Father Matthew Hall

Father Mathew Hall is a two-story meeting hall with a three-story corner tower on the south side of Lowell Street in North Billerica, built in 1889 and 1890 by the Father Mathew Total Abstinence Society, a Catholic temperance society of the Irish mill workers of the village. It stands in the Billerica Mills Historic District. The society and its hall were named for Father Theobald Mathew (1790-1856), the Irish Capuchin priest celebrated as the "apostle of temperance", whose total abstinence pledge was taken by hundreds of thousands in Ireland and, after his visit of 1849 to 1851, in the United States, where he spoke in Lowell in 1849. The society's deeds, its listings in the town's 1912 magazine and the town reports all spell the name "Mathew", as he did; the spelling "Matthew" appears only in a 1965 deed and in the 1983 National Register nomination, which also misdates the hall to 1886.

The land was part of the old mill grant at the falls of the Concord River. In 1794 Thomas Richardson sold about forty acres there to the Proprietors of the Middlesex Canal, and in 1851 the canal company sold its Billerica land to Charles P. Talbot and Thomas Talbot. One of the eleven parcels in that deed was the triangle between the county road (now Old Elm Street), the road to the canal (Colson Street) and the canal's private way (Lowell Street), long called the Common, where the Talbots built the North Billerica Baptist Church in 1870 and houses for their mill hands. In 1884 the Talbot heirs conveyed the land to Talbot Mills, the corporation formed to run the mill.

The Billerica society of the Father Mathew Total Abstinence movement was organized on November 1, 1887, through Edward Slattery of Lowell, and first met in the Engine House hall; its membership was closely tied to St. Andrew's parish, whose church then stood on Rogers Street (Saint Andrew's Church on Rogers Street). The mill owners, who wanted a sober work force, backed it. On December 19, 1889 The Talbot Mills, by its president Solomon Lincoln and treasurer Frederic S. Clark, gave the "Father Mathew Total Abstinence Society of North Billerica" for $1 a lot "on the Southerly side of Lowell street", 68 feet 6 inches on the street, between the company's own land and the lot of Mrs. A. Wilson, and running back to the Baptist Society's land. The gift was made "upon the condition that a building shall be erected upon the land hereby conveyed for the uses and purposes of a Temperance Society and for no other uses and purposes, and that said land shall not be leased or sold", on pain of the land going back to the company. How the building was paid for is not recorded, though the members seem to have raised the money with bazaars and similar events; the hall was dedicated on February 17, 1890.

For the next half century the hall was the society's home and a meeting place for other Catholic and fraternal groups of the North Village. In 1912 the society had 75 members and met "Tuesday evening at 8 in Father Mathew Hall"; the North Billerica Council of the Royal Arcanum met there twice a month, the Holy Name Society of St. Andrew's met there, and the society gave whist parties in the hall. Its ladies put on plays in Thomas Talbot Memorial Hall, and on November 15, 1912 it celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with a dance there. When the Talbot Mills library closed, many of its books went to the hall. On October 31, 1939 The Talbot Mills sold the society Lot 58 of its Plan "B", a 7,438 square foot lot between the hall and the house at 8 Lowell Street.

Interest in temperance faded after the end of Prohibition. On August 9, 1948 the remaining members voted "to transfer for a nominal consideration to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston ... all the property of the Society situated on Lowell Street", and the society's president, Timothy J. McCarthy, signed the deed of both parcels "with the buildings thereon". The next June The Talbot Mills released the temperance condition of 1889 and its right to take the land back. Under the parish the hall was used for whist parties, church meetings and lectures. In 1950 the pastor of St. Andrew's, Rev. Bernard J. McNulty, offered "the upper story of the Father Mathew Hall" to the Bennett Public Library Association, which opened its North Billerica branch there in 1951.

In December 1964 Richard Cardinal Cushing, as Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, deeded the hall to the Billerica Disabled Veterans Building Corporation, which bought it with a $5,000 mortgage from the Lowell Five Cent Savings Bank (the deed was recorded in March 1965). The hall was the headquarters of Chapter 47 of the Disabled American Veterans for 36 years, and from about 1989 the chapter shared it with the Open Door Baptist Church. As its membership shrank and the old building grew too costly to keep, the chapter moved to Chelmsford, and in October 2001 the corporation sold the hall to a private owner for $175,000 (a confirmatory deed followed in 2003). The new owner first proposed tearing it down and building two houses; when the Historic Districts Commission objected, he converted the hall into a single-family house instead, keeping the tower and the slate hip roof.

Today the former hall is a private home, assessed as one house on its 0.199 acre lot with Lot 58 as a separate parcel beside it. The front porch and its arched entry, which once carried the words "Father Mathew Hall", are gone, and decks have been added at the rear. The hall had been left off the inventory of the historic district, and in 2022, with the building for sale, the Billerica Historical Commission filed an inventory form for it.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.313
2. Billerica assessor, 6 Lowell St (parcel 9-106-0): 0.199 acre, one-family, current deed 16483/97 (2003); Lot 58 is parcel 9-105-0
3. Billerica (magazine), vol. 1, 1912-13: Societies and Clubs, "1887. Father Mathew Total Abstinence Society ... Members, 75. Meets Tuesday evening at 8 in Father Mathew Hall"; Day Book, Nov. 15, 1912, the society's twenty-fifth anniversary
4. Town reports 1950 and 1951, Bennett Public Library Association: Rev. Bernard J. McNulty of St. Andrew's offers "the upper story of the Father Mathew Hall on Lowell Street" for North Billerica branch library no. 2 (opened 1951)
5. National Register nomination 83003996, Billerica Mills Historic District (1983), no. 687: "Father Matthew Hall, 1886, 6 Lowell Street", owner Billerica Disabled Veterans Bldg. Corp.
6. Town report FY2022, Historical Commission: the Form B for Father Mathew Hall was never filed; the building for sale, a new Form B to be prepared

Deed References Expand all

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