John Rogers Homestead

The John Rogers Homestead stood on the east side of the old road from Billerica to Lowell, just north of North Billerica village, and was the scene of the second Indian raid on Billerica on August 5, 1695. It was the home of John Rogers, born in 1641, the eldest son of John Rogers, one of the town's first settlers, who had come from Watertown about 1656 and lived near the center. The younger John married Mary Shed, daughter of Daniel Shed, in 1667, and set up his farm at the far northern edge of the town. For some years it was the town's outermost house in that direction. His brother Thomas and Dr. Roger Toothaker's family lived nearby.

In the summer of 1695, during King William's War, a party of Indians, said to have been on horseback, came upon the scattered families east of the Concord River about noon. They found John Rogers, then about 54 and a widower, asleep in his bed. An arrow struck him in the neck; he pulled it out and died with it in his hand. A woman in the house threw herself from a window and, though badly wounded, escaped by hiding among the flags. A young woman was scalped and left for dead but survived for many years. Four of Rogers's six children escaped, but his son Daniel, aged twelve, and a daughter, Mercy, were carried off as captives. His brother Thomas Rogers and Thomas's eldest son were also killed that day, along with most of John Levistone's family and the wife of Dr. Roger Toothaker. The town clerk recorded "fivetene persons slain & taken."

Writing in 1883, town historian Henry Hazen placed the house "nearly north of Mr. Talbot's, about eighty rods," and 25 rods east of the railroad. "The well by his house may still be seen," he wrote, "and bricks from England may be dug from the cellar."

The Rogers family held land here for another century and a half, though how it passed down after 1695 has not been traced. In 1827 John Rogers gave half of his estate to his son Hermon Rogers, who lived at the corner of the Lowell road in North Billerica. In 1859 Hermon sold "the Hermon Rogers farm," with land on both sides of the old road "which leads from Billerica by said Rogers dwelling house to Lowell," to Anthony Jones for $4,700. Jones sold parts of it in 1860 to Lyman Haynes, Dudley Foster and Martin Conway, and in 1864 the three sold Conway fourteen more acres, "being a part of our Hermon Rogers farm." In 1886 Conway sold an acre by the land of the heirs of Thomas Talbot to James Barrington. By 1904 the Barrington lot fronted on Billerica Avenue, and it later passed to the Casey, Soutter, Burke, Fernandez, Ducharme and Rios families. It is now 31 Billerica Avenue.

In 1930 the Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Commission put up a marker on Billerica Avenue, just north of Hickory Lane: "Near this spot stood the John Rogers homestead, which was destroyed in the Indian massacre of 1695, and the entire family killed." Hazen's account and the family records show that not everyone died: John Rogers was killed, but four of his children escaped and two were taken captive.

References

1. Historical Marker Database: John Rogers Homestead (Tercentenary marker, 1930)
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): the massacre of 1695 and the Rogers family
3. Forgotten New England: When Eastern Massachusetts was the Frontier, 1695

Deed References Expand all

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