Edward A. King

Edward A. King (1848-1920) was a carpenter, builder and hardware dealer in Billerica Centre. He turned the old cider mill on Boston Road south of the Common into a block of stores and tenements, the building later known as Martin's Block, and he served the town as a Town Assessor from 1913 until his death.

He was born about October 1848; where is not recorded. He was in Billerica by the mid-1890s, when the town abated his poll tax because he had "left town," and by 1900 he was back, doing carpentry and repairs for the town. Over the next twenty years the town reports pay him for work on the town hall and the engine house, the canopy over the town pump, automobile warning signs, lumber, tools and supplies. The 1901 directory lists him as a carpenter and builder living on Concord Road opposite the Common, where a teacher of the Pollard School boarded with him.

In December 1900 Edward F. and William H. Dickinson, who had inherited the land from their mother, Mary L. Dickinson, sold him a lot of 15,737 square feet on the west side of the Boston road south of the Edward Dickinson House, with the cider mill that stood on it. He borrowed $3,000 on it from the Trustees of the Howe School and made the mill into stores and apartments. On January 21, 1903 a spark from a stove started a fire that destroyed the "Dickenson Block, property of E. A. King," a loss of $1,500 on the building and $500 on its contents, and spread to "King's Block," which escaped with $42.50 in damage. In 1909 he refinanced the property with a $3,700 mortgage to Merton L. Fisk. By 1912 he advertised as a contractor and builder also selling hardware, paints and glass on Boston Road near the Common, and in 1915 as a dealer in builders' hardware, farming tools, paints, oils, glass and roofing materials. In 1921 the hardware business was E. A. King & Co.

In March 1913 he was elected an assessor for three years, defeating John J. Nuttall by 319 votes to 251, and he sat on the board with Frank H. Alexander and William H. Hutchins, and later with William H. Sexton and Charles H. Kemp. He was re-elected in the years that followed, the last time in 1920, when he beat Kemp by 378 votes to 342. About 1913 he was one of the Board of Trade committee that looked into a co-operative association to build houses for working men. In October 1917, after the town voted to build a fire station at the Centre, he sold it the south 8,260 square feet of his lot, and the Center Fire Station was built there beside his block.

He died in Billerica on November 15, 1920, aged 72, without a will. His daughters, Harriet A. Wheeler of Boston and Myrtle R. Pollard of Revere, quitclaimed their two thirds of the block to his widow, Marion King, who sold it in 1927, by then living in Needham, to Valentine O. Martin and his wife Isabella.

References

1. Billerica Town Report 1914, Assessors' report signed by Frank H. Alexander, E. A. King and Wm. H. Hutchins
2. Billerica Town Report 1916, annual election: Assessors, Charles H. Kemp 312, Edward A. King 273
3. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1903, fire department: Jan. 21 fire in the Dickenson Block and King's Block, property of E. A. King

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.