College Farm

The College Farm was one of the "farms" that Cambridge granted along the Shawshin River in the 1640s, when the whole Shawshin wilderness belonged to that town. This one went to Harvard College, which let it to tenants for about a century and a quarter. It lay north-east of the Church Farm, down the Shawshin, and mostly on the east side of the river. Hazen knew of a plan by Danforth; in 1744 the College had the farm surveyed again by Caleb Brooks, who found "near 230 acres," and on Oct. 15, 1744 a committee of the Corporation (President Edward Holyoke, Henry Flynt and the Rev. Nathaniel Appleton) settled the east line with the neighbor Jacob Walker, whose house stood so close to it that the old line ran "before the said Jacob Walker's door." The agreement and Brooks's plan were recorded and copied into the Billerica deed books.

William Gleason first appears on the Billerica tax list in 1754, and Hazen says he "leased the College farm, east of the Shawshin, and not many years later, he purchased it." The deeds show how. In 1764 and 1765 Gleason bought land on the Woburn line next to the farm, including a 31-acre "messuage" bounded "by the College Farm." On Feb. 22, 1775 the President and Fellows sold the whole farm, "about two hundred and thirty acres lying in three pieces being divided by the Highway and Shawshin River," for 606 pounds to four Billerica men, Solomon Pollard, Jonathan Stickney, Samuel Kidder and Solomon Kidder, describing it by Brooks's plan "pricked off in the College Book No. 3 Page 122." Within a month the four resold it in pieces: Gleason's own deed for 91 3/4 acres, dated Mar. 18, 1775, was never recorded, but his will cites it, and their deed of Mar. 20, 1775 to Jacob Marshall for the 22 1/2 acres west of the river keeps a way "to and from the Colledge ford way across the land we lately sold to William Gleason." The College deed names no buildings, so the records do not settle whether the house was the College's tenant house or was built by Gleason; the Historical Commission dated it to the 18th century from its style.

Gleason, who grew hops and raised cattle here, died in 1818 at 88. His will of 1794 left his lands "as butted & bounded in two deeds from Samuel Kidder & others" to his son William, and the younger William's will of 1838 describes "my Homestead Farm, where I now live ... consisting of about one hundred acres," giving his widow Sarah the easterly half of the dwelling house with shared use of "the front entry, kitchen, oven, well-room, cellar and out buildings." After his death in 1844 his sons William S. Gleason and Josiah B. Gleason inherited; Josiah had already released his interest in "the home place" in 1841. The Walling map of 1853 still shows W. S. Gleason at the farm just east of the river bridge. Hazen says he moved to the village in 1850, but the sale came on Apr. 28, 1859, when he sold the 91 3/4 acres "with a dwelling house and barn thereon standing being my homestead," and ten acres across the road, to Norton Newcomb of Medford for $4,500, ending 84 years of Gleason ownership.

The next thirty years were unsettled. The farm passed from Newcomb to John B. Cross of Boston (1865), Robert H. Logan of Roxbury (1865), Lucia S. Little of Middleborough (1866), Francis A. Fogg of Boston (1866), John S. Barry of Medford (1866), David P. West of Boston and Gustavus L. West of Tisbury (1867), and then to the neighbor John Crosby (1867), who sold it in 1868 to Francis L. Crosby; every deed calls it "the homestead formerly of William Gleason." Family tradition recorded in 1973 remembered a Crosby who grew black beans for the army, a Virginia family named Hunter who tried tobacco, and a Pollard; the Crosbys are in the deeds, but no Hunter or Pollard owner was found. In 1869 Francis Crosby mortgaged the farm for $1,500 to the Trustees of Phillips Academy at Andover, and in 1874 he sold it to Nancy K. Bishop of Providence. The academy entered to foreclose on May 3, 1879; Mrs. Bishop sold to Charles Blake in 1883, and in 1887 Blake deeded the place to the academy. On May 31, 1890 the academy sold it for $1,500 to Herbert B. Richardson and Frank H. Richardson of Woburn.

The Richardson family kept the farm for the next seventy-seven years. In 1928 Herbert Richardson and his sisters granted New England Power a 250-foot strip for a transmission line across the farm, and in 1944 Edith and Bertha Richardson and their sister Florence B. Shinquin granted Colonial Beacon Oil a pipeline right of way beside it, running from the Flaherty land "to lands ... of the Town of Billerica at the Shawsheen River, crossing intervening highway called Cook Street." Mrs. Shinquin died in 1946 and her brother Herbert in 1948, and her family inherited the farm. In 1966 the Burlington Water and Sewer District took easements along the river for its reservoir.

When the Shawsheen Valley Regional Vocational Technical School District was formed, it chose the old Gleason homestead north of Cook Street for its school. The district committee adopted an Order of Taking on Feb. 14, 1967 for the land between Cook Street, Alexander Road and the Shawsheen, "including the trees and structures thereon," awarding $50,000 in damages, and the owners confirmed the taking by deed in 1968. The farmhouse was moved across Cook Street onto land the family kept, its present site at 93 Cook Street (local records give 1965, but the taking points to 1967 or 1968), and Shawsheen Valley Technical High School opened on the old site in 1970. The house has since passed to private owners and remains a residence; in 1999 the Historical Commission allowed a carriage shed of about 1969 to be taken down because it did not affect the historic house. Harvard's papers on its management of the farm are in the Harvard University Archives.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.203
2. Harvard Hollis Archives
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): the College Farm and William Gleason

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.