Benjamin L. Judkins House (Middlesex Turnpike)

The Benjamin L. Judkins House is the old farmhouse on the west side of the Middlesex Turnpike at 439 Middlesex Turnpike, between Concord Road and Nuttings Lake, now a three-family house on two and a half acres running back to the old Bedford and Billerica railroad. It was the house of a small farm of about 25 acres, in the stretch the deeds call the road "from Mr. Jaquith's to Charles Stearns". The 1853 Walling map marks two buildings here, "J. Buttman" and, a little to the north, "B. Judkins"; by 1932, when the county surveyed the turnpike for widening, this was the only house on the stretch, on the land of Margaret A. Barber.

The ground was once part of the "great pasture" of Isaac French. On May 8, 1793, William Blanchard of Wilmington sold French, then of Tewksbury, a 70 acre farm "with all the buildings", together with "the great pasture" running to "a wall at pond meadow swamp" and "the Pond Pasture" on Nuttings Pond, "reserving a bridle way through the last two lots". The turnpike was later laid out across this land. French died in 1821, leaving "the farm ... supposed to contain 120 acres with the buildings thereon", and in March 1822 his executor, Joseph Parker Jr., took two thirds of the lands through a sale to Josiah Crosby and back. On December 20, 1827 Parker sold Benjamin L. Judkins 17 acres of it on the turnpike for $221, with no buildings named, and in 1833 Judkins added "the Turnpike field", three and a half acres formerly of Jonathan Bowers, bought from Joshua Simonds for $100.

When Judkins sold the 25-acre farm to Ira N. Hannaford in February 1844, he described it as land he had bought of Joseph Parker and Joshua Simonds and conveyed it "with all the Buildings thereon standing", so the house went up under his ownership between 1827 and 1844. Every deed for the next hundred years describes the farm the same way, starting "at a bridle way by the ten acre pasture, so called, at the Easterly angle" and running by walls along the lands of Judkins, George Bacon, Seth Crosby and the Stearns family, always "reserving a right for George Bacon to pass and repass through said land in the usual way". Judkins kept the land bordering the farm on the north and west, which may account for the second building the 1853 map labels with his name.

In June 1850 Hannaford sold the farm for $1,500 to Jonathan Butman Jr., a yeoman from Lowell, whose name the 1853 map gives as "J. Buttman". In April 1858 he and his wife Amey W. Butman sold it for $1,530 to Alexander Howes of Beverly, who two years later sold "my homestead farm" to his relatives Willis Howes of Boston and Cyrus Howes of Dennis. They sold in 1861 to William E. Clark of Chelsea, who mortgaged the farm in 1863 to the estate of Nicholas Little of Boston and defaulted; in September 1868 the estate's administrator sold it at auction for $1,050 to Roscoe P. Owen of Boston, who within three weeks resold it for $1,200 to Dennis O'Keefe of Bedford.

The O'Keefe family kept the farm for more than sixty years. In 1883 Dennis O'Keefe bought one more acre from Samuel Cole, on the turnpike south of the farm "to an old wall at land of the late Charles Stearns". The farm passed under his will to Mary Frances O'Keefe, and after her death her executrix sold the farm and the acre "with the buildings thereon" in April 1930 for $6,000 to Margaret A. Barber of Littleton, who passed them to Esther L. Barber in 1947. By then the Bedford-Billerica branch of the Boston and Maine Railroad had cut across the old farm. Esther Barber sold the land "with the buildings thereon" in May 1953 to a couple who divided the turnpike frontage into house lots under the name Turnpike Acres, Inc. (Plan Book 86, Plan 58A, 1955; Plan Book 88, Plans 132A, 1956, and 181B, 1957).

The old house kept its own lot of two and a half acres, the northerly part of a 3.5-acre area on the 1957 plan, with 227 feet on the turnpike and running back about 490 feet to the railroad. It has since been converted to three apartments and has passed through private owners, since the 1960s.

References

1. Billerica assessor, parcel 78-196-0 (439 Middlesex Tp): 2.5 acres, part of Plan 88-181B, three-family conversion, current deed Book 7406 Page 66

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.