Dutton - Holden Homestead

The Dutton - Holden Homestead stands back from the west side of Pond Street a short way northeast of the Center, a two and a half story, center-chimney farmhouse with a rear lean-to, a long east wing and, at its end, the small shoe shop of the Holden family, raised in the 19th century over a carriage house. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 as a well preserved evolved farmhouse, and the shoe shop is a rare survivor of Billerica's home industries. Pond Street was the old road to Andover, and the deeds of the farm can be followed without a break from 1723 to the present.

In the last great division of the common land, in 1707, John Dutton and Ebenezer Farley received the land between the Township, Pond Street and Salem Road. On Dec. 9, 1723 John gave his son Jonathan "one Messuage or Tract of Land ... containing eighty acres ... of upland and meadow," bounded east "by the Road to Andover," "with all the Buildings fences and Trees thereon." On Jan. 25, 1731/2 Jonathan, signing with his mark, sold the whole farm "and also all the Buildings that are upon said Land" to his brother Samuel, a blacksmith, for 100 pounds. The deed was recorded on June 21, 1732; two days later their father asked the probate court for a guardian for Jonathan, who the selectmen found "so far non compos as to stand in great need of a Guardian." He later recovered and settled in Tewksbury.

Samuel Dutton died in 1736. When his estate was divided in 1739 the old homestead of John Dutton, "with the old Buildings," went to his eldest son John, and the 36 acres to the north of it, "with the Buildings thereon Standing," were split between John and his younger brother Samuel, then about twenty, whose guardian was the neighbor Thomas Kidder. Their mother Hannah released her dower but kept "Liberty to possess and live in the west Room of the most Northerly house that was my late husbands," with part of the cellar and the use of the well: the northerly house appears to be this one. On Nov. 17, 1740 Samuel Jr., by then of Bedford, sold Kidder "thirty six acres ... and was the homestead of Samuel Dutton late of Billerica Decd ... together with a house and Barn thereon standing," with two pieces of meadow at Mill Meadow, for 440 pounds. Tradition, followed by the Historical Commission in 1976, dates the house to Jonathan Dutton about 1724; the National Register study found the visible framing and finish to be later, about 1750 to 1770, so the present house may be a rebuilding or enlargement of the Duttons' house under Kidder or Davis.

Kidder kept the farm as the "easterly part of my Homestead" for a quarter century. On Feb. 11, 1765 he sold Deacon Joshua Davis, who lived on the farm to the west, 11 acres and 70 poles of orchard and pasture "together with a Dwelling House thereon standing and also a Frame of a Barn," with a right of way a pole and a half wide "westerly down to the watering place," and on Jan. 1, 1767 the adjoining 34 1/4 acres. Davis, a selectman and a leader of the town's Revolutionary committees, died in 1777, and the 1778 division of his estate gave his son Timothy "about forty seven acres with the Buildings thereon standing." On Sept. 8, 1785 Timothy sold "all my Homestead ... about thirty five acres ... with my Dwelling House & Barn" to John Soley, a Boston merchant from Charlestown, for 240 pounds. Soley used the farm as a country seat and bought pew No. 20 in the new meetinghouse. He died at Billerica in 1801; his estate was administered without insolvency, and the bankrupt named in the sale of the farm was his son John, whose share was conveyed by an assignee. On July 16, 1802 the heirs sold four fifths of the farm "together with all the buildings standing thereon" to Thomas Holden of Woburn, a shoemaker, for $1,080, and on Jan. 28, 1803 Nathaniel Soley sold him the last fifth for $270.

Thomas Holden kept the farm until his death in 1842 and left it by will to his son Amasa Holden (1813-1876), who was to support his mother. Amasa enlarged the farm, raised hay, peas, potatoes and a large orchard crop, made shoes in the shop, and served as a selectman in 1855 and 1856; his will, approved in March 1876, left "the homestead of the late Amasa Holden" to his son Warren Holden, subject to his widow's dower. Warren mortgaged the fifty-acre homestead in 1878 and lost three strips along the front of the farm when the County relocated Pond Street in 1916. He turned to market gardening and poultry and served on the Board of Public Welfare and the Water Commission.

On Oct. 2, 1926 Warren Holden deeded the farm, then about 35 acres "together with all the buildings thereon," with his furniture, to Lester D. Holden of Stoneham, reciting the Soley deeds and the wills of Thomas and Amasa Holden; Warren died in 1928. Lester mortgaged it in January 1929 and in September 1929 sold it to George R. Ford of Belmont, who passed it on within days to Forrest F. Collier, a lawyer and treasurer of the Billerica Trust Company. In 1930 Collier gave the back land to his wife and sold the house, the barn and about eight acres at the southeast corner to Robert E. and Irene H. Wyman, who deeded them back to him in 1936. Collier laid out the back land in house lots as Pondale Acres in 1936 and as Holden Heights in 1950. In January 1950 he conveyed Lot B, the barn lot, to trustees of the Shawsheene Building Association, formed to sell shares to members of Shawsheen Lodge No. 54 of the Odd Fellows and to hold the "Odd Fellows Hall Building and land on Pond St." (see Billerica Seventh-day Adventist Church), and on Sept. 12, 1950 he deeded Lot A, the house and 73,100 square feet, to his son Dudley F. Collier and his wife, who cared for it for more than forty years. After Dudley's death the house lot was sold in 1992 to private owners, who had it listed on the National Register; it has changed hands privately since.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.161
2. National Register nomination, Dutton - Holden Homestead (2001): construction dates, Holden and Collier family history
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): 1706 division, Genealogical Register (Dutton, Holden, Soley)

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.