♂Josiah Filley

Josiah Filley (21 January 1675 – 1750) was a colonist of Windsor, in the Connecticut Colony, where he lived and raised his family for most of his life. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son William Filley (1709–1756).

Early life

Josiah was born to Samuel Filley and Anna Gillet, who had married at Windsor in October 1663; Samuel was himself the son of William and Margaret Filley of Windsor. According to the town’s nineteenth-century history, Samuel moved his family to Massaco, the settlement that became Simsbury, in 1669, and later brought them back to Windsor. Josiah’s birth is entered in the Windsor town record, although Simsbury has long been given as his birthplace. Either is possible, because Simsbury births of that period were often recorded at Windsor. A birth “21 January 1675” in a Windsor book may also fall in 1676 by the modern calendar, since the year then began in March.

He was the seventh of eleven children, and the family lost several of them young. A daughter and a son named Samuel died as small children, and a second daughter died at sixteen. A second Samuel was “killed with a cart” in October 1679, aged five or six, when Josiah was three or four. The parents gave the name Samuel to a third son in 1681. Giving a dead child’s name to a later one was common practice, a way of keeping a family name, here the father’s own, alive.

Marriage and family

Josiah married Esther Eggleston at Windsor in December 1703. The couple settled in Windsor and had nine children, born between 1704 and 1725, among them William, born in 1709.

When Samuel Filley made his will in December 1711, shortly before his death, he named Josiah among his sons and left a bequest to “my grandson Samuel Filley, son of Josiah Filley”.

Will and death

Josiah made his own will in October 1748. As summarized in a published digest of the Hartford probate records, it named his four sons, Josiah, Samuel, William and Erasmus, the last described as “often disturbed in his brain”, and made William his sole executor. It also named his five daughters, by then married into the Allyn, Holliday, Wood and Rowley families, with one still unmarried. His estate was inventoried on 14 April 1750 and the will was proved on 1 May 1750. His widow Esther outlived him, and the estate was finally distributed among her and the surviving children and heirs in 1761. William had died by then, and his share went to his heirs.

Notes

The date 14 April 1750, sometimes given for his death, is that of the estate inventory. Josiah died at some point before it, and the exact day is not known. The details of the will and the 1761 distribution come from a printed digest of the Hartford probate records; the original will, in the district’s probate book, names the same four sons and five daughters and says the same of Erasmus.

The marriage date

The town record enters the marriage twice, once on 9 December and once on 29 December 1703, and the town’s history gives 20 December.