Jonathan Danforth

Jonathan Danforth was Billerica's renowned early surveyor, and Henry Hazen, the town's historian, thought that "in view of his long life and many and varied services, he might be recognized as the father of the town." He was the youngest son of Nicholas and Elizabeth Danforth, born at Framlingham in High Suffolk, England, on February 29, 1627-8. His mother died in England in 1629 and his father in Cambridge in 1638. His elder brother Thomas Danforth of Cambridge became Deputy Governor of Massachusetts, and another brother, Rev. Samuel Danforth, was John Eliot's colleague at Roxbury. Jonathan signed the 1654 petition that asked the General Court to enlarge the Shawshin settlement and name it Billericay, making him one of the town's founders.

Danforth's marriage to Elizabeth Poulter on November 22, 1654 was the first recorded in Billerica, though it took place in Boston, "before Mr. Increase Nowell," and was recorded there too. Elizabeth, born at Rayleigh, Essex, in 1633, was the daughter of John and Mary Poulter. Her mother's second husband was town clerk John Parker, which is why the two men called each other father-in-law and son-in-law. The house Danforth built on West Street (now River Street) was one of the garrisons of King Philip's War; Hazen, who saw it taken down in 1879 and 1880, called it "the only structure in town which is an incontestible relic of that day."

For forty years he probably surveyed every land grant in town, and much of the surrounding region as well: Haverhill, Dracut, Dunstable, Groton, Townsend, and as far as Amherst and Litchfield, New Hampshire. He left some 200 pages of his own careful survey descriptions, "in his own, very clear and handsome hand-writing," in the town's volume of Land Grants, and many of his plots are preserved in the State Archives. As early as 1659 he ran the Woburn line as the "Artiste" who "did ye work for both townes." In December 1665 the town hired him, at fourpence a grant, to copy every earlier grant into a new book, with power to settle conflicting bounds; in November 1666 the townsmen examined the work and confirmed it as the town's authoritative record. In 1661 the inhabitants agreed that he and John Parker should have a thousand acres of the town's new grant if they laid out the other three thousand acres at Penacook, and in 1685 he was chosen to lay out a division of the town's remaining meadows.

Beyond surveying, he served as town clerk from 1665 to 1686, as a selectman for twenty-one years between 1660 and 1685, as a Representative (Hazen's list, with a query, gives 1685), and as Captain of the militia company. In March 1676, during King Philip's War, he served on a Council committee on the defense of the Middlesex out-towns, and that October he and his fellow selectmen petitioned the General Court for relief from the war's heavy rates. In 1692 he was summoned as a witness against Martha Carrier of Andover, formerly of Billerica, in the Salem witchcraft trials; the Billerica constable reported that "hee can say nothing in yt case, that is worth mentioning." In 1698, when the selectmen chose him for a meeting about a new bridge over the Concord River, "Capt. Danforth, being presented with the selectmen's order, wholly refused." Hazen wrote that he was the lifelong friend of the minister Samuel Whiting, who survived him by only five months.

Elizabeth died October 7, 1689, and on November 17, 1690 he married Esther Champney, widow of Josiah Convers of Woburn, who died a few months after him. His children included a son Jonathan, an ensign who died before him in 1710-11, and a daughter Anna who married Oliver Whiting; in 1714 his children sold the homestead "which belonged to our Honored Father Danforth" to Oliver Whiting Jr. Danforth died September 7, 1712, aged 84 (the town's record of deaths says 85). A memorial poem attributed to his nephew, Rev. John Danforth of Dorchester, reads in part: "He rode the circuit, chain'd great towns and farms, to good behavior; and by well marked stations, he fixed their bounds for many generations."

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 34, DANFORTH 1 (birth at Framlingham, brothers, first marriage on record, surveyor)
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 35, DANFORTH 1 (offices, memorial poem, house, marriages, children, death 1712)
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Chapter X (hired to transcribe the Book of Grants, 1665-66)
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 113 (Danforth garrison on West Street, still standing 1879)
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 115 (Council committee on the Middlesex out-towns, March 1676)
6. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 100 (Capt. Danforth refuses the bridge meeting, 1698)
7. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 304 (lists of town clerks and representatives)
8. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 305 (list of selectmen: Jonathan Danforth, 21 years)
9. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), Marriages p. 242 (Jonathan Danforth and Elizabeth Poulter, Nov. 22, 1654, in Boston)
10. Vital Records of Billerica (1908), Deaths p. 354 (Capt. Jonathan Danforth died Sept. 7, 1712, a. 85; wives Elizabeth and Esther)
11. Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive, SWP No. 24.7 (summons of Capt. Danforth as witness against Martha Carrier and constable's return, 1692)

Deed References Expand all

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