Solomon Hill House

The Solomon Hill House stood on the west side of Concord Road, the old road from Billerica to Bedford, on the farm the Hill family had held since the seventeenth century, a little north of the older Deacon Samuel Hill House. In January 1732/3 Deacon Samuel Hill deeded the southerly part of his farm to his son Ralph Hill, who married that winter, and Ralph probably built this second, larger house before his father's death in 1755. A former resident gave its date as 1742, though the source of that date is unknown, and the Historical Commission noted in 1973 that the name it carried in "Open House in Billerica" (1949) was a misnomer: Solomon inherited the house, but his father built it.

Capt. Ralph Hill made his will on Nov. 12, 1784, and his heirs assented to it in February 1789. He left his son William "the Southerly part of my homestead," with the old house, and to his son Solomon Hill "all the rest of my Lands in Billerica including the small Island in the River with all the Buildings thereon standing," reserving to his widow Abigail "the Easterly end of my now dwelling House" and to William a right to pass through Solomon's land to his field. Solomon's farm, about 56 acres, ran from Peter Hill's wall on the north to "a bunch of Maples which is William Hills Northwest Corner" and the stone wall "at the South end of a Hop yard," and from the road to Concord River.

Solomon did not keep it long. In June 1789 he and his wife Hannah deeded one half of the farm "with the Buildings standing thereon" to his sister Naomi and the other half to his sister Sarah, a staymaker in Bedford, each for 75 pounds. These deeds were security for money the sisters had lent him: when the town stepped in, the sisters held "a Deed of all the Land and buildings" and had "given Bond of reconveyance." In February 1791 the selectmen complained that Solomon "by excessive Drinking, Idleness, and other dissolute practices" was likely to become a charge on the town, and in March the Probate Court made Hezekiah Crosby and Oliver Crosby his guardians (Solomon named his next son Oliver Crosby Hill that July). Their inventory valued "the Dwelling House" at 30 pounds, "the Barn" at 3 pounds and 55 acres "tho under Mortgage" at 165 pounds. Licensed to sell, they advertised "about fifty five acres of Land with a house and Barn thereon ... within about a mile and an half of the meeting house," "well fenced with stone wall and well watered," and on Dec. 5, 1791 the whole was "struck off to Lt. Peter Hill," the neighbor to the north, for 211 pounds 2 shillings. The Historical Commission's account that the sisters sold the place to Jonas Bacon is not borne out by the probate papers.

Neither the guardians' deed to Peter Hill nor his conveyance to his brother-in-law Jonas Bacon was ever recorded, but by 1804 Bacon owned the farm, and in that year he bought from John Kidder the ten acre lot across the road that went with it for the next forty years. In November 1824 Jonas Bacon sold "my homestead with all the buildings thereon," described with the same bounds Solomon had used in 1789 and the same right of way "named in the last will of Deacon Ralph Hill," to his son Oliver Bacon of Malden, who mortgaged it back to him the next day. Oliver sold it in 1829 to his brother George, "the homestead farm where the said George now lives," with "an Island in Concord River opposite the said homestead called Jug Island," and George sold it in 1835 to Thomas Eames, "the farm where the said Eames now lives late my homestead."

Eames, married to Lucy Ann, a daughter of Rev. Jacob Norton, became insane. A first complaint was dropped in 1841, but in August 1844, while he was in the hospital at Worcester, Jeremiah Crosby was appointed his guardian, and on March 23, 1846 Crosby sold the farm at auction to Elijah B. Hill for $1,500. That October Hill sold "the Thomas Eames place," sixty acres "with the buildings thereon standing," bounded north by Benjamin L. Judkins and south by James Marshall, who then owned William Hill's old farm, to Isaac Roby of Reading for $1,700. The 1853 map shows I. Roby here.

In December 1868 Roby sold "my Homestead ... where I now reside," about 58 acres, to Francis A. Wheeler, and eleven days later Wheeler divided it: he sold the road frontage, "a part of My Roby Farm so called, containing fifteen acres more or less with the Buildings thereon," to Rosalvo M. Walker for $1,100, and kept the forty acres of back land running to the river, which later became Riverhurst. In 1874 Walker, then of Lynn, sold the house lot for $1,500 to Sarah E. Hosmer, wife of Dr. Charles E. Hosmer, the "Dr. C. E. Hosmer" of the 1875 atlas, who also bought Wheeler's back land that September. The Hosmers moved to Sutton, New Hampshire, and in 1888 sold the house and its land, "a part of the 'Roby Farm' (so called)," to Jennet Nelson of Lawrence for $1,800.

Jennet Nelson, the "Jeannette Nelson" who bounds the neighboring Ranlett farm on the Land Court plans of 1910 to 1917, kept the place for half a century. In 1938 she sold a 2.13 acre lot on the road to Jacob and Annie Elmer (Plan Book 61, Plan 59) and deeded the rest to herself and Elkanah Nelson, and in 1941 Elkanah sold the remaining thirteen acres "with the buildings thereon" to Francis F. O'Donnell of Lowell. In 1944 O'Donnell sold them to Alton E. and Mildred A. Westhaver, who held the place for 28 years; in 1953 the Commonwealth took a strip of the frontage for the relocation of the Middlesex Turnpike as Route 3.

In September 1972 the Westhavers sold the house and land to Jon H. Graham of Graham Builders for $110,000, and Graham laid out the Villas at Old Concord on it and the Deacon Samuel Hill farm next door. In 1973 the Billerica Historical Commission tried to move this house, with the Deacon Samuel Hill House, to new lots on Riverhurst Road; its survey form, recorded by Charles E. Stearns in July 1973, lists the house as vacant and its move as "waiting," with the note "July 27: still not moved!" Only the older house made the move. A note on the form records this one as "demolished - August 1976," and the Commission's report for that year regretted the loss of "the Ralph (?) Hill house, formerly of Meadow Lane," one of two "ca. 1740 farmhouses" lost that year.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.172
2. Middlesex probate 11505: will of Capt. Ralph Hill of Billerica, 1784 (allowed 1789)
3. Billerica Annual Report 1976: Historical Commission notes the loss of the Ralph Hill house of Meadow Lane
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): the Hill family

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.