Spencer, Dearborn and Dearborn, William Briscoe of Boston, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 178 (2024)

Known from the research file’s reading. The Briscoe generations: William Briscoe, tailor, bp. Sundridge, Kent, 24 June 1591, son of Rev. Guy Briscowe and Mary Wilson, first cousin of Rev. John Wilson of Boston; his first wife Jane, buried at Watford 3 May 1637; his son Joseph, bp. Watford 19 Aug 1627, who married Abigail Compton at Boston 30 Jan 1651/2 and drowned 1 Jan 1657/8 (Rev. John Wilson wrote a printed elegy on him, on the anagram “Job cries hopes”); and Joseph Jr., born 21 Aug 1658, a baker, living 1724 with his wife Rebecca. The corner of Washington and Bromfield Streets was “Briscow’s Corner” in 1708.

Read in full in the issue PDF (October 2026). The article prints the Watford parish register’s Briscoe entries (p. 11): baptisms of Thomas (16 Nov 1617, “Son of Willm brisco”) and of Daniel, Nathaniel, John, William, Elizabeth, Joseph (“Joseph, Sonne of William and Jane Briscoe—19,” Aug 1627), Benjamin and Lydia as children of William and Jane, 1619-1631/2; Ezekiel, “sonne of Willyam & Sislee Bisco,” 16 Apr 1639; William’s marriage to “Ciclye Deale,” 17 Aug 1637; and the burials of an infant and a child of William (19 and 21 June 1630), “Jane ye. wife of William Bisco” (3 May 1637) and her son John (1 Feb 1637/8). It transcribes the Sundridge register entry “1591 Williã, ye sonn of Guy Briscow, June 29” (p. 12), though its text gives 24 June (p. 24). For William (pp. 24-26): Boston inhabitant 24 Feb 1639/40; freeman 2 June 1641; overseer of fences at Muddy River 1642 and 1647; letters to the churches at Milford and Lynn, 27 Aug 1648; Cicely died at Boston 9 Dec 1661; died between 9 Sept 1662 and 13 June 1667, when administration went to his son Benjamin, “his sonn that tooke all the Care & paines with him in his life time” (inventory £17 7s). For Joseph (p. 26): married before William Hibbins; his widow Abigail, only daughter of John and Susanna Compton, married (2) Abraham Busby, 23 Sept 1659, before Governor Endicott, and in 1683 she and Busby deeded her son Joseph land for his grandmother Compton’s estate. For Joseph Jr. (pp. 32-34): his grandmother Compton’s legacy; the 1679 suit; the 1680/81 deed with his wife Rebecca; offices, the 1696 brick-law petition, and “William Row, Negro Servt.”; the 1724 sale “with the consent of Rebeckah his wife”; and his children by Rebecca, the first being Rebecca, b. 16 Sept 1679, bp. Old South 12 Oct 1680, wife of Samuel Foster (d. 10 Mar 1702), Thomas Morris and William Scorch, with the deeds of 9 Mar 1699[/1700], 27 June 1722 and 2 Aug 1726 (pp. 34-35).