Hezekiah Crosby House

The Hezekiah Crosby House was the Crosby family farmhouse on the west side of Lexington Road, between Manning Road and School Lane, on the high ground east of Nuttings Lake. Five generations of Crosbys lived and farmed here from the early 1700s until 1914. The 1853 Walling map labels the house "Dea. J. Crosby", for Deacon Jeremiah Crosby, but the house was much older than that map. It stood until 1959, and its site is now part of the former Eugene C. Vining School grounds at 121 Lexington Road.

The farm began with Joseph Crosby (born 1669), a son of the settler Simon Crosby. Between 1720 and 1728 Joseph deeded his land to his son William Crosby. In 1720 William received 35 acres "with a house standing thereon" by "the road leading to Bacon's Mill", and in January 1727/8 his father's own house lot, "on which my house and Barn now standeth", by "the highway to Nuttings pond", along with meadow and swamp at Rubbish meadow. In 1722 William bought fifteen acres of Deacon Joseph Foster's "second division in the Pond Squadron", bounded north by "the highway that lies on the South of Nutting's pond". He died on January 1, 1754. His will left his widow Hannah "the one half of my Dwelling house (viz) the East End thereof" and divided his Billerica and Bedford lands and "all my Buildings" equally among his sons Jesaniah, Hezekiah Crosby and Seth Crosby.

Hezekiah Crosby (born 1732/3) took the homestead east of the pond as his share. In 1759 his brothers Jesaniah and Seth quitclaimed their rights in the other lots to him, among them Beach Island and a lot on the pond, both bounded by "Hezekiah Crosby's own Land", and in 1766 he bought nine more acres of swamp on Nutting's Pond from John Blanchard's administrators. The December 1776 tax list, as annotated by the town historian Henry A. Hazen, places Hezekiah at the "Crosby pl., east of Nutting's Pond", while his brother Seth lived at the Fisk place south of the pond. The house is therefore dated here to 1776 or earlier. It may well be the dwelling house that William Crosby left in 1754, but the old deeds do not describe the land closely enough to prove it.

In 1790 Hezekiah sold his son Jeremiah Crosby "the one half of the lots of land ... with the one half of the buildings thereon", from the Blanchard land west "to Nuttings pond so called" and east to "the road leading from Billerica to Lexington", for 200 pounds. His will of 1800, proved in 1817, gave his widow and daughter the west end of the dwelling house and left Jeremiah all his real estate. Jeremiah died on October 19, 1821. His will gave his widow Lucy "the Easterly End of my Dwelling house" and left all his real estate to his son Jeremiah, born in 1784. This younger Jeremiah, Deacon Jeremiah Crosby, was remembered on his gravestone as "an active Deacon of the Unitarian Church for fifty years". He is the "Dea. J. Crosby" of the 1853 map.

On January 24, 1842 the deacon sold his son Leander Crosby "the one undivided half of my farm" for $2,000. The farm ran from the Lexington road by William Mann's land west to Nutting's Pond, south to the Hill land and Seth Crosby's "Willoughby orchard" and swamp, and across the Middlesex Turnpike. In 1856 Leander mortgaged his half, "containing one hundred and thirty acres more or less", to the widow Lucretia Stearns. No deed of the other half was ever recorded. The deacon kept it until his death, and it came to Leander by inheritance. On July 31, 1878 Leander mortgaged the whole of "my Farm" for $4,900 to Dudley Foster, trustee, promising to "keep the buildings thereon insured against fire in a sum not less than Three Thousand Dollars". The mortgage was assigned to Foster himself in 1884 and to David L. Mason in 1891. Hazen wrote in 1883 that Leander "lives on his father's place, east of Nutting's pond".

Leander Crosby left the farm by will to his son Frank W. Crosby (Frank William, born 1855). In April 1907 Frank had the civil engineer Edgar P. Sellew survey it into six lots. Lot 4, 51.25 acres between Lexington Road, Manning Road, Nutting's Pond and the Turnpike, held the farmhouse with its ells and a long barn attached to its west end. Lot 2 held an ice house on the pond. In March 1910 Mason released Lot 1 from the old mortgage, and Frank sold it for the Nuttings Lake Park summer colony. Two weeks later Frank, "the devisee of the mortgagor", paid the mortgage off. On February 28, 1914 he sold Lot 4 and Lot 6 (30.09 acres across the road) "with the buildings thereon" to Mary A. Wallace of Boston. The deed describes the land as "a part of the premises devised to me by my father, Leander Crosby". The plan was recorded the same day.

The farm changed hands quickly after that. Wallace sold it in 1915 to Elmer E. Libby of Haverhill, who sold it that April to John A. Crowe of Cambridge. Crowe left it by will to Mary A. Crowe, who sold it in 1920 to Isedor A. and Hilda M. Johnson. On September 4, 1929 the Johnsons conveyed "a certain parcel of land with the buildings thereon, situated on Lexington Road", with the manure on the premises, to Neil J. Kennedy. That same day he mortgaged it for $7,000 to Robert L. Innis and Dougal McLennan. Kennedy laid out the Crosby Gardens house lots along the Turnpike, and the remaining farmland passed to Innis's family after his death.

In 1955 Town Meeting voted to buy a thirteen-acre site on Lexington Road for an elementary school at Nuttings Lake. On October 3, 1955 the Selectmen took Lot No. 1 on a plan by James B. Monahan by eminent domain "for the purpose of erecting a new school building". The lot ran from the corner lot at Manning Road about 900 feet north along the road and took in the old farmhouse site. Damages of $13,000 were awarded to Kennedy as owner and Innis as mortgagee. The Eugene C. Vining School opened on the lot in the fall of 1957. The Crosby farmhouse and its barn were torn down in 1959, and the rest of Lot 4 was later divided into house lots.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): tax list of December 1776, "Crosby, Hezekiah ... Crosby pl., east of Nutting's Pond"; Genealogical Register, Crosby 3, 9, 21, 30, 36 and 40 (Leander "lives on his father's place, east of Nutting's pond")

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.