Bowman's Tavern

Bowman's Tavern stood at the corner of Lexington Road and the Middlesex Turnpike in south Billerica, near the Bedford line, from the early 1800s until 1996. For most of the nineteenth century it was the farm and "Tavern Stand" of the Bowman family; from 1908 to 1979 it belonged to the Martin family, who revived it as the Martin Tavern; and its corner lot is now the site of a 99 Restaurant.

The Bowmans were on the old road to Bedford well before the Turnpike. In 1766 Jazaniah Crosby sold Francis Bowman of Bedford two parcels "lying partly in the Town of Billerica and partly in the Town of Bedford" on both sides of "the highway leading to Bedford", with the buildings, and a second lot of thirty acres. In 1775 Francis mortgaged a farm of ninety-two acres that ran "across said Road ... near the Northeasterly Corner of the Barn", and in 1785 he sold his house and the land west of the road to John Bacon of Bedford, keeping his land on the east side. Hazen records that Francis "lived on the Lexington road, by the crossing of the Middlesex Turnpike". How his nephew Abel Bowman (1747-1822), who came to Billerica from Bedford about 1790, acquired the farm east of the road was never recorded.

By 1815 Abel Bowman was living on a farm of about sixty acres bounded west by the Lexington road, north by Jeremiah Crosby and Joseph Blanchard and south by Silas Richardson, "crossing the Middlesex Turnpike". That December he deeded his son Abel Bowman Jr. "one undivided half of the farm which I now live upon with all the buildings thereon standing", and his will of 1820 left the son "all the remainder of my estate", while giving his widow Lucy "my northeast room with the Chamber over it and my north bed room Chamber" for life. The present house is said by tradition to have been built as a tavern when the Turnpike was put through in 1805, and it appears as a tavern on the 1830 town map. The inventory of Capt. Abel Bowman Jr., who died in 1829, lists "The home stead with all the buildings" at $3,475, with a bar room, parlor and chambers.

The younger Abel's estate was insolvent, and in November 1830 his administrator, Jeremiah Crosby, advertised for auction "that valuable Tavern Stand, lately owned by Capt. Abel Bowman, deceased, situated in Billerica, upon the Middlesex Turnpike, consisting of a large and commodious 2 Story House, 2 Barns and convenient out buildings ... together with about 60 acres of land ... with a good Orchard". At the sale on December 27, 1830, his widow, Hannah F. Bowman, bought the farm and tavern stand for $1,225. She enlarged it with the twenty-eight-acre Ross Pasture to the east in 1835 and, in 1842, with the seven-acre lot of John J. Gorham in the angle between the Turnpike and Lexington Road, across from the tavern. Her son Francis Bowman (born 1820) lived "at the family homestead" in 1883.

After Hannah Bowman's death her five children each held a fifth of "the Bowman Homestead", and by 1884 the deeds were calling it "the old Bowman Tavern Stand", about one hundred acres. Between 1897 and 1899 Francis's son Alfred F. Bowman bought out his father, his aunt Elizabeth Whitford, his uncle Abel of Nashua and the children of his uncle William H. Bowman, and then mortgaged the whole to John Fiske for $3,000. Fiske foreclosed and bought the farm at auction in 1901, and in 1902 sold the "Old Bowman Tavern Stand" to Arthur W. Merriam and Charles E. Moore. In April 1908 they sold eighty-four acres "with the buildings thereon" to George D. Cox, who resold the same day to Fred H. Goss, and in June 1908 Goss sold the place to Valentine O. Martin of Boston.

The Martins kept it for seventy-one years. Valentine Martin's mortgages of 1913 and 1916 still describe it as "known as the 'Old Bowman Tavern Stand'". In 1932 the county relocated the Middlesex Turnpike to a width of sixty-six feet, rounding the corner "at premises of one Martin" with the curve that still bounds the lot. Valentine Martin died in 1936, and in 1937 his only child quitclaimed his share to his mother, Isabella M. Martin, who owned the farm for the rest of her life; her estate was still the owner when the Historical Commission recorded the building in 1974. MACRIS notes that it was used mainly as a farmhouse until about the Second World War, when the Martins revived it as a tavern; by 1974 both ells were modern and the house had been "much" altered.

In 1979 the Martin heirs had the corner surveyed as Lot AA, 2.84 acres, on a plan that shows the long tavern building near the intersection, and sold it for $140,000 to GVS Realty Trust. In 1980 it passed to the Doe Family Trust subject to "a Lease to 99 Portland, Inc.", and the old tavern became a 99 Restaurant. The chain replaced the building in 1996 with the present restaurant. In a 2001 sale-leaseback the trust sold the building and an estate for years to Double 9 Property III LLC and the remainder to 99 Remainder III LLC; both interests were sold in 2021 to SCF RC Funding IV LLC.

The deeds correct some earlier accounts: the Bowmans held the land well before 1805, the tavern left the family through a 1901 foreclosure rather than a sale in the 1920s, and the Martins bought it in 1908.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.192
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register: Bowman 1-5 (Francis on the Lexington road by the Turnpike crossing; Francis b. 1820 at the family homestead).

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.