Gerrit H. Bennink House

The Gerrit H. Bennink House stands on the southeast side of Andover Road in Billerica Center, on land that was pasture for more than a century before the house was built. In the eighteenth century it was part of the farm of the Sheldon family, whose homestead lay along what was then the road to Salem and was sometimes called Sheldon's Lane. When Samuel Sheldon died in 1777 his land was divided among his five daughters. One of them, Mary, was the wife of Jonathan Pool of Reading, and in 1781 the deed of her sister Sarah Center's homestead gave its eastern bound as land of Jonathan Pool.

On December 4, 1786 Pool sold the tract to Nahum Baldwin, a Billerica cordwainer, for 99 pounds 10 shillings: "a Tract of Land in Billerica containing thirty nine Acres and 16 Pole", beginning at "the Road leading to Salem" and bounded by Josiah Bowers Jr., Oliver Abbot, Solomon Manning, Jonas French, Samuel Kidder, Benjamin Baldwin and Solomon Pollard. Baldwin lived across the road. When he died without a will in 1808, the appraisers listed his house with about an acre and three quarters on the west side of the road and "About 40 acres of land the opposite side of the road from the buildings". His widow Martha received her dower in 1809, and the rest of the land passed to his children in common. For the next century it was known in the deeds as the Nahum Baldwin pasture, and a later deed described the spot on the road "directly opposite where once stood the Nahum Baldwin house".

The heirs sold their shares one at a time. Martha Shed and her husband Thomas sold her quarter to George Bruce in 1823, and her sister Rizpah sold hers to Bruce in 1826. Bruce's heirs sold the half to the brothers John Baldwin and Henry Baldwin, traders at the Center, in 1827. Mary Bird, a widow and another of Nahum's daughters, sold them her quarter in 1832, and the last quarter, which had gone into the Bowers family, came to them in 1834 from Jonathan Gates. In 1836 John released his half to Henry. Henry Baldwin's inventory of 1846 lists the "Nahum Baldwin land 37 acres", and his will left his real estate to his widow Anne for life and then to their sons. By 1877 the only surviving son, Samuel W. Baldwin, held the pasture.

On April 23, 1877 Samuel W. Baldwin, unmarried, sold Gerrit H. Bennink of Somerville "a certain parcel of land situate in said Billerica containing three acres and eighty-five rods" for $706.25, bounded by the road, a lane along the south side and other Baldwin land, "as per plan of Samuel Page dated this day". The deed mentions no buildings. On the same day Bennink and his neighbor Lewis Johnson exchanged two small strips, so that Bennink gained 73 feet of frontage on the road and Johnson a strip at the back of his lot, all shown on Page's "Plan of Lands sold by S. Baldwin to Bennink, Bennink to Johnson: and Johnson to Bennink". The house was built soon after, about 1877.

Bennink was a carpenter, cabinet maker and builder, said to have come from Holland. The directories list him as "carpenter and builder, Andover n. Pond", and the town reports show him paid for repairs to the school houses, the hearse house and the railing at the town hall through the 1880s and 1890s. He is credited with building houses for the Richardson family, including 398 and 400 Boston Road, and probably others on Andover Road. A 1973 survey of the street credits John Baker with building three houses in a row here, a cottage, the Lewis Johnson house and last this one, with larger rooms and improvements learned from the first two; Baker may have been the carpenter, but the land and the house were Bennink's. Gerrit H. Bennink died on March 22, 1912, aged 78, and the house passed under his will to his widow, Lucilla A. Bennink. The couple gave a gateway to the Fox Hill Cemetery, and a Bennink Fund for its care appears in the town accounts from 1913.

Lucilla A. Bennink died on April 6, 1922. Her will left the residue of her estate to Clarentine T. Flint, Edith F. Holt and George H. Flint, and since Clarentine had died in January, Holt and George H. Flint took it together. Holt quitclaimed her half of "about three and one-half acres of land with the buildings thereon" to Flint in May 1922, and that November he deeded the place to himself and his wife Ethel as joint tenants. In 1936 Ethel B. Flint sold "the land and buildings located in that part of Billerica called Billerica Centre situated on the southeasterly side of Andover Street", still three and a half acres with the right to use the lane, to Bernard H. and Doris J. Houghton of Medford.

The Houghtons owned the house for more than sixty years and were living there when the Billerica Historical Commission surveyed it in 1973 and 1974; it is part of the local historic district established in 1990. After Doris J. Houghton's death her executrix sold the property in 1998 to Selma Realty Trust. The trust laid out the back land as the Kiely Estates subdivision on Stonewall Lane and in 2000 sold the house, on Lot A of just under an acre, to private owners. It changed hands again in 2014 and 2023.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.12
2. Billerica assessor: parcel 51-64-1, 0.971 acre, built about 1875; Lot A of Plan 202-75 (subdivision of 51-64-0, FY 2002).

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.