Frederick S. Clark House

The Frederick S. Clark House, known as the "Red Gable," stands on the north side of Mt. Pleasant Street in North Billerica, on a lot that began as two fields of four acres "known as the orchard lot and mowing field" on the road from North Billerica to Tewksbury. Lyman Haynes, Anthony Jones and Dudley Foster, partners who owned much of the land around the mills at North Billerica, sold the two fields in October 1864 to William L. Talbot for $475. Their deed names no earlier owner, so how they acquired the fields is not known. William L. Talbot sold them in 1866 to Eliza A. Rogers, "reserving all the crops now growing upon said premises," and she sold them on September 12, 1868 to Edward R. Talbot of Lowell, manufacturer, for $1,000. None of these deeds mentions a building.

Edward R. Talbot built the house between 1868 and 1874. He died before 1874, and on May 18, 1874 Charles P. Talbot, guardian of his daughters Harriet and Gertrude, sold "a lot of land with the buildings thereon containing four acres" at public auction to George B. Thayer of Brookline for $5,000. Thayer gave a mortgage of $1,620 to the widow, Eliza J. Talbot, and the Beers atlas of 1875 shows the house under his name. He did not keep up the payments: on May 5, 1880 the widow, by then Mrs. Frank P. Putnam, made "an open and peaceable entry" on the place to foreclose, and in December 1881 the Putnams sold it for $4,000 to Charles P. Talbot and Thomas Talbot.

In December 1885 the Talbot Mills, by its president Solomon Lincoln and its treasurer Frederic S. Clark, sold the house and four acres for $4,500 to Isabella W. Clark, Thomas Talbot's daughter and Clark's wife. The title stayed in her name. She enlarged the grounds by buying a strip on the east from Allan Bottomley in 1887, the land behind the house from Bottomley in 1890, a strip on the west from her father's trustees in 1892, and in 1892 Bottomley's land running east to the road to Lowell (High Street), all of it cut from the old George P. Elliott homestead next door except the western strip. The Clarks enlarged the house some time after 1887, and the estate came to include a garage, barn, ice house, toolhouse, coachman's cottage and tennis court.

Frederic S. Clark died in 1929 and Isabella W. T. Clark some years later. Her children, Thomas T. Clark, Lincoln Clark, Frederic S. Clark Jr. and Isabella H. Eaton, took the place under her will and in March 1938 sold the 14.26 acres "with the buildings thereon" at the corner of Mt. Pleasant and High Streets to Joseph J. and Catherine V. Sweeney of Lowell, who sold it the next month to Merle A. Farnan. She ran it as the Farnan private hospital for the aged; the house was badly damaged by fire in the aftermath of the hurricane of September 1938 and was rebuilt within a year. As Mrs. Rivinius she sold the property in 1946 to Francis B. Sheehan, who sold it in 1949 to Ann G. Lye, and in 1954 she sold the house and 13 acres to Joaquin F. D'Ornelas Jr. of Lowell.

In 1960 D'Ornelas had the land surveyed into two lots (Plan Book 93, Plan 130) and sold Lot B, the house and 2.06 acres on Mt. Pleasant Street, to The Billerica Mt. Pleasant Nursing Home, Inc. The nursing home sold the house in 1970 to a private buyer. After several private owners it was sold in 1983 to a realty trust and has since been run as a rooming house; it passed between related trusts in 1989.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.287
2. Forgotten New England: The Day North Billerica's Hospital Nearly Burnt Down, 1938
3. Billerica assessor, account 99 (parcel 10-206-0): Lot B, 2.06 acres, current deed and sales history.

Deed References Expand all

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