Artemas Young House

The Artemas Young House stood on the east side of Boston Road south of the Center, on the lot now occupied by the Convenient Plaza at 498-506 Boston Road. Artemas Young built it in 1831 or 1832 on the old homestead and tavern stand of the Bowers family. It is the "J. Rogers" house of the 1853 map, the home of Josiah Rogers from 1838 until his death in 1866.

The land was part of the homestead of Capt. William Bowers, who gave it in 1788 to his son Jonathan Bowers, "my homestead containing about twenty two acres" with the buildings. Jonathan Bowers, Esq., kept a tavern here and died early in 1829 leaving no widow or children, and his nieces and nephews sold the place in 1831. On August 2, 1831 Abraham R. Thompson, acting for the heirs, sold Artemas Young of Lowell, merchant, for $1,350, "a part of the Homestead and Tavern stand of Jona. Bowers, Esq. deceased, with the dwelling house and new barn thereon standing", 31 rods 17 links on "the great Boston road" south of the Bowers Homestead of Samuel Bowers, then Nathaniel Cheever's. Jonathan Simonds sold him the nine rods next south, by John Eames, "reserving the buildings now upon said premises, with the privilege of taking them off within one year". Young mortgaged the place to Asa Perrin of Lowell the same day.

Young then built. On November 24, 1832 he mortgaged to the Lowell Institution for Savings, for $2,000, "one certain farm on which I now dwell in said Billerica containing nineteen acres and ten rods with a new dwelling house and other buildings thereon". In March 1834 he sold the nineteen acres "with the buildings standing" to Samuel H. Mann of Lowell for $7,000, about five times what he had paid in 1831. Mann sold to William Hilliard Jr. in April 1834 for $5,000, and the claim passed in 1835 through Charles C. Little and Silas P. Tarbell to David Henry Kane of Boston. Meanwhile the Lowell Bank had a judgment against Young, and on April 30, 1835 a deputy sheriff sold his right of redeeming the farm at auction at the Washington Hotel in Lowell to Nathaniel Wright, the bank's president. In 1836 the bank sold the place "with the buildings thereon" to George P. Elliott for $1,000 and the $2,000 mortgage, and in 1838 Elliott sold it to Josiah Rogers, a Billerica yeoman, for $3,800, with Nathaniel Cheever on the north and Blaney Abbot on the east. In 1858 Rogers sold sixteen acres of the back land and the frontage to the north to Harlow Colby for $5,000 (see Harlow Colby House). He kept his house lot on the road, bounded "on my own land as the wall now stands".

Josiah Rogers died on December 21, 1866. His will of 1863 provided for his wife Lucy and left the rest of his estate to his daughters, Sarah B. Mason, wife of Dr. Augustus Mason, and Elizabeth Rogers, "for their own separate use". In 1872 the daughters, then of Brighton, sold "the homestead of the late Josiah Rogers", one acre and fifty-five rods "with the buildings thereon", to William Proudfoot of Billerica for $3,350. After Proudfoot's death his widow Jane M. Proudfoot and his sons sold it in 1888 for $2,850 to Oliver C. Rogers. When Oliver C. Rogers died, his administrator sold the place at auction in April 1894 to Eliza A. Davis of Lowell for $2,735. Later deeds of the neighboring land call it the land "formerly of one Rogers, supposed to be now of one Davis".

Eliza A. Davis sold the house lot in January 1922 to Arthur Elmer and Hannah Belle Angell of Billerica. By then Clarence A. Backer owned the land to the south, and the Town of Billerica's standpipe lot adjoined it on the east. In 1928 the Angells sold the south seventy-five feet of the lot to their neighbors, the Bohannons, and kept the north part with the house. The 1939 deed that began Musgrave's Tower Farm bounds on "land now or formerly of Angel". Hannah Belle Angell died in 1941, and in August 1944 Arthur Elmer Angell conveyed the house lot to Mabel B. Angell.

By then the house was numbered 502 Boston Road. Arthur A. Angell, a sign painter and decorator, worked from it: directories from 1949 to 1957 list his sign painting business, the 1957 directory gives both his shop and his home at 502 Boston Road, and he advertised in the Howe High School yearbook in 1951. In 1967 Mabel B. Angell conveyed the place to herself and her husband, Arthur Andrew Angell, as tenants by the entirety. In June 1970 the Angells sold it, "with the buildings thereon", for $64,000 to the C.B.C. Billerica Trust, which had a plan of the lot made for C.F.M. of New England, Inc. in November 1970 and obtained a variance from the Board of Appeals in March 1971. The house was taken down for the Convenient Plaza, whose first store was leased in November 1971.

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.