Albert Marshall House

The Albert Marshall House stood on the south side of Andover Road, a short way east of the corner of Boston Road at the Billerica Common, on land now part of the telephone exchange lot at 9 Andover Road. It was earlier listed as the Herbert A. King House, built in 1915 and demolished in 1964, but the recorded deeds show that it was built in the 1840s for Albert Marshall of Charlestown, and that for most of its life it was the home of William S. Gleason and then of his daughter Lucy and her husband, town clerk Herbert A. King. It was still standing in 1967.

The land was the east end of the "Tavern stand" that Lyman Haynes, innholder, bought in 1833 from Asa Richardson of Boston: two and a half acres "on the east side of the great road leading from Lowell to Boston and in front of the first Congregational Meeting-house", bounded north by "Sheldon's Lane so called", the road that became the road to Salem and later Andover Road, and east by the land of John and Henry Baldwin. Haynes briefly sold the tavern to Sereno Fiske in 1839, took it back in 1840, and then began selling house lots from its eastern edge along the lane.

In August 1840 Haynes sold Albert Marshall of Charlestown a vacant lot four rods wide and about fifteen rods deep, running back from "the Salem road" beside Col. John Baldwin's "Wetherbee place" to the land of Fitch Tufts; in 1842 he added a strip one rod wide on its west side. No buildings are named in either deed. In 1844 Haynes sold the next four rods to the west to Daniel Wilson Jr., blacksmith, "together with the black smith's shop standing on part of said premises", and Wilson sold that strip to another blacksmith, William G. Alley, in 1845.

By October 1848, when Marshall sold his half acre to Rufus Clement, merchant, for $2,000, it carried "a dwelling house and other buildings", and Clement was already living there under a lease of April 1, 1848. The house therefore went up between 1842 and 1848, probably for Marshall as a rental. Clement bought Alley's strip in 1849, and in 1850 sold both pieces together, about an acre, to Harriet Ward, a widow. As Harriet Crosby, wife of Sylvester Crosby of Lowell, she sold the place in 1854 to Edward Pratt, who sold it in 1855 to Mary B. Shaw, a widow lately of New Haven. In 1859 Mrs. Shaw sold "a certain piece of land with the buildings thereon ... containing one acre" on "the road leading from Billerica Common to Salem" to William S. Gleason for $2,500.

Gleason's family had farmed the old College Farm in the east part of town; Hazen records that he "removed to the village" and lived "on the south side of Andover street". He served many years as a selectman and represented the district in the legislature in 1876. He kept the house until his death, and by his will, proved at Lowell on Feb. 20, 1894, it passed to his daughter Lucy M. King. Her husband Herbert A. King was town clerk, auditor and a justice of the peace, and the house took his name. After his death Lucy King, as a widow, sold it in September 1925 to Arthur S. and Carrie E. Cook, who sold it in May 1927 to Inez L. Merriam, wife of Arthur W. Merriam.

In 1930 the Merriams sold the west front corner of the lot, 65 feet on Andover Street and 132 feet deep, to the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, which built its Billerica exchange there; the boundary with the Metcalf land to the west was fixed by agreement on the same day. Mrs. Merriam kept the house on the remaining 35,000 square feet, mortgaging it "with the buildings thereon" in 1937 and passing it in 1941 to Elmer H. Bartlett of Plainville, who left it back to her by his will when he died in 1953. She sold it in 1954, and it changed hands privately again in 1961, when it was known as 11 Andover Street. The exchange building went up on the 1930 lot in 1965, beside the old house. A surveyor's plan of February 1967 still shows the "2 1/2 Story Wood Frame Dwelling" with its porch and a "1 1/2 Story Wood Frame Shed" behind it, and in June 1967 the telephone company bought the house and the rest of the lot. The house was removed after that, and the exchange site at 9 Andover Road now covers the whole one-acre lot first put together in 1840-1850.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): William S. Gleason "removed to the village" and lived on the south side of Andover street; selectman and representative 1876.

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.