Fellows Billings (1704-1784) was born in Hatfield, Massachusetts, one of several children born to Ebenezer and Hannah Billings. (The Hatfield record of his birth spelled his name Fellowes Billing.) He married Mary Easton (1712-1799) of Hadley in 1735; the couple had nine children. Fellows was among the early settlers of nearby Sunderland, Massachusetts. He served in a number of town offices and was a Lieutenant in the militia during the colonial wars. Fellows operated a well-known and highly regarded tavern there for almost 40 years until the town voted in 1774 "they were not willing Lt. Billing should keep the tavern any longer." A strongly Whig (Patriot) town, Sunderland residents resented Billings's openly Loyalist sympathies, who was still remembered in a 1899 history of the town for "his obnoxious toryism." Fellows sold his Sunderland propery and moved his family to Conway, Massachusetts, where he died in 1784. His gravestone identified him as "Capt Fellows Billings."
There are no references in surviving Sunderland records that Billings was an enslaver while living there. According to the town's history, Conway vital records recorded the death of a "negro child of Capt. Billings" on November 14, 1780.
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