Gray Street

Gray Street runs north from Andover Road in East Billerica, past the old Billerica station of the Boston and Lowell Railroad and the Richardson mill on Content Brook, to the Tewksbury line, where the road goes on as Chandler Street. It is very probably the oldest part of the road to Andover east of Fox Hill. The country road laid out with Andover on the 26th day of the 12th month, 1660 ran from Fox Hill "vntill you come to a meadow, called Content meadow," then six poles wide "from the meadow to Strongwater brook" in what is now Tewksbury. In 1664 the town ordered a highway "from ye country road leading to andever, to Shawshin Riuer, beginning on ye east of content bridge," and Henry A. Hazen identified this as "the road from the depot to Pattenville." That places the country road's crossing of Content Brook at the East Billerica depot, on the line of Gray Street, with Patten Road leaving it there for Pattenville.

The crossing became a small industrial neighborhood. The Middlesex Canal, opened about 1802, passed under the road at the Richardson Bridge, and the stone sluiceways of Content Brook and Richardson's Mill still stand beside the canal bed near the street. John Richardson 2nd, who married Nancy Allen in 1812, ran the saw mill here, and the railroad from Boston to Lowell, opened in 1835, was put through between the mill and the Richardson houses. Mail for the district came through the station south of the railroad crossing, where Peter B. Bohonan was long the station agent; he was appointed postmaster of East Billerica in 1877. The saw mill, later owned by John O. Richardson, was described in 1973 as the last water powered saw mill in Billerica.

The street takes its name from William Gray, a merchant born in Tewksbury in 1792, who married Abigail Allen Richardson, daughter of John Richardson, in 1846 and built a Greek Revival house beside her father's, now 79 Gray Street. The 1853 map shows his house among the four in the Richardson cluster, and his widow was living there on the 1875 map. No vote naming the street for him has been found, but he is the only Gray connected with the road. The name first appears in the list of the street naming committee chosen in 1896, "Gray street, running north from Andover street to Tewksbury line, E. Billerica," and the Billerica Historical Society kept it in the list accepted by the town on March 27, 1899: "Gray street, from Andover road running north to Tewksbury line." Some later reports spell it "Grey Street."

Gray Street remained a gravel road until 1929, when the town voted $1,200 "to gravel and tar Gray Street from Andover Road to the Tewksbury Town Line." The work was "a tar and gravel construction, with yet more to be done," and in 1932 the surveyor graveled 2,640 feet "6 inches in depth and 18 ft. wide, oiled and tarred" and patched and tarred another 1,850 feet. A new Gray Street Bridge over the railroad was built by the Boston and Maine Railroad and the town, with Chapter 90 aid, and formally accepted on September 16, 1950. That bridge was in turn replaced by the state in 1996 and 1997, and the new bridge was later named for Helen Knight, a longtime resident of the neighborhood. A reconstruction of the street itself was designed in 1996, and it was repaved again in 2016.

It was formally accepted as a public way at the Fall Town Meeting of October 2016, which voted, 124 to 19, under Chapter 82, sections 21 to 24, of the General Laws, to accept the 57 old roads "the layout of which is shown on the official Town of Billerica Map of 1831." The town manager explained that the state already treated these roads as public ways, but the town had no record of accepting them and so could not spend money to maintain them. The list gives it from Andover Road to the Tewksbury town line.

Historic Buildings

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 90: the Andover highway of 1660 by Content meadow to Strongwater Brook
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 94: the 1664 highway east of Content bridge, "the road from the depot to Pattenville"
3. Billerica annual report 1897: street naming committee's list, "Gray street, running north from Andover street to Tewksbury line"
4. Billerica annual report 1899: Historical Society list of streets, "Gray street, from Andover road running north to Tewksbury line"
5. Billerica annual report 1900: Historical Society street list accepted at the town meeting of March 27, 1899
6. Billerica annual report 1930: Gray Street a tar and gravel construction with more to be done
7. Billerica annual report 1932: Gray Street graveled, oiled and tarred, 2,640 feet
8. Billerica annual report 1950: Gray Street Bridge and approaches completed and accepted September 16
9. Billerica annual report 1996: replacement of the Gray Street bridge over the B&M Railroad
10. Massachusetts state highway layouts in Billerica: 1993 alteration for the Gray Street bridge over the MBTA (Bridge B-12-12)
11. Annual Report 2017: Fall Town Meeting, October 2016, Article 36 accepts as public ways the roads shown on the official town map of 1831 (124 to 19)
12. Annual Report 2017: warrant for Article 36, the 1831 list of roads with their termini

Deed References Expand all

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