Deacon Edward Wright House

The house at 57 Andover Road stands on the half acre that the town of Billerica used as its first poorhouse, from about 1800 until 1824. MACRIS records it as the Deacon Edward Wright House, after the engraver who bought the old poorhouse lot in 1839.

The lot was cut from Benjamin Baldwin's land on the road to Andover, which the deeds of the time call the Salem road. On April 13, 1799, Baldwin sold John Jefts, a cordwainer, "a certain parcel of land situate in said Billerica near the dwelling house of Luther French containing one half acre", eight rods along the highway and ten rods deep, for $30. By August Jefts had "buildings" on it, and he mortgaged half the lot to Josiah Crosby for $120. On July 7, 1800 he sold the place "with the buildings standing thereon" to Oliver Crosby for $500. (The MACRIS inventory form dates the Baldwin deed 1790.)

No deed to the town was ever recorded, but by October 8, 1803 the Jefts lot next door was bounded "by land belonging to the Inhabitants of said Town of Billerica", so the town had taken Jefts's house by then and kept its poor there. The town also kept its powder house on the lot. By the early 1820s the town was moving its poor to the Rogers farm in North Billerica, later the Town Farm. At a town meeting on June 21, 1824, Josiah Crosby was made agent "to sell and pass deeds to convey the house recently occupied by the Town as a poor house together with land attached to the same". That day he sold it "at public auction" to Josiah B. French, "he being the highest bidder", for $309, keeping for the town "the powder House standing on said premises and the land under the same".

On August 12, 1839, French, then of Lowell, sold the half acre "with the buildings thereon, except the small building in the rear of said lot used as a powder house" to Edward Wright of Billerica for $325, nearly what he had paid. Wright had been an engraver in Boston when he married Mary Elizabeth Wilson there in 1836, and he came to Billerica soon after. He bought more of the Baldwin land to the east, and his wife's family, the Wilsons, joined them. The 1853 map shows two buildings at E. Wright's, and the 1875 and 1889 maps show two houses under Mrs. M. Wright. When Edward Wright died on September 11, 1863, his estate was inventoried as the "Home Stead" ($600), "Land with buildings adjoining homestead" ($550) and about twelve acres more ($550). His widow kept the homestead for 38 more years.

In 1901 the widow released her dower to the eight grandchildren, and the probate court divided the estate, 360 feet along Andover Street, into three lots. The surveyor's plan shows a large house with an ell on Lot 1, the west end next to the Turner and Dimock land, which was the old poorhouse half acre, and a small building on Lot 3 by the Underhill estate. The commissioners' report of December 20, 1901 adds that "the building shown on said plan has since been destroyed by fire". Mabel B. King, a granddaughter (the daughter of Anna Wright and the Rev. S. Sherburne Mathews), bought the Kinney third, Lot 1, in 1902 and the next lot east in 1904. Her 1914 plan again shows a house with an ell at the Turner corner, so the house was repaired or rebuilt where the burned one had stood. The Historical Commission thought the chimney "more appropriate to 1850 than 1900" and that she rebuilt along the original lines; an original doorway was blocked and replaced by one on the east side, entering from the porch, perhaps at that time.

Whether any of John Jefts's 1799 house, the poorhouse, survives inside the present Greek Revival house is not known. MACRIS supposed that Wright built the house about 1850, but the deeds show only that the poorhouse lot had a house from 1799 on, that the house stood at its west end in 1901 and 1914, and that it has been rebuilt at least once.

In July 1914 Mabel B. King, then of Fitchburg, sold Lot 1, 83 feet on Andover Street and 18,000 square feet "with the buildings thereon", to James A. Sansom, and the Sansom family kept it for more than sixty years. Every later deed describes the house lot as Lot 1 on her 1914 plan. The Sansom heirs sold it in 1976, and it was sold again in 1989 and 2002; the present owners hold it in a family trust.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.18
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 166, WRIGHT 4: Edward Wright, engraver of Boston, married Mary Elizabeth Wilson in 1836 and died Sept. 11, 1863; his daughters and their children, among them Mabel Babcock Mathews, born 1877

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.