Abraham Jaquith House

For three centuries this house on the north side of Concord Road, near the Old South Burying Ground, stood on the homestead of George Farley, one of the first settlers of Billerica. Farley came from Woburn and bought the north-west lot of the Dudley Farm; Hazen placed his house "near the Jaquith place." His son Samuel, born in the last week of March 1654, was recorded as the first birth in the town. Farley was one of the known Anabaptists among the early settlers, and when King Philip's War came, "George ffarley's house is allowed for garrison" by order of October 14, 1675. For that reason the house was long known as the Farley Garrison and was called the best candidate for the oldest house in town.

In 1693 the aged George and Christian Farley turned over their estate to their grandson Caleb Farley Jr., who agreed to come home and care for them, and George died later that year. Most of his descendants moved away early, several of them to Roxbury, perhaps because of their Baptist ties. Caleb Jr. sold the 50-acre "house, house Lott and Living" to Job Lane in 1700, bought it back in 1706, and sold it the same week to Joseph Farley of Roxbury; Benjamin Farley of Roxbury conveyed it in 1713 to Ebenezer Farley. On January 13, 1726/7, Ebenezer's daughter Hannah married Abraham Jaquith, born in 1701 in the part of Woburn that became Wilmington, and in 1728 Ebenezer deeded them "my homested or house Lott" of about fifty acres "with all the Buildings and fences thereon standing" as her portion. Hannah bore twelve children, all but the eldest in Billerica, and the Jaquith family held the farm by inheritance for the next 270 years. Two later Jaquith houses, of 1812 and 1872, stood nearby on Concord Road.

A First Period survey in 1985 found that, despite the Farley tradition, the house itself was most likely built about 1725, around the time of the Farley and Jaquith marriage. It was a two-cell central chimney house with an original staircase, quirk-beaded summer beams and posts, feather-edged sheathing and early Second Period paneling, and an unusual longitudinal summer beam on the second floor; the lean-to on the north side was added in the 18th century. A family story held that in the late 19th century two brothers each owned half of the house, and the brother on the east let his half decay until it fell down. Photographs show the half house in the early 20th century, and the east end was rebuilt, not quite accurately, around 1922.

In 1946 Anna Jaquith conveyed the house to Joseph Jaquith Casey and Grace Amelia Casey. When Charles E. Stearns recorded it for the Billerica Historical Commission in 1973, the land was under option for a housing development that did not provide for the house, and he ended his report with a plea: "HELP!" The house survived, and in 1979 Casey sold the surrounding 10 acres to Cabot Corporation, keeping a one-acre house lot. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. After Joseph Casey's death in 1993, his heirs, Peter J. Casey and JoAnn Brown, sold the house lot to Cabot in April 2000 for $430,000. That month Peter Jaquith Casey had the First Period frame taken down and crated for storage in New Hampshire, while the rest of the building was demolished. About 2010 Douglas Towle had the frame reassembled on Frisky Hill in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, restored to its appearance of about 1725 with a group of reconstructed outbuildings, and it is now a private home there. The house was removed from the National Register in 2024.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.169
2. Wikipedia
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): George Farley, the first birth in town, and the Farley garrison of 1675
4. National Register of Historic Places nomination (NRIS 90000166)
5. New Hampshire Home: "Relocating history" (2012), the house rebuilt in Gilmanton, NH

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.