Clara E. Sexton

Clara E. Sexton (about 1857 to 1936) bought, divided and sold land around Billerica Centre for more than fifty years, served as secretary of the Billerica Historical Society, and left her house on Concord Road to the Society, which has kept it ever since as the Clara E. Sexton Memorial, the Clara E. Sexton House. She was the wife of the blacksmith William H. Sexton, a town assessor, and held most of her land in her own right, her husband releasing his curtesy in her deeds.

In November 1879 she bought a narrow lot on the east side of the Boston road south of the Centre, four rods wide and forty deep, between the old Blaney Abbot homestead and the Cheever place. She paid $1,585 for it to Lund F. Eastman and the guardian of Addie E. Eastman, with its house, the Nathaniel Cheever House, and mortgaged it for $1,800 to Mary H. Crosby; in 1892 she sold the house lot to Susan Ella Martin for $2,000. In August 1879 she had bought from Lund T. Eastman, for $1,350, his lot on the west side of the road, Lot 3 on Samuel Sage's 1871 plan, where the 1889 map shows two buildings under "W. H. Sexton" (see Lund T. Eastman House).

Clara Sexton was the only heir at law of Mary H. Crosby, a Billerica widow who died before 1892, and through her she came into the Crosby land on the Boston road, including the old Abbot homestead (see Blaney Abbott House). In 1906 she and her husband sold five acres of it with the buildings to Frank A. Fitzgerald; in 1908, while living in Somerville, she sold a house lot at the corner of the Boston road and Charnstaffe Lane to Arthur W. Merriam and Charles E. Moore; and in 1912 she had the rest of the farm, 384 feet on Boston Road and more than 2,500 feet deep, registered in the Land Court. The north part of it was sold to Clarence A. Backer in 1913.

In 1902 she bought at auction from the executor of Lucinda Tufts, for $2,000, the house and barn on the west side of Boston Road that had been the Susan Rogers House, and the next spring sold it to William T. Carr, keeping an eight-foot strip along its north side. In 1912 she paid $2,800 to Herbert A. King, trustee under the will of Martha Ann Dodge, for the two-tenement house on Concord Road now numbered 55-57, the Elijah Bacon Hill Central House, and in 1913 sold the house with part of the land to Alonzo H. Sanborn, holding his mortgage until 1915. In 1914 she and her husband bought from Richard Austin a fourteen-acre field running from Concord Road to the Concord River and six acres on Bedford Street; they registered it in the Land Court in 1915 and sold it as house lots on Concord Road and the new Richardson, Whiting and Parker streets until 1928 (see William Mann House). She also lent on mortgage, to William J. Lyons on part of the old Whitford homestead in 1908 and 1914, and to Oscar Fellows on a house on Concord Road in 1927; when Fellows defaulted she sold it at auction in May 1933 and bought it in herself for $3,100. In 1932 she bought from the receiver of the failed Middlesex National Bank of Lowell the house and land at 373 Boston Road, the John D. Foster House.

On March 31, 1920 the Sextons bought from Harry W. Essex the house at 36 Concord Road, the eighteenth-century home of the Rev. Henry Cumings and later a doctor's place, and made it their home. As secretary of the Billerica Historical Society she signed the Society's letter to the selectmen of December 27, 1923 recording the "Historical Memorial" it had placed in a metal chest in its room in the Bennett Library, to be kept for one hundred years. By her will of September 30, 1929 she left the house to the Society.

She died in Billerica on April 10, 1936, aged 79. Her husband, who settled her estate as executor, died there on October 9 of the same year, aged 81. Dr. Frederic H. Sexton of Halifax, Nova Scotia, a native of Billerica and former pupil of the Howe School who became Commissioner of Technical Education of Nova Scotia, was a trustee under her will with the Union Old Lowell National Bank and administered William H. Sexton's estate; in 1940 the trustees sold the Boston Road house to Lucy B. Collier. In 1922 the Sextons gave the schools books from the library of the late W. Howard Sexton, of the class of 1898.

References

1. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1936, deaths: Apr. 10, Clara Sexton, 79 years 2 months; Oct. 9, William H. Sexton, 81
2. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1923: Billerica Historical Society letter of Dec. 27, 1923 on its Historical Memorial chest, signed Clara E. Sexton, Sec'y
3. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1924: Dr. Fred H. Sexton, Commissioner of Technical Education of Nova Scotia, a native of Billerica, gives the high school graduation address
4. Historical Marker Database, Billerica: the Billerica Historical Society maintains the Clara E. Sexton Memorial house

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.