John Baldwin House (Boston Road)

The John Baldwin House stands on the east side of Boston Road about a third of a mile north of the Common, across from the old Howe School grounds. The deeds of 1802-1816 place it "about a quarter of a mile north of the meeting house" on the road "leading to Amherst." Its lot descended in the Baldwin family for more than a century, and the present house, remodelled in the 19th century, keeps chamfered interior sheathing in one room, which was not painted until about 1942 and is the best evidence for a date of about 1700.

John Baldwin, who married Mary Richardson of Woburn and died in 1687, held one of the twelve lots "on the Township" granted from Cambridge in the 1650s; he was the only Woburn man among them. Hazen places the settler's house on the west side of the street near Jonathan Danforth's. No deed or probate passed the land to his son John Baldwin (1665-1736), but by 1732 the family dwelling stood on a two-acre lot "on the easterly side of the County Road," bounded north by Thomas Kidder and east and south by land formerly Jonathan Danforth's, with forty acres opposite running down to the Concord River. On March 30, 1732 John Baldwin sold "the one half of my now dwelling House and the one half of my Barn" and of those lands to his son William Baldwin, and the other half to his son John; another son, Thomas, released his share in the estate in 1735. The younger John died in 1738, leaving William "all my Part of the Homestead that was formerly my Fathers and my Part of that Peice of Land on the East side the Country Rhode where the house now stands."

William Baldwin (1710-1762) married Mary Farmer and died intestate in December 1762, leaving "the Homsted of about Forty three Acres of Land with the Buildings there on Standing." His estate was not settled for forty years. His eldest son John, of Andover, sold his double share to his brothers William and Thomas in 1773, and William Baldwin (1748-1802) bought out the other heirs and lived on the place. After the younger William died in April 1802, his son Thomas Baldwin, a saddler, administered both estates. A committee described "the house lot ... on the east side of the great road leading through said town, about one fourth part of a Mile north of the meeting-house, containing about five acres," bounded west by the road, north by John Parker and east and south by Francis Pollard. Under a court license the farm was auctioned on the premises on May 2, 1806, and "the farm and buildings were struck off to Joseph Foster for the sum of fifteen hundred and sixty five dollars."

Joseph Foster, a shoemaker, mortgaged the house to Eliphalet Pearson in 1807 and died in 1815. His estate was administered by Joseph Locke, who in November 1816 sold "the right in equity of redeeming" the five acres "with all the buildings standing thereon" to Thomas Sumner, then a cordwainer of Boston, for $880; Sumner paid off Pearson with a new mortgage. Sumner, later a deputy sheriff, lived there with his wife Rebecca until Nov. 9, 1841, when they sold the house and about five acres, lying east of "the Boston Road leading from Lowell to Boston," to William Blanchard, merchant and for some years the town's postmaster.

Stearns family tradition credits Blanchard with bringing the house "up to date" about 1841-42: he took out the central chimney, moved the main door from the south front to the gable end facing the street, and added the recessed doorway; one of the carpenters on the doorway was Edward Mansfield. Blanchard bought an acre on the south from Ichabod Everett in 1844, describing the old lot as his "garden lot in front of his house at the Great Road," and three acres on the north from Marshall and Maria Preston in 1859, running to "a lane ... called Holdens Lane," the later Farmer's Lane. On Nov. 11, 1869 he sold his "Homestead" of nine and a half acres to Albert Stearns for $3,500, taking back a $2,400 mortgage, and the same day took Stearns's smaller place nearer the village.

Albert Stearns (1835-1914) was the town's undertaker for thirty years, kept the leading livery stable in Billerica and served as constable; in 1886 he mortgaged "my 'Homestead'" to George H. Hall. He died on June 25, 1914, and his son George Edwin Stearns (1860-1923) succeeded "as the son and sole heir at law." George sold a strip on the south side to Michael Hayes in 1919, and in 1924 his widow, Datie Louise Stearns, quitclaimed "the Homestead of which Albert Stearns died seized" to his son Dr. A. Warren Stearns (1885-1959), physician and town historian. A 1931 survey for Dr. Stearns shows the house lot as 6.07 acres between Main Street (Boston Road) and Farmer's Lane. Neither George nor Warren Stearns lived in the house; from about 1930 to 1960 it was the home of Cyril D. Locke, principal of the Howe High School across the street, for whom the Locke School is named.

In October 1960 Charles E. Stearns, as administrator of his father's estate, sold the house and about eight acres running back to Farmer's Lane to Leonard J. Brown and his wife for $15,000. In 1993 two house lots on Farmer's Lane were divided off, the old house keeping 3.62 acres, and in 1994 it passed to a member of the family. The house is in the local historic district established in 1990.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.160
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): the Baldwin house lot and William Blanchard
3. Middlesex County Probate File Papers, 1648-1871: Baldwin estates (cases 831, 874, 876) and Joseph Foster (case 8234)

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.