Samuel and Patience Billings (PEO.5)

Samuel and Patience Billings

Baptist Deacon Samuel L. Billings, born July 30 1784 in Majorbigwaduce (Naskeag), Maine was the son of Deacon Abel Edwin Billings (Feb 16 1756/7-Nov 27 1833) and Elizabeth (Betsey) Farrar (Sept 15 1762-1846).

Samuel’s father Abel was among the first to establish the Baptist Church in Sedgwick as described in this quote from a 1905 historical sketch by Rev Arthur Warren Smith,

“On July 8, 1793, the Church of Christ in Sedgwick was constituted thus with twenty-two original members. They were Daniel Merrill, Jonas Dodge, Richard Wells, Ebenezer Eaton, Abel Billings, Amaziah Dodge, Ebenezer Herrick, Solomon Billings, Nathan Osgood, Elias Bartlett, Silas Bunker, Sarah Dougherty, Lydia Dodge, Mary Bunker, Lucy Emerton, Hannah Douglas, Abigail Byard, Marcy Dodge, Abigail Billings, Hepiziah Cleaves, Rachel Smith, and Joanna Hawley. The above persons were all who composed the first Christian church which was ever constituted on the shores of Sedgwick.”¹

Samuel was an expert carpenter (joiner) and built many of the houses in Sedgwick. He used post and beam construction methods and several of those buildings are still standing and are as straight as when they were built. He built his own home, the Billings homestead, at the corner of Reach Road and Caterpillar Hill Road in 1820, the year Maine became a state.

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¹ Smith, Rev Arthur Warren, Centennial of the First Baptist Church Sedgwick, Maine June 11-18, 1905, I. Historical Sketch of the Town of Sedgwick, pages 29, 30.