Deacon Thomas B. Edmonds House

The Deacon Thomas B. Edmonds House stands on the east side of Baldwin Road a short way north of Allen Road, on a lot that has been a homestead since at least the 1770s. The deeds spell the deacon's name Edmands. From 1819 to 1906 the farm was always described the same way: a home lot of about ten acres "bounded westerly on the road" with George Carter's land on the other three sides, sold together with a twelve-and-a-half-acre wood lot called the Plain on Mill Brook, three acres on the road from John Crosby's to the meetinghouse, and three acres of meadow called Bell Meadow.

The earliest record of the place is a 1777 deed in which Richard Snow and his wife Lydia sold Josiah Wright of Wilmington "my Homestead," about eight acres "with all the Buildings thereon," bounded west on the road and elsewhere by William Tarbell. Only two thirds passed, because the other third was a widow's thirds. Wright, then "in the Continental Service," sold the same two thirds to Ephraim Crosby in 1780, but the Snows stayed on. When Richard Snow, a cordwainer, died insolvent in 1794, his inventory listed the eight acres and "a Dwelling house and Barn together with a shoemaker shop." His father Richard Snow Sr., a tailor, died the same year owning the same eight acres and "a small dwelling house." The two widows divided the house between them at the chimney: Bethia Snow got the west half and Lydia Snow the east end, the barn and the well. In 1798 Crosby released his two thirds, "with all the buildings thereon standing," to the cordwainer's son John Snow for ten dollars.

John Snow sold "my homestead farm containing ten acres" to Francis Cook in 1819 for $440, with the Plain, which Snow had bought of Jeremiah Blanchard, and the three-acre lot. He added Bell Meadow, bought from Si Kittredge, in 1829. Cook mortgaged "the Snow farm" with all his other lands to the trustees of Phillips Academy in 1830. In 1831 he sold it to Varnum Waugh, and the academy released its claim to the farm. John Snow, who had moved away, quitclaimed in 1834 "the farm upon which I formerly lived." That October Waugh sold the farm for $600 to James Gould, a Boston baker. Six years later, in April 1840, Gould sold it for $1,400 to Thomas B. Edmands of Charlestown. The price more than doubled while Gould owned it, which fits the suggestion in the 1974 Billerica Historical Commission survey that the present house, whose divided chimney is younger than John Snow's time, could have been built by Gould, who came in 1834. The assessor dates the house to about 1870.

Thomas B. Edmands, later a deacon, lived here with his wife Sophronia for the rest of his life. Their daughter Sophronia A. Edmands married Asa G. Putney, a railroad repairer, in 1848. To finance the farm Edmands borrowed $700 from Emily Rust of Lexington in 1841, $850 from Daniel Richardson, a Woburn blacksmith, in 1849, and $1,500 from Richardson in 1860. Henry A. Hazen's 1883 history uses "the Deacon Edmands place" as a landmark in describing the town's second land division along the Shawsheen. Edmands died in 1876 with the 1860 mortgage unpaid. In March 1884 Richardson made formal entry on the property, and on April 26, 1884 the farm was sold at auction on the premises to Dudley Foster for $760.

In 1885 Foster sold "the Homestead of the late Thomas B. Edmund deceased" for $1,200 to Rebecca Colburn of Lowell. Amanda Holden and Foster B. Putney renewed the forty-year-old right of way across their land to the wood lot. In 1906 Rebecca's son George F. Colburn sold the whole estate, by then called twelve acres "with all the buildings thereon," to Dennis J. Gilman of Everett. For many years the Gilmans used it as a summer home. A 1936 survey for Dennis J. Gilman, subdivided in 1940, divided the land along Baldwin Street into Lots A, B and C. The old house stood near the road on Lot C. His widow Martha L. Gilman died on December 29, 1943 and left the property to her children. In 1947 they gave their brother John R. Gilman a 25-foot right of way across Lot C to his Lot B. In 1954 they sold the house on Lot C-2, 3.02 acres with 362 feet on Baldwin Road, to private owners.

In 1971 the house lot was divided into four lots, and the house kept Lot 3 of 57,000 square feet. That lot was sold in 1975 and redrawn as Lot 3A in 2011, when a new house lot was made behind it on Sartell Circle. The house remains a private home of about seven-tenths of an acre.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.168
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 38 ("the Deacon Edmands place") and Genealogical Register p. 135 (Snow family)
3. Billerica assessor, parcel 63-34-5 (57 Baldwin Rd): Lot 3A, 0.702 acres, built about 1870

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.