Aldrich Road

Aldrich Road lies in Wilmington. It begins at the Billerica line where Cook Street ends and runs east into Wilmington. The west end of the wiki's segment sits on the town line at the end of Cook Street; the rest of the segment is in Wilmington.

The land along the road was part of Woburn until Wilmington was incorporated in 1730. Wilmington's anniversary history of 1930 says that Sergeant Abraham Jaquith settled "near the present Aldrich Road," possibly as early as 1660, and places the site of the Jaquith garrison house, "before 1730," at the corner of Aldrich Road and Forest Street, with a cellar hole "a very short distance beyond the old Aldrich House." Henry A. Hazen wrote that the boundary between Billerica and Wilmington "followed the Shawshin River in part, touching the farm of Abraham Jaquith," and that Billerica lost to Wilmington the corner of its original territory east of the Shawshin, which was annexed in 1737. The records found do not show whether any part of Aldrich Road lay in that annexed corner.

The name evidently comes from the Aldrich family, whose "old Aldrich House" stood on the road in 1930; no record of when Wilmington gave the road that name has been found, and no Billerica record uses it. On the Billerica side the road is Cook Street, listed by the street naming committee of 1897 as "Cook street, running northeasterly from Main street to Wilmington line, E. Billerica" and by the Historical Society's list, accepted March 27, 1899, as "Cook street, from Boston road running northeasterly to Wilmington line, S. E. Billerica." Cook Street from Boston Road to the Wilmington town line was among the roads shown on the town map of 1831 that town meeting accepted as public ways in October 2016.

References

1. Wilmington, Massachusetts, 1730 to 1930: Abraham Jaquith near Aldrich Road, the Jaquith garrison site and the old Aldrich House
2. Billerica annual report 1897: street naming committee, "Cook street, running northeasterly from Main street to Wilmington line"
3. Billerica annual report 1899: Historical Society list, "Cook street, from Boston road running northeasterly to Wilmington line"
4. Billerica annual report 1900: Historical Society street list accepted at the town meeting of March 27, 1899
5. Annual Report 2017: Article 36 list of 1831-map roads, Cook Street from Boston Road to the Wilmington town line
6. Annual Report 2017: Fall Town Meeting, October 2016, Article 36 accepts the 1831-map roads as public ways (124 to 19)