East Billerica Station

The East Billerica Station was the stopping place of the Boston and Lowell Railroad where the line crosses Gray Street, the old county road from Billerica to Andover and Tewksbury, beside the Richardson saw mill on Content Brook. For more than a century it served the farms and mills of the Gray Street neighborhood, and the mail for much of the east part of town came through it. Its station grounds lay south of the Gray Street overpass on the west side of the tracks; the only building left from them is the Railroad House at 69 Gray Street.

The railroad was laid out across the farm of Oliver Richardson and his son John Richardson 2nd, whose homestead (the Richardson Homestead) stood on the west side of the road. On January 20, 1834 the Richardsons sold the Boston and Lowell Rail Road Corporation, for $1,050, "a strip just four rods in width" through their land "on the easterly side of the County road leading from Billerica to Andover near said Richardsons dwelling house," and a longer strip west of the road along the mill pond. They kept the right to flow the pond on both sides of the embankment and to use it as a dam for "our mill and water privileges," and the corporation agreed to fence both sides of its strip. The line opened between Boston and Lowell in June 1835. The first record of a stop at the crossing comes in July 1841, when John Richardson 2nd granted the railroad a way "to give an easy access from the said County Road to the Rail Road," the use of a strip beside the tracks "for depositing Wood or materials or Merchandise intended for the use and business of said Rail Road Corporation and to erect a Wood Shed thereon," and sold it a further one-rod strip on the south side. The wiki's date of 1836 for the first station has not been confirmed in the deeds.

South of the crossing lay about eight acres of meadow and woodland on both sides of Content Brook that the Richardsons owned undivided with the Bowers family; in 1808 the sons of William Bowers released their half to their brother Dr. William Bowers. When John Richardson 2nd died in 1861, his sons divided his land, and in October 1861 John O. and Albert R. Richardson released to their brother Alden B. Richardson nine acres "near the Billerica and Tewksbury R.R. Station," between the railroad, the Tewksbury road and the old road to Wilmington. Alden bought the Bowers heirs' four acres in 1862 and a strip from Samuel Brown, and on September 22, 1863 sold the whole ten acres, "on the westerly side of the Boston and Lowell Rail-road," to Peter B. Bohonan. Bohonan, who had bought his house lot across the road from John Richardson 2nd in 1845, was the station agent, ticket agent and, from 1877, the first postmaster of East Billerica. On September 14, 1868 he sold the railroad, for $200, about 26,325 square feet on the highway beside the tracks, the corporation agreeing "to build and forever maintain all fences around said premises." These were the station grounds. In 1871 a deed of a small corner to Bohonan named "the road leading to the Depot" and "the new road leading to the Freight Depot."

The railroad rebuilt and improved its stations in the 1870s, and in 1874 it built the small house on the station lot, now the Railroad House, for station agents and section hands. The Boston and Maine Railroad leased the Boston and Lowell in 1887 and later held the property under its 1919 general mortgage. In 1928 the town's list of railroad property valued the East Billerica "Station Lot," about three quarters of an acre, and the house "Rear of Station House on station lot." No agent worked at the station after the late 1920s; Alfred A. Franz was its caretaker from 1927, and in December 1944 the Boston and Maine sold the house and its lot to his wife, Margaret Elizabeth Franz, keeping a right of way over "the driveway as now located ... extending easterly from said Gray Street to the grantor's East Billerica Station grounds." When the Gray Street bridge over the tracks was rebuilt in 1949 and 1950, the county commissioners described it as the bridge "at the East Billerica Station."

The station closed on January 18, 1965, when the Boston and Maine cut its commuter service back to the cities and towns of the new MBTA district. In 1975 there was a push to have the Lowell Regional Transit Authority reopen it, since the tracks were still in use, but nothing came of it. On December 24, 1976 the trustees of the bankrupt Boston and Maine sold the line, with its rights of way and station lands, to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority; the right-of-way map recorded with that sale shows the station grounds bought from Bohonan, the Franz lot cut from them, a passenger shelter and the flag posts at Gray Street. The MBTA Lowell Line still runs past the site.

References

1. Billerica annual report 1928: Boston and Maine property in East Billerica, "Station Lot," about 3/4 acre, and "Rear of Station House on station lot"
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Peter B. Bohonan appointed postmaster of East Billerica, December 21, 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.