Lund Building

The Lund Building stood at the corner of Boston Road and Charnstaff Lane, just south of the L.T. Eastman Blacksmith Shop, on land that had been part of the homestead of Dr. William Bowers. When his last surviving daughters died, Priscilla Bowers left her third of the property to the First Baptist Church and Mary and Fanny Bowers left theirs to the Town for the poor. In May 1871 the town committee (Dudley Foster, Israel A. Colson and David L. Mason) and the church sold the homestead off in lots laid out by surveyor Samuel Sage. Lot No. 4, "1 acre 50 rods" with 8 rods on the main road and 29 rods 3 links on Charnstaff Lane "as staked out by the Selectmen", went to George W. Gragg for $400, two thirds from the town and one third from the church. He gave the town treasurer a $300 mortgage for most of the price.

Gragg already lived across the lane. In 1876 he put the corner lot in his wife's name through a pair of same-day deeds with their neighbor Mary Cole, and Mary E. Gragg mortgaged it back to Mrs. Cole. A second mortgage in 1877 describes the lot "with the buildings thereon", the first sign of a building on it. In October 1884 Mary E. Gragg, "in her own right", and her husband sold the lot "with the buildings thereon" for $800 to Charles W. Lund, the blacksmith who had built the Charles Lund House a few lots to the north. On the same day Lund also bought Mary Cole's quarter acre across the lane.

Lund sold the corner in December 1892, again "with the buildings thereon", to George P. Greenwood for $850. In 1894 Greenwood deeded it for one dollar to his father-in-law, Oliver M. Harding, who kept it for the rest of his life. When his daughter, Greenwood's wife Alice H. Greenwood, mortgaged it in 1921 to the Lowell Co-operative Bank, she wrote that her title came "as the daughter and sole heir-at-law of the said Oliver M. Harding". She mortgaged it again in 1935, by then the widow of George P. Greenwood, to the Billerica Trust Company. It then went to her son Oliver P. Greenwood, whose will left it to Lois E. Fayton, describing it as "one duplex dwelling located on the corner of Boston Road and Charnstaff Lane - 443-445 Boston Road".

In March 1970 Lois E. Fayton sold the front of the old lot, Lot B on a plan surveyed for the Mobil Oil Corporation (18,910 square feet), to Mobil for $50,000. The same day Mobil bought Lot A, the old Eastman shop lot next door. The rear of the lot (Lots C and D) stayed with the family. The duplex was torn down and replaced by the service station of 1971, which ExxonMobil sold in 2010 to Global Companies LLC with three other stations. The two lots are now the gas station parcel at 441 Boston Road.

The building's history differs from older accounts. The lot was not empty before Lund: the deeds already speak of buildings on it in 1877 and 1884. Mary E. Gragg was not a widow when she sold to Lund, since her husband joined in the deed. Greenwood owned the lot for less than two years. From 1894 to 1970 it was held by the Harding and Greenwood family, and the building was a two-family 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.