Aaron Danforth House

The Aaron Danforth House was a farmhouse on the southwest side of Allen Road, about a quarter mile south of Andover Road. The Walling map of 1853 marks it "A. Danforth", for Aaron Danforth, a farmer who owned it from 1827 to 1859. Hazen lists him as a son of Benjamin Danforth. He married Sarah Crosby on February 5, 1805, and their children, born between 1805 and 1831, included Sarah, Aaron, Sylvester, Charles, Mary Ann, Susan Crosby, Abigail Jaquith, Hannah Maria, Caroline Lovice, George Henry and Joseph Varnum. In 1850 the census found Aaron, a farmer of 69 with real estate worth $850, living there with his wife Sarah and their son Joseph. His neighbors were Reuben French, Joseph Tyler, Thomas Richardson and John Allen.

The house was older than the Danforths. In 1799 Benjamin Abbot sold Elijah Bradstreet, a blacksmith from Greenfield, New Hampshire, a tract on the highway bounded by Jonas French, Thomas Richardson, Isaac Marshall, Nehemiah Kittredge and the Bowers family. On September 6, 1800 Bradstreet sold "the one undivided half" of 112 acres "with the buildings thereon" to Benjamin Daland (Deland), a saddler from Beverly, for $2,500. The other share appears to have gone to Joseph Foster, a cordwainer, whose heirs bounded the farm for the next thirty years. On March 8, 1815 Daland and his wife Hannah sold "a certain farm in said Billerica containing fifty three acres ... with all the buildings thereon", on both sides of "the road leading to Shawshin river bridge", to Ebenezer Richardson, a blacksmith, for $1,150. The house therefore stood by 1815, and probably by 1800.

Richardson died in January 1818 and his estate was insolvent. Benjamin Beard, the administrator, set off a third of the house and land to the widow Susanna as her dower. At an auction on April 12, 1819 he sold 18 acres to John Crosby and "24 A. 1 R. 35 P. with 2/3 of the buildings thereon" to William and Francis Richardson for $451.43. In 1821 the brothers deeded their purchase to Supply Dean, a yeoman, in two lots of 17 1/2 and 6 3/4 acres. Dean died unmarried in 1826. His inventory lists "About seven acres of land with the westerly half of the house on the same where the said Dean last dwelt with half of the cellar under the easterly half of said house, with a part of the wood shed, together with two thirds of the barn and barn yard opposite said house on the easterly side of the road". Aaron Danforth was one of the appraisers. By then the house was a double house: the west half and most of the barn belonged to Dean, and the east half was still in the Richardson estate.

Danforth bought both halves. On October 8, 1827 Marshall Preston, Dean's administrator, sold him the 17 1/2 acres at auction for $105.86. A week later Alexander Winning and his wife Dorcas quitclaimed to him the 6 3/4-acre house lot, "together with all the right Supply Dean late of Billerica deceased had in the building on the premises and to the barn and barn yard opposite the house and on the easterly side of the road". On November 8, 1830 Beard sold the rest of Ebenezer Richardson's land at auction to Preston for $106. That lot came "with the half of a dwelling house thereon", divided from Danforth's land "through the door yard and through the centre of the house", and the deed kept rights in the front yard and cellar for "Aaron Danforth the owner of the Westerly half of the house". The same day Preston passed it on to Danforth at cost, subject to the widow's dower.

On April 19, 1859 Aaron Danforth sold "my Homestead containing seven acres ... with the dwelling house thereon" to Louisa Fletcher, the wife of James Fletcher, for $1,100. The deed included 32 acres across the road "with the barn thereon" and kept the old right of way for Benjamin Beard. The seven acres ran west from the highway along land of Charles Kittredge to a cross wall, then by land of William F. Burrows and Jonathan Wright. The Fletchers gave Danforth back a $700 mortgage, which he assigned in 1867 to George H. Danforth of Boston; it was paid off in 1880. Louisa Fletcher died by 1887. Her administrator, Jay B. Crawford, sold the farm at auction to her husband on September 8, 1888 for $500, subject to his life estate by the curtesy.

In 1893 James Fletcher sold the house and the barn land to Charles L. Wilder of Somerville for $1,000. In 1894 Wilder sold the seven-acre house lot by itself to James L. Dunham of Boston for $500. Dunham deeded it in 1896 to Ella E. Sweeney of Cambridge, and in 1902, after her husband's death, she sold it to Bridget Harkins of Boston, who became Bridget A. Dunham. The deeds of these years copy the bounds of 1859 but no longer mention a house. The land stayed in Bridget Dunham's name until her death. In 1951 her administrator sold the seven acres for $3,000 to a Billerica couple.

In April 1962 Emmons and Fleming drew a subdivision plan for the new owners that divided the Allen Road frontage into three house lots. The plan shows one house, on Lot 3 at the northwest end of the frontage, now 27 Allen Road. Lots 1 and 2 were vacant. Lot 1 is now 31 Allen Road, where the assessor dates the present Cape-style house to about 1961. It changed hands in 1967 and 1974. A house was built on Lot 2, now 29 Allen Road, in 2013, and the assessor dates the house on Lot 3 to about 1966. The records do not show whether the house on Lot 3 in 1962 was the old Danforth house. Nothing of the farmhouse is known to survive.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register: Danforth 28, Aaron, son of Benjamin; Marston: Abigail J. Danforth, daughter of Aaron
2. Billerica assessor, 27 Allen Rd (parcel 52-21-1): Plan 96-72 Lot 3, house built about 1966
3. Billerica assessor, 31 Allen Rd (parcel 52-21-3): Plan 96-72 Lot 1, Cape built about 1961

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.