Roberts, History of the Military Company of the Massachusetts, now called The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, 1637-1888, vol. 1 (1895)

Compiled sketches of the company’s members, year by year, read in the archive.org full text. Used for the Foster, Payson, Brown and Briscoe families:

• Capt. Hopestill Foster (member 1642): came with his mother Patience in 1635, aged fourteen; married Mary, daughter of James Bates; ensign of the Dorchester train band under Humphrey Atherton in 1644 and later its captain; selectman 1645-1674 with gaps; deputy 1652; by his will gave £5 “towards the free school”; “a brewer, active in all town affairs, a man of judgment, and deserved popularity”; fourth sergeant of the company in 1647; died “Oct. 15, 1676” (1:121).
• Ensign Hopestill Foster (member 1673), soap boiler of Boston: baptized at Dorchester “March 10, 1645”; freeman 1673 and member of the Second Church; married Elizabeth Payson, Feb. 15, 1667; first sergeant 1675; constable 1674-5; on 28 Dec 1676 appointed to a committee “to guard the town against a conflagration”; died at Boston in 1678; “His widow married Edmund Brown” (1:223).
• Giles Payson (member 1647), of Roxbury (1:162).
• Edmund Brown (member 1691), shopkeeper of Boston, son of Deacon William Brown of Sudbury: constable 1687, tithingman 1690, lieutenant, overseer of the poor and deputy in 1692; “In 1694, he married his second or third wife, the widow of Hopestill Foster (1673), and he died soon after” (1:283).
• Joseph Briscoe (member 1692), “loaf-bread baker,” born at Boston 21 Aug 1658, son of Joseph and Abigail (Compton) Briscoe (1:293).