Benjamin L. Judkins House

The Benjamin L. Judkins House stood on the west side of Concord Road (the old Bedford road) about a mile south of the Common, on land that had been in the Hill family since the first years of the town. Ralph Hill, one of the first settlers, lived on "the farm" here; Hazen wrote in 1883 that his house stood "a little west of the place where Mrs. Judkins, his descendant, now lives." The date of the house itself is uncertain: local sources give dates between 1734 and 1795, and it was standing when Hales drew his map in 1831.

In the 18th century the farm belonged to Peter Hill, who appears on the town tax lists of 1733 and 1755. By his will of July 1773 he left his eldest son Peter "all my Lands Lying in Billerica ... my Homestead with all the Buildings thereon Standing as also my meadow & wood Lot on the west Side of Concord River," with money legacies to his other children. The younger Peter, born in 1748, was taxed here in 1776, and Hazen's key to that tax list places him at "Mrs. Judkins's place, Bedford St." He died without a will early in 1823, leaving "no widow nor child except" his daughter Elizabeth, who was appointed to settle the estate in March 1823 and inherited the farm.

On Jan. 1, 1827 Elizabeth Hill married Benjamin L. Judkins, born in New Hampshire in 1797, and the Hill homestead became the Judkins place. The earlier story that Judkins bought the house when he married is not borne out: none of his many Billerica purchases between 1827 and 1854 is this farm, which came to him through his wife. He added meadow, pasture and woodland around it and died here in 1875. Hazen's history, published while his widow was still living, pictures the "Judkins Homestead" and the "Residence of Mrs. Benjamin L. Judkins." Their younger son Edward took the name Edward Judkins Hill in 1874, and a survey of January 1883 shows the land "belonging to the Judkins estate and to E. J. Hill": the house and barns on a 2.78 acre lot on the west side of the road, surrounded by the Rocky Pasture, Big Field, Muddy Pasture and Further Field running down to the Concord River, with the old "Peter Hill Lot" still named across the river.

The farm stayed with the Judkins heirs into the 20th century. In 1926 the Probate Court partitioned the family's Billerica lands, and the house fell in Lot 9, 52 acres on the west side of the road. After the death of Emily C. Judkins in the 1930s it came to Frances M. Stearns, known as Frances Judkins Stearns, who took title under the will of her father Edward F. Judkins and a trustee's deed of 1953. In October 1968 she sold the house with 7.9 acres to Gordon C. and Helen M. Brainerd, ending 141 years of Judkins ownership and nearly three centuries in the Hill line.

After Gordon Brainerd's death the property passed to a family trust. In 2008 most of the land was sold to Brightview Billerica LLC for its senior living community, with a 40,004 square foot lot kept around the house, and in December 2020 that last lot was sold to a developer, Landsmart LLC. The house was demolished in 2021. By then it had been much altered from its 19th-century appearance and had not been surveyed as a historic building.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Ralph Hill, the Hill and Judkins families, the 1776 tax list, and the Judkins Homestead illustration
2. Middlesex probate 11498: will of Peter Hill of Billerica, 1773
3. Middlesex probate 11500: administration of Peter Hill of Billerica, 1823

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.