Jacob Crosby

Jacob Crosby was a Billerica farmer who died in the army of the Revolution in the first winter of the war. He was born on September 19, 1729, a son of Thomas Crosby, and on April 8, 1761 he married Hannah Russell. Hazen places their farm next to the Chelmsford line. Their children were Hannah (1761), Reuben (1764; the baptismal record calls the child Rebecca), Zilpah (1767), who married Joseph Stearns, Jacob (1769) and Samuel (1773).

He went into the army and did not come home. By February 27, 1776 he was dead, and Hannah, signing with her mark, asked the probate judge to give the administration of the estate of "my Late Husband Jacob Crosby" to Lieutenant Asa Spaulding. The inventory, taken on March 12, 1776 by Deacon Joshua Abbot, Isaac Foster and Ebenezer Kittredge, shows a modest household: beds, a loom, spinning wheels, pewter, one cow, and about thirty acres of land with the buildings on it. When the administrator returned it he added that the widow had received forty shillings, "wages due to her husband as a soldier." In November 1777 the judge allowed Hannah seven pounds for the support of herself and her family.

Hazen's list of Billerica soldiers in the Revolution marks Jacob Crosby among those who died, under the year 1776, though it numbers his service with the men of 1777; the probate papers show that he had died by the end of February 1776. Hazen's lists of the earlier French wars also name him.

His name is on the Revolutionary War plaque that the Billerica Historical Society placed on the Meeting House Site Memorial on the Town Common, which names the fourteen Billerica soldiers known to have given their lives in the war.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 30, CROSBY 23
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 30: Jacob Crosby (23), marriage, farm and children; estate settled 1776
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 244: list of Billerica soldiers in the Revolution ("Crosby, Jacob, 3, *1776")