiah Brown. Hazen places their home "just west of Shawshin river, on the Wilmington road," and the Kendall land bordered the Brown and Patten farms on the road to Salem. Their children were Judith (1750), who married Thomas Richardson in 1772; Reuben (1754); Joseph (1757); Mary (1761), who died on July 12, 1783, aged 21; and Sarah (1766). He was rated in the east part of the town on the minister's rate of 1755, and on the province tax list of 1776 he and his son Reuben Jr. appear on the Wilmington road near the Shawshin.

He was elected a selectman in 1773 and served through 1776, again in 1778 and 1779, and from 1782 to 1784. On December 19, 1774, town meeting chose him to its Committee of Inspection, with Joshua Davis, William Tompson, John Parker and others, "to see that the Resolves of the Continental, and Provincial, Congress, be adhered to." He was on the board in March 1775, when Thomas Ditson Jr. of Billerica was tarred and feathered by British soldiers in Boston and the selectmen presented a remonstrance to General Gage; the town meeting of March 20 thanked them "for the wise and prudent measures" they had taken and told them to carry the case to the Provincial Congress. In 1778, when he was again on the board, town meeting instructed the selectmen "to take care & provide for the families of the soldiers that are out in the Continental army" and to provide clothing for the town's soldiers.

His wife Judith died on May 22, 1800, aged 75. In the 1790s the Middlesex Canal was laid out across this neighborhood, and its proprietors bought land of Reuben Kendall in 1794 and 1800 by the road to Salem and near their aqueduct over the Shawshin. Reuben Kendall died on November 6, 1805, aged 82, and both he and Judith have gravestones in the Old South Burying Ground. His son Joseph, who married Mary Crosby in 1788, died in 1823.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 81, KENDALL 2
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 233: Reuben Kendall chosen to the Committee of Inspection, Dec. 19, 1774
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 234: the selectmen's remonstrance to General Gage after the tarring and feathering of Thomas Ditson Jr., March 1775
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 249, tax list of December 1776: Kindall, Reuben, and Reuben Jr., Wilmington Road near Shawshin
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 306, list of selectmen: Reuben Kendall, 1773-76, 1778-79, 1782-84
6. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), marriages: Reuben [Kendal] and Judith Brown of Tewksbury, Apr. 20, 1749
7. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), deaths: Reuben [Kendall], Nov. 6, 1805, aged 82; Judith, w. Reuben, May 22, 1800, aged 75 (gravestones, Old South Cemetery)
8. Middlesex County Probate File Papers, case 13050: guardianship of Ezra, Reuben and Judith, minor children of Ephraim Kendall of Woburn, 1732 and 1739 (Samuel Walker of Wilmington guardian)