Ezra Trull House

The Ezra Trull House was the farmhouse of a farm of about one hundred acres on both sides of Sheldon Street in North Billerica, on the old road from the Canal Mills to Tewksbury, which the deeds call "the road leading to Tewksbury Meetinghouse". It stood on the north side of the road at what is now the corner of Michael Road, where 16 Sheldon Street stands today.

The farm was a Trull homestead. Hazen's list of the 1771 taxpayers places Samuel Trull at the "Sheldon place, North Billerica". In 1830 Ezra Trull, a Boston distiller, sold John Trull, also of Boston, land there that included twenty-seven acres "with the buildings thereon", a three-acre piece "with the buildings thereon" and seventeen acres north of the Middlesex Canal, for $5,000. In 1845 John Trull, then of Watertown, sold the farm of about 120 acres, "with all the buildings thereon standing", to Isaac L. Hosmer of Concord for $1,880. It reached from Sheldon Street south across the Lowell railroad to the canal and Fox Brook, and the railroad had already taken an acre and six rods of it near "Trull's bridge".

Hosmer kept the farm only a few months. On July 14, 1845 he sold it to Francis Sheldon of Boston, a trader, for $2,000, and that year Sheldon added a two-acre wood lot bought from Charles W. French. Sheldon did not farm it himself. On June 11, 1854 he leased the farm "with the buildings thereon" to Ezra Sheldon of Billerica, yeoman, "for and during the natural life of the said Ezra Sheldon". Ezra paid $1,000 for the lease and agreed to pay the taxes, keep the buildings in repair and "carry on said farm in a good and husbandlike manner". Oren Sheldon, a neighbor, witnessed the lease. The "E. Sheldon" written at this house on the map of the 1850s is Ezra, the tenant, and the farm itself belonged to Francis.

Francis Sheldon died by 1858, when his will was proved in Suffolk County. The farm stayed in his family for almost fifty more years. In 1905 and 1906 his widow and executrix Sarah J. Sheldon of Brooklyn, New York, the guardian of Sargent T. Sheldon, and the guardian of the five children of Chauncey E. Sheldon of Wakefield sold their interests in the "estate with the buildings thereon" to John F. Finnegan of Billerica. Finnegan paid $1,000 for each guardian's share and mortgaged the farm to John J. Hogan of Lowell for $1,600. In 1940 straw deeds through William A. Hogan put the farm in John F. and his wife Marion E. Finnegan jointly, subject to a Home Owners Loan Corporation mortgage, and in 1948 a second pair of straw deeds put it in Marion's name alone.

After Marion Finnigan's death, William H. Sullivan, the trustee under her will, sold the hundred acres "with the buildings thereon" to M & T Construction Corporation of Tewksbury on October 21, 1966. The developers divided the land into house lots. The plan of Lots 15 and 16, drawn by K. J. Miller Company on October 18, 1966, shows the old house and its outbuildings at the corner of Michael Road and notes "Existing buildings located on lots 15 and 16 to be removed". The lots passed to L. C. M. Realty, Inc. in December 1966 and to Sheldon Construction Corp. in 1967. The farmhouse was taken down in 1967, and in 1968 a ranch house was built on Lot 15, now 16 Sheldon Street, which has since had private owners.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), 1771 tax list: "Trull, Sam'l ... Sheldon place, North Billerica."
2. Billerica assessor: parcel 11-145-0, 0.689 acre, ranch built about 1968; Lot 15 of Plan 104-134A.

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.