Jackson Homestead - History of The Homestead - Joseph Jackson

Joseph Jackson

Joseph was born only a few months before his father, Sebas, died. He lived with his mother, Sarah, and his siblings until they married, on the homestead until he was seventeen. However, when he, the youngest of Sebas's six children, finally came of age, his father's estate was finally divided among the six. Sarah gave up all rights to her property in exchange for financial support. Joseph took the homestead, as all other siblings were long married, wed a woman named Patience Hyde, and became a clothier. Sadly, for many years Joseph was involved in representing himself, his mother, and his two sisters in a litigation suit against his oldest brother, Edward, over the estate of their brother Jonathan, who had disappeared while on a logging expedition to the Gulf of Mexico. The bitter feud had hardly died down when Sarah died in 1726, launching a fresh round of legal battles. By the time everything was finally settled, Joseph was so experienced in law that he was able to represent Newton in a lawsuit against Cambridge over support for the Great Bridge over the Charles River. Towards the end of his life Joseph became too weak to walk and was forced to sit in a special chair while doing chores around the farm; a century later the chair was celebrated in a poem by his great-great-granddaughter, Marion Jackson-Gilbert, and is still exhibited at the museum.