Stearns Farm Transfer to Bedford

The Stearns Farm Transfer of 1767 moved the farm of Edward Stearns from Billerica to Bedford. Apart from the loss of whole districts in the eighteenth century, it was the only change of Billerica's lines by law until the Bedford Line Change of 1973.

The line with Bedford had been drawn when Bedford was made a town in 1729 (see Set-off of Bedford). It was changed, as Hazen wrote, "by consent of the two towns, in 1766, so as to transfer Edward Stearns and his farm to Bedford." Stearns's house stood much nearer the Bedford meeting-house than Billerica's, and on his petition and that of Bedford's agents, Billerica having agreed, the General Court passed an act on February 26, 1767 setting him off with his farm. The new line began at a maple stump at Page's Corner, ran straight to the southeast corner of the land of Lieutenant Isaac Stearns, followed a ditch to Edward Stearns's northeast corner, then an old ditch and wall to a large rock "about two pole southwest from the saw mill," and then followed the brook to the Concord River. Bedford's historian Abram English Brown wrote that the change carried the landmark rocks called the Two Brothers into Bedford. The farm stayed on the Bedford side, and on April 19, 1775 Stearns was in the Bedford company at Concord; when its captain, Jonathan Wilson, was killed, "the command devolved upon his Billerica lieutenant, Edward Stearns."

The remaining changes of the period were losses of whole districts, each told in its own article: the Annexation of the Wamesit Purchase to Chelmsford in 1726, the Set-off of Wilmington in 1730 and 1737, the Set-off of Tewksbury in 1734, and the Set-off of Carlisle, whose bounds were fixed by the act of April 28, 1780. With Carlisle, Hazen wrote, the dismemberment of the old town ended. The circuit of its ancient bounds had been 35.5 miles and was now about twenty-five, and the only stretch of the original Shawshin bound that Billerica still shared with the same neighbor was "the short portion of Concord River between the Tewksbury line on the east and the Pawtucket stake on the west, where the Chelmsford line leaves the river."

People

• Edward Stearns: Set off with his farm from Billerica to Bedford by the act of February 26, 1767.
• Isaac Stearns: Lieutenant whose land marked the new Billerica and Bedford line of 1767.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 219: Bedford line changed by consent of the two towns in 1766 to transfer Edward Stearns and his farm; the new line from Page's Corner.
2. Acts and Resolves of the Province, vol. 4, p. 914: act setting off Edward Stearns and his farm from Billerica to Bedford, passed February 26, 1767, with the new line.
3. Historical Data Relating to Counties, Cities and Towns in Massachusetts (1920), p. 42: Billerica entry, part annexed to Bedford Feb. 26, 1767.
4. Brown, History of the Town of Bedford (1891): the Stearns farm and the Two Brothers rocks brought into Bedford by the change of line.
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 236: on April 19, 1775 command of the Bedford company devolved upon its Billerica lieutenant, Edward Stearns.
6. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), pp. 72 to 73, Boundaries: only the short stretch of Concord River from the Tewksbury line to Pawtucket stake keeps its first neighbor.