Enoch Kidder House

The Enoch Kidder House was the farmhouse of a hundred-acre farm in North Billerica that ran from the old Lowell road, now High Street, west to the Concord River, where 216 High Street is today. Known in turn as the Kidder farm, the "French Farm" and the "Collins farm," it can be followed through the deeds from 1736 to the twentieth century.

Tradition dates the house to 1711. The 1711 Manning deed to Enoch Kidder was for a piece of the Mill Meadow by Alewife and Fox Brooks, and Kidder's 1713 purchase from Nathaniel Rogers was a house lot near the Center. No recorded deed of the North Billerica farm to Enoch Kidder has been found. It first appears on Sept. 30, 1736, when Enoch Kidder, "for and in Consideration of the parental Love good will and affection which I have and do bear to my son William Kidder," gave him sixty-five acres "bounded Easterly by the highway that leads to the Wamassett," "westerly on Concord River," with Rogers land north and south, "together with the house and Barn thereon standing." That November William's brother Enoch Jr. sold him ten acres across the road and an acre bought of John Rogers Jr.

William Kidder farmed here for 45 years. On Dec. 27, 1781, "in Consideration of the Love and good will I bear to my Daughter Rebecca French," and for 266 pounds, he deeded 76 acres between the highway and the river to her husband, Ebenezer French of Dunstable, blacksmith, "together with all the Buildings thereon standing excepting my new Barn," with half his Tewksbury land and half his Mill Meadow. His will of 1789 says that Rebekah had received her "full portion" in "furniture, buildings and lands."

Ebenezer French died without a will in 1802. His son Zadock French of Boston administered the small personal estate, but the farm was never divided, and for thirty years it belonged jointly to the widow and seven children while the unmarried daughter, Elizabeth French, lived on it. Between 1830 and 1834 she gathered in the shares: she levied execution on her brother Zadock's two sevenths of "a certain farm ... with the buildings thereon" in 1830, and took releases from her brothers Abel of Albany and Josiah of Guilderland, New York, and from Zadoc's heirs in Maine. On May 9, 1834 she sold six sevenths of the farm, about one hundred acres "formerly owned by Ebenezer French," to Thomas Pinnock, a Lowell carpet manufacturer, and the Blanchard heirs sold him the last seventh. By then the new Boston and Lowell Railroad ran across the farm, between the house and the river.

Pinnock soon died, and on Nov. 9, 1836 his administrator, Seth Ames, sold "the French farm" at auction to Edward Collins of Billerica, the highest bidder at $1,870; the widow and Pinnock's son released their claims. Collins, who signed with his mark, was soon in debt: he mortgaged the farm to John McGarry for $500, a creditor had the sheriff sell his equity of redemption in 1837, and he deeded the farm to Felix Trainer of Cambridge and took it back at the same price. In June 1838 he sold the north half to the younger Thomas Pinnock and then the south half, "with the dwelling house and other buildings thereon ... where I now reside," taking back a mortgage; Collins stayed in the house. McGarry won a judgment for possession in 1841 and in 1842 assigned his mortgage to John A. Knowles, a Lowell lawyer, who sold the land west of the railroad to the railroad in 1845 and on July 29, 1848 quitclaimed the farm to Collins's wife, Sarah.

Sarah Collins, later known as Sarah Cullinan, kept "the Collins farm" for more than fifty years, mortgaging it to Knowles for $200 in 1873, when she noted "I then bore the name of Sarah Collins." The "Mrs. Quinlan" through whose land, beside the town farm, the 1892 town meeting warrant proposed to extend Billerica Street was evidently she. After her death her executrix, Sarah E. Collins, sold the farm in June 1905 to Lawrence B. Gannon and Bernard W. Kearney for $3,500. Their surveyor, O. M. Snell, drew it that month as two lots and a wood lot, with three buildings beside the road on Lot II. In 1910 they sold Lot II, 28 acres between the Lowell road and Talbot Street, to Ovid Ouellette of Lowell. In 1937 Ouellette deeded the High Street house lot "with the buildings thereon" to Fred O. Ouellette and took back a life lease. House lots were sold off in the 1950s, and the remaining lot, 216 High Street, has been in private hands since 1969.

The records do not say when the old Kidder farmhouse came down. The buildings now on the lot are dated to about 1905, but the 1905 plan still shows buildings by the road; whether any part of the old house survives has not been settled.

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.