Arthur and Annie Jendricks House

The house at 10 Mechanics Way stands on eight small lots of Fordway Park, a North Billerica house-lot development laid out in 1897 on the old Pollard farm east of the Fordway Road. Patrick Riley had bought the farm from George E. Butters in 1878, and after his death his administrator sold it at auction on May 21, 1897 to Jacob W. Wilbur of Everett for $2,100. Wilbur had Frederic R. Page survey it into several hundred lots, and the "Plan of Fordway Park, North Billerica, Mass., owned by J. W. Wilbur Co." of May 1897 was recorded as Plan Book 13, Plan 5. The street through this part of the plan was Beacon Street, renamed Mechanics Way in later years.

Within a week of buying the farm Wilbur began selling lots, most of them to buyers from Lowell. On June 7, 1897 he sold Lots 17 and 18 to Wojciech Jarosz of Lowell (the deed spells him "Yarosz") and Lots 22, 23 and 24 to Winifred Higgins of Billerica, and on June 10 he sold Lots 19, 20 and 21, about 6,000 square feet, to Stefano E. Palese of Lowell (written "Poeles"). All three deeds describe bare "lots or parcels of land situated on Beacon Street", and Palese did not even record his deed until 1906.

On January 30, 1906 Palese sold Lots 19-21 to Arthur and Annie E. Jendricks of Billerica, still with no buildings named. In 1909 the couple passed the lots through a straw, James E. O'Donnell of Lowell, into Annie's name alone. When she sold them to Mary D. Doyle of Lowell on April 11, 1914, the deed described "three certain lots of land with the buildings thereon, situated on Beacon street". This is the first record of the house, so the Jendrickses built it between 1906 and 1914, rather than about 1900 as the assessor's records say.

The house changed hands quickly. Doyle sold it in April 1915 to Katherine White of Lowell, together with three more Beacon Street lots (88-90), and on May 28, 1915 White sold Lots 19-21 to Charles Gramps of Billerica, who mortgaged them to the City Institution for Savings in Lowell for $700. Gramps gathered the lots on either side. He and his wife Katrina bought Lots 22-24 from Winifred Higgins, by then a widow, in October 1915, and in June 1921 Charles bought Lots 17-18 for $150 from William H. Wilson, administrator of the estate of Wojciech Jarosz. With that the lot reached its present size of eight lots, 160 feet on the street and 16,000 square feet.

On December 2, 1921 Charles and Katrina Gramps sold the three parcels to John and Mary Babrousky of Billerica, taking back a $1,100 mortgage. John Babrousky died on May 23, 1923, and on October 14, 1927 his widow Mary, who signed by her mark, sold "the land ... with the buildings thereon" to Charles and Susie Janauskes. They financed the purchase with a $1,600 loan from the Lowell Co-operative Bank. The Janauskes owned the place for twenty-five years. After Susie's death Charles held it as surviving joint owner, and in July 1952 he sold it to a couple from Medford.

The property then passed through private owners in 1963, 1964, 1966, 1969 and 1971, each deed describing the same eight Fordway Park lots "with the buildings thereon", and in 1972 it was sold to the family that owns it today. In 1999 the Town of Billerica took it for unpaid 1998 taxes, and after a Land Court tax lien case the owners redeemed it in 2009, when the Town Treasurer released the taking. The assessor classes the property as residential and commercial, with a seven-room house and a second building on the lot.

References

1. Billerica assessor, parcel 22-71-0: Fordway Park lots 17-24, current deed and tax-title history

Deed References Expand all

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