Pattenville

Pattenville is a neighborhood in East Billerica on Andover Road and Whipple Road at the Tewksbury line, along Content Brook. Pattenville was the old mill village where Whipple Road crosses the brook, which took its name from the Patten family's mills and the cabinet works of the nineteenth century.

Pattenville may be the site of the first mill in Billerica. Henry A. Hazen noted that John Parker owned two large lots there and that "a mill-pond is mentioned there in 1664," and that Thomas Patten had a sawmill there by about 1680; in 1682 the selectmen ordered a highway "on ye East of Thomas pattins Saw mill." The Patten family held the mill through the eighteenth century, and Whipple Road crosses the brook on what may be an enlargement of the first mill dam. In the nineteenth century Theophilus Manning, whose wife Hannah was a Patten, had both a sawmill and a gristmill on the brook. In Hazen's words, "He sold both, in 1825, to Dea. Aaron H. Patten, who began, in 1845, the manufacture of cabinet-work. The business grew to considerable proportions, and Pattenville became a definite local name in town." The shops turned out $20,000 to $30,000 worth of work a year, much of it furniture shipped around Cape Horn to California, and were carried on by the deacon's sons after his death in 1866. They suffered in the depression of 1874 to 1878 and were sold in 1879 to Walter J. Pettingell, who made tanks there until the mill burned in January 1882.

The 1875 county atlas labels Pattenville at the Tewksbury line, with the houses of S. H. King, A. H. Patten and Thomas Patten and a cooper's shop along the road. A small community of workers' and family houses grew up around the shops on Andover Road between about 1853 and 1880, among them the Samuel H. King House at 350 Andover Road, built for Samuel H. King, who came from Landaff, New Hampshire, and married the proprietor's daughter in 1854, and the A. H. Patten Jr. House at 373. The name outlived the mill: the district school on Salem Road was called the Pattenville School in 1885, the town kept a well at Pattenville in the 1880s, its guide boards included one "at East Billerica, leading to Pattenville," the Pattenville Bridge over Content Brook was replanked in 1913 and rebuilt in 1922, and fire alarm box 612 was "Pattenville" in the 1919 and 1931 directories. The Billerica Historical Commission surveyed the surviving houses at 350, 352, 354, 369 and 373 Andover Road as the Pattenville area in 1973. By then the site of the mill and shops had become Brookside Drive.

Morningside is a group of small subdivisions of the late 1950s and 1960s off Andover Road in East Billerica, along Content Brook and the Boston and Maine Railroad, on Newport Drive, Morningside Drive, Brookside Drive and Lampson Lane that filled out the Pattenville neighborhood. The first was a "Plan of Land Situated in Billerica, Mass." for H. & M. Construction Co., Inc., drawn by S. Albert Kaufmann of Tewksbury on June 25, 1959, approved by the planning board on July 23 and recorded on July 30, 1959 (Plan Book 91, Plan 121). It laid out fifteen lots on Newport Drive, running west from Andover Street between Content Brook and the railroad. Townsman Homes, Inc. followed with the "Definitive Plan of Morningside," drawn by Emmons, Fleming & Bienvenu in August 1965 and recorded on November 16, 1965 (Plan Book 102, Plan 157), eleven lots on Morningside Drive, which runs north from Andover Street to Content Brook. The "Plan of Content Park," drawn by the K. J. Miller Company on July 16, 1968 (Plan Book 107, Plan 121), laid out Brookside Drive, and the Harart Corporation sold its lots from 1969. Lampson Lane, off Andover Road beside the railroad, is registered land: George H. Poor's subdivision plan of October 1, 1968, made for the Chelmsford Woods Realty Trust, was registered on August 7, 1969 as Land Court Plan 11803-E (Registration Book 86, Page 141), lots 7 through 12. The houses on Newport Drive date from 1960, those on Morningside Drive from 1966, and those on Brookside Drive and Lampson Lane from 1968.

Historic Buildings

Name	Alternate	Address	Built	Moved	Demolished
Samuel H. King House		350 Andover Rd	1862		2009
A. H. Patten Jr. House		373 Andover Rd	1865
Field House		354 Andover Rd	1870
Shuman House		369 Andover Rd	1880
Foster House		352 Andover Rd	1883
Charles A. Foster House		350 Andover Rd	1915		2009
Clark Berris House		356 Andover Rd	1915		2007

References

1. MACRIS BIL.G, Pattenville (Area 300), Billerica Historical Commission survey by Charles E. Stearns, 1973