Joseph Billings, or Billing (1700-1783), was decended from a family that was among the original settlers, or proprietors, of Hatfield, Massachusetts. He purchased Amos Newport from David Ingersoll of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1729. In 1766, after being enslaved by Billings for almost four decades, Newport unsuccessfully sued him for his freedom. Newport charged that on Dec. 1, 1765, Billings made "an assault upon him...and...falsely imprisoned and restrained [him] of his lawfull liberty..." Newport's freedom suit was unsuccessful; the court ruled he had been legally sold to Billings. Newport appealed the verdict to the Massachusetts Supreme Court but lost his case in September 1768. The Court ruled that "the said Amos was not a freeman as he alledged but the proper Slave of the said Joseph." There is no evidence that Amos Newort ever successfully emanciptated from Joseph Billings.Billings also enslaved a man called Caesar, who appeared n Elijah Williams's Deerfield store accounts in 1757 as "Caesar Mr. Billing Negro" and "Caesar Billings".
According to the Vital Records for the town of Hatfield, Joseph Billings died "of a burn" in 1783, aged 83.
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