George Brown Street

George Brown Street runs east from Salem Road in East Billerica, over the railroad and past the site of the Middlesex Canal, to Whipple Road, about half a mile. No laying out of it has been found. It is one of the old ways that the town said in 2016 were shown on the official town map of 1831, and with Whipple Road it formed part of the old road from East Billerica toward Wilmington and Pattenville. Where it crosses the line of the Middlesex Canal, opened about 1802, the canal survey places the site of Kendall's bridge, canal bridge No. 36, and a short way north the canal crossed the Shawsheen River on the Shawsheen Aqueduct, whose stone abutments stand off George Brown Street.

The road had no name of its own in the nineteenth century. The street naming committee of 1896 called the whole way from Salem Street to the Tewksbury line "Patten street," and the Billerica Historical Society's list, accepted at the annual town meeting of March 27, 1899, gave "Whipple road, from Salem road running easterly to Tewksbury line," which took in this road as well as the present Whipple Road. In 1951 a zoning description spoke of "the junction of the Salem Road and the Wilmington Road," running southeasterly "along said Wilmington Road, sometimes called Salem Road," toward the Shawsheen River. By the 1960s the road was known as Brown Street, and a water main was laid in 1963 "in Brown Street, East Billerica, from Salem Road to the B. & M. Railroad bridge."

Because the town had several streets named Brown Street, the selectmen's sub-committee for renaming streets changed this one to George Brown Street by a vote of April 25, 1988, effective July 1, 1988, describing it as the "1st left off Salem Road beyond Dignon Road." The record of the change gives no reason for the first name. The Brown family had farmed in East Billerica from the 1690s, and Henry A. Hazen wrote that George Brown, who took the oath of fidelity in 1685, "did settle in the east part of the town"; his son Samuel's farm included the site of the first sawmill on Content Brook, later known as Patten's Mills. The name probably honors that family, but no record of 1988 says so.

The road was accepted as a public way at the annual town meeting of 1975, which on April 22, 1975 voted to accept "the laying out of Brown Street from Salem Road to Whipple Road a way of varying width from 40 to 50 feet and 2750 feet more or less long." The Street Acceptance Committee had warned that it needed drainage, sidewalk and paving, and it was said that the cost did not include the bridge over the railroad tracks, which belonged to the Boston and Maine. The state rebuilt that bridge, No. B-12-014, under layouts of 1998 and 2003, and the work was under way in 2002 and 2003. The town's list of 2016 gives the date of acceptance as April 5, 1975.

References

1. Annual Report 1897: street naming committee, "Patten street, running easterly from Salem street to Tewksbury line, E. Billerica"
2. Annual Report 1899: Historical Society street list, "26. Whipple road, from Salem road running easterly to Tewksbury line"
3. Annual Report 1951: zoning description at "the junction of the Salem Road and the Wilmington Road"
4. Annual Report 1975: Article 14, streets to be accepted, "Brown Street (from Whipple to Salem Road)"
5. Annual Report 1975: annual town meeting votes to accept the laying out of Brown Street from Salem Road to Whipple Road
6. Annual Report 1988: selectmen's sub-committee renames Brown Street, East Billerica, George Brown Street
7. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register: the Brown family, George Brown settled in the east part of the town
8. Massachusetts state highway layouts for Billerica: George Brown Street bridge B-12-014, layouts 7432 (1998) and 7739 (2003)
9. Annual Report 2017: roads on the 1831 map already accepted, "George Brown Street, Whipple Road, Salem Road, Accepted 04/05/1975"