C. P. Talbot Mill Worker Housing at 23-25 Old Elm St

The C. P. Talbot Mill Worker Housing at 23-25 Old Elm Street is a two-family company house built by C. P. Talbot and Co. for workers at the Talbot Mills in North Billerica. It stands on the corner where Lowell Street meets Old Elm Street, called Elm Street until the street renamings of 1988-1991, next to the house at 1-3 Lowell Street, which shares its historic inventory form. It appears on the map of 1875.

The land was part of the mill grant the town made to Capt. Christopher Osgood in 1708. Thomas Richardson bought about forty acres of it from the Carleton heirs in 1783 and sold it with the mills to the Proprietors of the Middlesex Canal in 1794. The canal divided the land along the road to its mills into house lots on a plan drawn by Samuel Whiting in 1816. On June 1, 1833 it sold lots 17 and 18, eight rods "on the northerly side of the road leading from Oliver Farmers dwelling house to the Mills", west of John Mixer's land, to Israel Colson, a Billerica carpenter, for $150. The canal kept the land on the other side of its private way, now Lowell Street, and in 1851 sold it with the rest of its Billerica property to Charles P. Talbot and Thomas Talbot. Colson sold his two lots to the Talbots in 1857, the year their mill opened, so the corner where this house was built came to them from both sides.

In 1884 Thomas Talbot and the heirs of Charles P. Talbot conveyed the village land to the corporation, The Talbot Mills, which rented the house to its workers. Directories list William Adams, a wool sorter, and James Lee, a spinner, in its two halves in 1901, Jonathan Williams, a weaver, in 1912, and from about 1916 Seth Taylor, a mill operative, at number 25. After his death his widow Mary J. Taylor stayed on, keeping a small food and variety shop in the house in the 1930s and 1940s, while Catherine A. Kearney, widow of Patrick T. Kearney, and her daughter Christine lived at number 23.

On the Monahan plan of 1936 the house lot became Lot 66 of Plan B, 7,392 square feet at the curve of the two streets, with a right of way behind it to Elm Street that was to be "forever kept open for the common use and benefit of the abutters". On December 3, 1936 The Talbot Mills sold it to Mary J. Taylor, and her mortgage that month notes that "the buildings on said premises are now numbered 23 and 25 on said Elm street." She owned the house for the rest of her life; in 1952 the town recorded a lien on it for the Old Age Assistance she received. After her death Thomas S. Taylor, who had lived in the house as a student in 1931, as administrator of her estate sold it under a license from the Probate Court in November 1955 for $6,300 to Frank St. John Jr. and his wife.

Frank St. John Jr., a sorter at Byam's Laundry in 1957, died on September 9, 1969, and the house passed to his widow, who lived at number 25 until she conveyed it to private owners in 1998. The house is a contributing building in the Billerica Mills National Register district (1983) and the local historic district (1992).

References

1. MACRIS BIL.86
2. Billerica assessor, 23-25 Old Elm St (parcel 9-100-0): Lot 66, Plan Book 60 Plan 28, two-family, built about 1875

Deed References Expand all

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