Richardson Pond

Richardson Pond is a pond on Content Brook at the Tewksbury line in East Billerica, east of Pond Street and north of Gray Street, with its wetlands running over the line into Tewksbury. The brook comes into it from the north, out of Long Pond in Tewksbury, and leaves at its south end, passing the old Richardson mill site at Gray Street, crossing the line of the Middlesex Canal and going on across East Billerica to the Shawsheen River. The Boston and Lowell Railroad of 1835 runs beside it, and the old Boston and Maine shop yard, now Iron Horse Park, adjoins it on the west.

The pond takes its name from the Richardson family, whose farm and mill were on this part of Content Brook for more than a century. In 1778 Thomas Richardson sold his brother Oliver Richardson his homestead farm on the road to Tewksbury, with four acres in Mill Meadow by "the Long Pond brook." Oliver's son John Richardson, born in 1789 and known as John Richardson 2nd, had a saw mill on the brook at Gray Street. Walling's map of 1853 shows a pond on Content Brook beside the railroad northwest of the Billerica depot, with a "Grist Mill" at its lower end and the houses of J. Richardson 2nd and William Gray nearby. When John Richardson 2nd's estate was divided in 1861 his son Albert R. Richardson took the homestead farm of 178 acres, "situate partly in Billerica and partly in Tewksbury," running north along the railroad to "the Long Pond road, so called," and the deed reserved "the right to enter the premises at any time to manage water and make repairs as usual for the mill privilege." The saw mill ran into the twentieth century and was, according to the Historical Commission's survey of the Richardson's Mill district, the last water-powered saw mill in Billerica.

The pond is probably the "Mud Pond" of the town's first street lists. In 1897 a town committee described Pond Street as "running southeasterly from Andover street to Mud Pond, Tewksbury line," and the list of streets accepted on March 27, 1899 gives the same end. Pond Street ends at the Tewksbury line between this pond and the south end of Long Pond, and Long Pond already had its own name, so this pond by the line is the likeliest meaning; the Mud Pond of the present maps is in another part of Tewksbury, east of the Shawsheen.

By the 1960s the pond was known by the Richardson name. In 1964 the Conservation Commission reported that "property research in the Richardson Pond area has been carried out and maps acquired," and in 1965 that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service "will be working with the Commission in a study of the Richardson Pond area." A Geological Survey map reproduced in one of the Historical Commission's surveys labels it Richardson Pond. On its west side the Shaffer Landfill, the old Pond Street dump at 209 Pond Street, grew up beside the railroad yard, and the pond became the northeast edge of the Iron Horse Park Superfund site: the Environmental Protection Agency's decision of 2011 on surface water and sediment included Richardson Pond in its study area. Below the pond, between Gray and Pond Streets near the landfill, the stone Content Brook Sluiceway and Richardson's Mill Sluiceway of the Middlesex Canal, both of about 1802, still stand.

Deed References Expand all

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

References

1. Annual Report 1964: Conservation Commission, property research in the Richardson Pond area carried out and maps acquired
2. Annual Report 1965: Conservation Commission, the Fish and Wildlife Service to work with the Commission on a study of the Richardson Pond area
3. Annual Report 1897: committee street list, "Pond street, running southeasterly from Andover street to Mud Pond, Tewksbury line"
4. Annual Report 1900: streets accepted March 27, 1899, "Pond street, from Andover road running southeasterly to Mud pond, Tewksbury line"
5. EPA Region 1, Record of Decision, Iron Horse Park Superfund Site Operable Unit 4 (2011): Richardson Pond borders the site on the northeast and is in the study area