Benjamin Danforth House

The Benjamin Danforth House stands on the east side of High Street in North Billerica, a little north of Mount Pleasant Street, on land that in the early eighteenth century lay along "ye Road to mr Winthrops ffarme." On Dec. 13, 1717 John Dunkin and his wife Sarah sold Jonathan Danforth two parcels for 116 pounds: a "messuage or house Lott" of about forty acres, and "one parcel of upland & swamp Containing Thirty four acres & Sixty & two poles," bounded south by John Sanders, north by Caleb Farley Sr. for about 115 poles, west by the Winthrop farm road "about ninety four poles," and east by land not yet laid out. The 1805 deed of the farm still refers to "the original grant of said tract of land to John Duncan, as recorded in the town book." The Historical Commission's 1989 summary of the 1717 deed (34 acres for 34 pounds, running from the Concord River) does not match the record.

On Jan. 30, 1748/9 Jonathan Danforth and his wife Elizabeth sold the 34 acre parcel, with the same bounds, to their son Benjamin Danforth, then a laborer, for 300 pounds old tenor, keeping for their lives "the south half part of the field now within Fence and the whole of the pasture." The deed names no buildings. Benjamin married in 1750 and raised twelve children here, and examination of the frame suggests that he built the west rooms and chimney bay about that time; a tall elm south of the house, since cut down, was thought to date from then. He kept the farm for more than half a century, and on March 26, 1805, at about 81, he sold it to Ami French, a young husbandman, for $500: "a certain farm ... containing about thirty four acres," bounded west "on the road leading to Winthrop's farm, formerly so called," "with all the buildings and appurtenances." Local accounts describe the sale as an arrangement by which French would care for the old couple for the rest of their lives; the recorded deed is an outright sale. French added the east rooms, with reused beams and a second kitchen fireplace.

By 1830 the farm had grown to about forty-five acres. In March of that year Ami French, burdened with mortgages, sold "a certain farm ... which was conveyed to me by Benjamin Danforth, and the same on which I now reside," bounded west by the road from Belvidere Village to Billerica, north by "Trull's pasture," east by the Batchelder, Trull and Rice lands and south by John Richardson, to his brother Edmund French of Tewksbury for $451. In March 1836, the year Ami died, Edmund sold the farm for $1,000 to Ami's son Charles W. French (1810-1876), so the son took the place by purchase from his uncle rather than by inheritance. In 1845 French bought from John Richardson 2d the ten acres between the farm and the road "leading from Billerica Mills so called to Tewksbury," today's Mount Pleasant Street, extending his land to the corner.

In October 1864 French sold forty-one acres at the south end of his land, from the junction with the road to North Billerica down to the Tewksbury road, to John E. Rowell, the husband of his daughter Marietta, keeping his own homestead to the north. In 1872 Rowell sold the corner, "a certain tract of land, with the buildings thereon, containing twenty acres," on "the easterly side of the Old Turnpike road" between Charles W. French's land and "a certain road leading to Tewksbury," to John Bottomley for $3,000. Every later deed describes the house lot with these bounds. Because the strip bought in 1845 came without buildings, the old house must stand on the former Danforth land, though the 1864 deed, like many land deeds of its time, does not mention buildings.

The Bottomley family kept the place for almost fifty years. In 1895 John Waterhouse of Oldham, England, widower of John Bottomley's daughter Emily, released his interest in "the same premises formerly owned by John Bottomley the father" to her brother John E. Bottomley, and in 1912 Mary Elizabeth Bottomley, an heir of John E., released hers to Adelaide J. Bottomley. In May 1919 Adelaide sold the twenty acres to Wong S. Sun. After his death the Public Administrator, Albert O. Hamel, sold the estate of "Wong Sun otherwise called Chester Wong" in January 1930 to Lars J. Johnson for $2,400. Johnson defaulted on a second mortgage, and in October 1931 the mortgagee, Raymond M. Humphrey of Lowell, sold the place at auction on the premises and bought it in himself for $1,100.

On Sept. 14, 1932 Humphrey sold the house and twenty acres to Albert J. and Rose M. Loranger. A collector's tax taking in 1934, still assessed to Humphrey, was redeemed. The Loranger family kept the house for more than half a century; in 1987, after Rose M. Loranger's death, the remaining 7.37 acres, Lot B on a plan of that year, passed to a grandson, and the house was altered in 1989. It remains a private residence, with a barn, a garage and a small second dwelling on the lot. The Historical Commission's chain of title, which cites a 1934 tax taking as the Loranger deed and a 1930 conveyance from the Town to Johnson, does not match the recorded deeds.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.291
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): the Danforth and French families

Deed References Expand all

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