Campbell's General Store and Post Office

Campbell's General Store and Post Office stood at the corner of Boston Road and Beaumont Avenue in Pinehurst, on the east side of the road at the north end of the Pinehurst Manor house lots, where 800 Boston Road is today. It was built about 1911 as the house of Charles Haughey. From the mid-1920s until 1931 it housed the village post office, called the Shawsheen post office until May 1, 1929 and the Pinehurst post office after that, and from 1927 it was the general store of James E. and Mary E. Campbell.

The land was part of the 100-acre farm on the road to Boston that Henry Sheldon and James T. Eames sold to Clara N. Wonson in 1893, "taken from the westerly part of a certain farm formerly owned by one Francis Carter". Mrs. Wonson, then a widow, sold it on September 13, 1910 to Frank W. Coughlin of Brookline, who had it laid out that month as Pinehurst Manor (Plan Book 27, Plan 95). Charles Haughey of Dorchester bought the corner from Coughlin in three deeds: lots 222 and 223, "Northerly on Beaumont Avenue" and "Westerly on Boston road", on June 26, 1911; lot 221 on August 25, 1911; and lots 220 and 224 on January 20, 1912, when the deed calls him "of Billerica". The five lots made a corner parcel of 16,440 square feet, 103.2 feet on the Boston Road and 178 feet on Beaumont Avenue. The directory of 1916 lists "Haughey Charles h Beaumont ave n Boston rd". In 1914 he also bought lots 229 to 232 across Beaumont Avenue, the later site of St. Mary's Church. He died in Billerica on October 12, 1915, at the age of 85.

The property passed under the probate of Haughey's estate to Thomas McHolland of Cambridge, who on March 7, 1925 sold the three parcels to Ethel B. Brown of Billerica, "Household furniture to pass herewith". She mortgaged the land "with the buildings thereon" the same day to Ellen F. Eaton for $3,000. Harry W. Brown had been appointed postmaster of the Shawsheen post office in 1923 and is listed in 1925 as a grocer on Boston Road; Ethel B. Brown followed him as postmaster in 1926. The post office and store most likely moved to the Beaumont Avenue corner when the Browns bought it.

The Shawsheen post office had opened on January 26, 1917 with Theodore P. Rogers as postmaster. Rogers was a grocer on Boston Road from about 1915; the directory of 1916 lists him as "grocer Boston rd c Shawsheen", and that of 1919 as "postmaster also groc Boston rd c Shawsheen", with the "Shawsheen Post Office, Boston rd cor Shawsheen, Theodore P Rogers Postmaster". Shawsheen Street, the main street of the Pinehurst Annex, has been Sheridan Street since about 1990 and lies about a quarter mile south of Beaumont Avenue. In 1921 the town bought the lot for the Pinehurst School from Josiah Hardwick "on the southerly side of Boston Road, just west of the Shawsheen post office". Rogers's store was therefore at the Shawsheen Street corner, probably the building on Pinehurst Annex lots 1 to 3 at the south corner, now 795 Boston Road, which belonged to the Dolaher family of Boston from 1908 to 1930. Rogers bought lots 26 to 28 on Shawsheen Street for his own house in 1918.

Mary E. Campbell was acting postmaster in 1927, and her husband James E. Campbell was appointed postmaster that year. In its report for 1928 the Board of Health described the new public dump at the end of Pinegrove Avenue, "off Boston Rd. opposite the Pinehurst Post Office". Campbell's advertised in The Torch of June 1929 as "Campbell's, Pinehurst Post Office, Jenny Station". The Browns' mortgage was not kept up, and Ellen F. Eaton sold the property at auction on the premises on April 12, 1930, after notices in The Billerica News; Mary E. Campbell was the highest bidder, at $3,000. In August 1931 the Campbells mortgaged it to the Billerica Trust Company for $750. The directory of 1931 lists "Campbell Jas (Mary), postmstr, h Boston rd, Pinehurst" and that of 1932 "Campbell's General Store, Boston rd (P)". William F. Eggo became acting postmaster on December 21, 1931, and kept the office, with a news stand, on Boston Road until 1958. In 1936 and 1937 the town warrants still described a lot "between the corner of Pinegrove Avenue and the Pinehurst Post Office".

By 1941 James E. Campbell was a truckman living on Beaumont Avenue. On July 20, 1945 Mary E. Campbell sold the corner, 6,940 square feet with 83 feet on Beaumont Avenue and 103.2 feet on the Boston Road, "with buildings thereon", to Dougal and Maud McLennan, and kept the back of the lots, where the family lived at 3 Beaumont Avenue; the bank's mortgage was discharged the same week. Dougal McLennan died in 1947, and in 1955 his widow sold the corner to a private owner. Menotomy Realty Corp. of Arlington owned it from 1961 to 1969, when the law office of Keshian and Birch was at 800 Boston Road, and private owners and trusts have held it since. The assessors date the present office building on the corner to about 1950.

References

1. Billerica assessor, 800 Boston Rd (parcel 90-148-0): Pinehurst Manor lots 220-223, Plan 27-95; office building built about 1950
2. Jim Forte Postal History, Middlesex County post offices: Shawsheen 1917-1929, Pinehurst 1929 to date

Deed References Expand all

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