Josiah Converse

Father of Col. Israel Converse. Born at Woburn in 1710, the eldest son of Josiah Converse and Hannah Sawyer, he went with his parents to Leicester, Massachusetts, about 1727, and married Eleanor, daughter of Nathaniel Richardson, there in December 1732 (source). Their daughters Mary (1733) and Eleanor (1735) were born at Leicester; by 1737 they were at Stafford, Connecticut, where the town recorded the births of Josiah (4 June 1737), Israel (7 Aug 1743) and the triplets Joseph, Benjamin and Hannah (22 Apr 1752) among “the chi. of Josiah and Eleanor Converse” (source). The Converse Family (1905), as quoted on WikiTree, says the triplets “were carried to the baptismal font by their three elder sisters, Mary, Eleanor and Dorothy” (source); Joseph lived three weeks and Benjamin four years. Thirteen children are known, the last, Joseph, born in December 1754.

He was sixty-five when the Revolution came. His descendant Ella (Chapin) Browne joined the DAR partly on his record: “Josiah Converse, (1710-75) responded to the Lexington Alarm from Stafford and was a member of the General Court” (source). He died at Stafford on 11 Sept 1775 and is buried in the Old Stafford Street Cemetery. His sons Israel and Joseph both died at Randolph, Vermont; Joseph’s son Julius, born at Stafford in 1798, was governor of Vermont in 1872-74 (source).

The Richardson Memorial says that Eleanor’s husband “was, about 1733, a leading man in Leicester, being in March of that year chosen moderator, first selectman, town clerk, town treasurer, and first assessor. In May he was chosen representative to the General Court” (source). At twenty-three that would be remarkable; the offices may well have been his father’s.

Research: research/hatten/Browne_Chapin_Cumins.md.

Open questions

• His parents: probably Capt. Josiah and Hannah (Sawyer) Converse. Kith and Kin (no. 71), WikiTree, the DAR line’s “(1710-75)” and Ella Browne’s own note of 1903, “Lieut. Josiah Converse, son of Capt. Josiah,” make him the Josiah born at Woburn in 1710. Against that, the Richardson Memorial (1876) calls Eleanor’s husband “son of John Convers, of Woburn” and says “She was his second wife,” and A. C. Vinton’s Converse genealogy in the Woburn records gives him a first wife Hannah and a daughter Sarah, born November 1729, and makes Capt. Josiah’s son the “Mr. Josiah” who died at Woburn in June 1748; Kith and Kin prints this too (no. 57), so it gives Eleanor two husbands. But Capt. Josiah himself moved to Leicester about 1727 with his wife Hannah, and their daughter Sarah was born there on 5 Nov 1729: the Leicester Josiah with a wife Hannah and a daughter Sarah was the father, not an earlier marriage of the son. His children’s names agree: his Dorothy, Jesse and Jude repeat three of Capt. Josiah and Hannah’s children, and Jesse and Jude are rare. The 1748 death record names no parents. The Leicester town records would settle it.