John Duren House

The John Duren House stood on the west side of Sullivan Road, the old road from the Rangeway toward Chelmsford, in the northwest corner of Billerica. The land was part of the farm of Lt. Asa Spaulding, whose will of 1808, proved in 1815, left about a hundred acres "with the buildings thereon" to his son Benoni Spaulding for his life, "but not to his assigns nor for him to dispose of by any way or means whatever", so that the farm would pass to Benoni's children. Benoni died on September 25, 1839, aged 79. In 1829 his children had already given the youngest son, Jacob, the half acre on the same road that held "the old house spot Door yard barn yard and the old barn", and in the fall of 1839 the heirs sold Jacob their shares of the 65-acre homestead.

On December 18, 1839, the same day he bought out his brothers and sisters, Jacob Spaulding sold ten acres of "tillage & wood land" to his sister Ann (Anna) Duren, wife of John Duren, for $225. The lot ran 35 rods along "the old Chelmsford Road", back past land of John Easty and Sherebiah Spaulding to Rodney Brown, and down to Asa Spaulding's land. Ann had married John Duren in 1818; in 1829 they were living in Carlisle. The land was hers "in her own right", and in February 1840 John mortgaged only his life interest in it to Franklin Putnam of Chelmsford. In 1841 the couple mortgaged the ten acres to Israel Putnam of Chelmsford for $325, and in 1846 they sold a corner of an acre and a quarter on "the new road leading from Chelmsford to Bedford" (Nashua Road) to Edward Spaulding.

No deed of the Durens mentions a house, and the date of building is not recorded. The 1973 inventory form made about 1840 its "best guess", and the 1853 map puts "J. Duren" on the spot. In March 1851, however, Ann Duren sold the ten acres outright to her mortgagee Israel Putnam for $500. The family seems to have stayed on as Putnam's tenants: in 1865 the town paid Edward Spalding and Dr. Levi Howard for "aid to J. Duren's family". That April Putnam sold the place for $500 to Ira N. Hannaford, who had married the Durens' daughter Emily in 1842. The 1875 map shows I. N. Hannaford here. In 1893 Ira, who signed by his mark, deeded it to Ella F. Hannaford, wife of Waldo Hannaford, and in 1896 she sold it to Timothy Moore.

The deeds kept repeating the description of 1865, ten acres bounded by the old Chelmsford road and the lands of Edward Spalding, Thomas Spalding and Stephen Wiley, for the next 120 years. The first one to say "with the buildings thereon" is Moore's 1913 sale to Helen G. Carter of Pelham, New Hampshire. She sold in 1915 to Anna H. Terry of Lowell, and the Terrys sold in 1916 to John Babaruski, who sold in 1921 to Peter and Joanna Olszewski of Lawrence. In 1943 the Olszewskis sold to Richard A. and Maria E. Stockton of Danvers, who resold within five months to Currie L. M. and Edith M. DeBow. In 1949 the DeBows gave the Lowell Electric Light Corporation a guy-wire easement on "a street or way called Sullivan Road", the first time the name appears in the lot's records. In 1967 they granted the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company a fifty-foot right of way across the land. Currie DeBow died in 1968, and the place stayed in the DeBow family until 1982, when it was sold to private owners.

By the 1970s the land along the Rangeway was becoming industrial. The 1973 inventory recorded a small house with a low-pitched roof and a single late nineteenth-century chimney on 7.85 acres, noting that it "deserves more work if it survives". In 1985 the land was sold again, and in March 1986 the owner had it surveyed as Lot D, 5.94 acres. That plan still shows the house and a barn on the Sullivan Road frontage. In 1986 the lot passed to the Sullivan Road Realty Trust, and in December 1988 the trustees recorded the master deed of the Sullivan Road Industrial Center, a 79,000-square-foot masonry-block building in four sections now numbered 34 Sullivan Road. The house had been taken down by then.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.206

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.