Deacon Samuel Hill House

The Deacon Samuel Hill House stood for more than two and a half centuries on the Hill family farm on the west side of the road from Billerica to Concord, above the Concord River, at what became 239 Concord Road. In 1973 it was moved to 33 Riverhurst Road. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 as one of the First Period Buildings of Eastern Massachusetts.

The farm came into the family in May 1656, when Ralph Hill Jr. bought William Baker's "now dwelling house" and about 125 acres, land "late in the hands of Edmund Chamberline" and part of the Dudley tract, for 40 pounds payable in fat cattle, wheat, barley or English goods. That house served as Sergeant Hill's garrison in King Philip's War. Hazen says the old garrison stood "until after 1850," so it was not the house that survives today.

When Ralph Hill Jr. died in 1695 the whole homestead went to his son, Deacon Samuel Hill, who probably built the present house. Its quirk-beaded summer beams point to a date after 1700. The Massachusetts Historical Commission dated it about 1725, while Charles E. Stearns thought about 1700 more likely. Local tradition, once shared by Stearns and his father, held that part of the 1675 garrison survived inside it, but Stearns later rejected the idea. The house is two and a half stories and five bays wide, originally one room deep, with an 18th century rear lean-to. It keeps beaded summer beams, horizontal wall sheathing, brick nogging in the end walls and, in the left-hand upstairs chamber, a rare section of 18th century marbleized raised-field paneling.

Deacon Samuel Hill died in 1755 and the farm went to his son, Deacon Ralph Hill. By then there were two houses on the farm, and Ralph lived in the "new house." His will gave the "old house," this one, to his son William and the new house to his son Solomon, who sold his half in 1789. In September 1818 William Hill sold the farm to Seth Crosby for $1,000, ending 162 years of Hill ownership. Crosby deeded it back the following February, and the next day Hill sold it to John Skinner, a Charlestown merchant, for $1,525. About 1825 Skinner sold to James Marshall. Around 1840 the central chimney was taken out and replaced with a center stair and two interior chimneys, turning the old center-chimney house into a center-hall plan.

In 1865 James Marshall's heirs sold the 75-acre farm to Charles A. Ranlett and John H. Osgood, and it stayed with the Ranletts until 1910, when the trustee under Charles A. Ranlett's will registered it in the Land Court and cut it into lots. The house lot passed through several owners: Rolland A. Hobbs (1910), the Bartlett family (1915), William J. Fermoyle (1917) and Edward N. Brody (1936), whose mortgage the Home Owners' Loan Corporation foreclosed in 1937.

In 1940 Ozeline Wise of Cambridge bought the house. Around 1942 she and her husband, John D. Wise, a chef at MIT, opened it as the Galehurst Guest House, which they ran for nearly 30 years. It was the only tourist lodging in the Greater Lowell area recommended for African American travelers in the Negro Motorist Green Book. In 1953 the state took a strip along the Concord Road frontage for the Route 3 relocation of Concord Road.

In 1972 Ozeline Wise sold the property to Jon H. Graham of Graham Developers. The next year Charles E. Stearns of the Billerica Historical Commission, with his wife Helen, moved the house to a lot on Riverhurst Road that had come down through his mother's Judkins family. They tried to move the Solomon Hill House, the Hill farm's "new house," as well, but it could not be saved and was demolished. The Stearnses lived in the house for the rest of their lives, and his estate sold it in 2011.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.173
2. Wikipedia
3. National Register of Historic Places nomination (NRIS 90000165)
4. UMass Lowell, Lowell Stories: Black History - Ozeline Barrett Pearson and the Galehurst Guest House
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Ralph Hill Jr. and the Hill garrison

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.