John Shed House

The John Shed House stands close to the west side of Boston Road north of the town center, on a long, narrow farm that runs back from the road to the Concord River. Behind its later two-chimney front are "the scars of a great central chimney and a changed roof," and as late as 1949 "the fine panelling in the front rooms still survives." The Historical Commission dated it "1727 (?) or earlier." The deeds show that a house stood on this lot well before 1727, and that the same thirty acres, bounded by the road on the east and the river on the west, passed through an unbroken series of records from the 1660s to the present.

The land was part of the house lot granted by the town in 1659 to Simon Bird, which ran west from the highway to "the great river." Bird's will of 1666 left everything to his wife Mary for her life and then to a list of legatees, among them the Billerica church and several kinsmen. Mary Bird married Henry Jefts in 1666, and after her death Jefts, as administrator, paid the legacies in 1680 by having narrow strips of "the land which Symon Bird dyed seized of" set off to the legatees, each running from the highway to the river. Jefts kept the south part. His will, written in 1692 and proved in 1700, gave his eldest son John Jefts "that place that he now dwelleth upon with all the buildings, fences, orchard," part of the lot "which formerly belonged unto Simon Bird," so John Jefts was living here by 1692. When he died in 1712 his inventory began with "the homestead with the old house, 29 acres," and in 1718 the probate court settled all his land on his eldest son, Henry Jefts Jr.

Henry Jefts Jr. sold "one Messuage or House Lott Containing about Thirty acres," bounded north by Edward Farmer, east by the country road, south by Daniel Rogers and west by the Concord River, "with all ye buildings," to Nathaniel Rogers Jr. in May 1718, and on Dec. 26, 1727 Rogers sold the same thirty acres "with all the buildings fences and trees" to John Shed Jr. for five hundred pounds. Shed, of the third generation of the family in Billerica, had married in 1724. When he died in January 1754 his estate included "the Homestead about 31 acres with the buildings thereon," and the division that year describes "a Mansion House thereon standing and a Barn": his widow Elizabeth received ten acres on the south side of the farm and "the east end of the house," and the rest was settled on his eldest son, John. The younger John Shed lived here until his death in 1797, when his brother and sisters quitclaimed "the whole of the lands & buildings that our honoured Father John Shed ... died seized & possessed of" to his son Zaccheus Shed. The Historical Commission thought the change from one central chimney to two was "very probably Zaccheus Shed," about 1790.

Zaccheus Shed died on Sept. 27, 1822, and his will directed his executor, his son-in-law Noah Harrod, to sell all his land at auction. In April 1823 Harrod sold "the homestead farm of the said Shed ... with all the buildings standing thereon" to Samuel Bates, a Boston merchant, who sold it in 1825 to Fisher Howe of New York City. In 1832 Fisher Howe deeded "the Farm on which he now resides" to George Howe, who farmed it for sixteen years. By 1842 it was known as "the farm formerly owned by the late Zacchius Shed," and in 1848 Howe sold "my late homestead farm ... called the Shed Farm" to John Graves of Methuen. It changed hands three more times in 1849: Graves to John T. Paine of Maine, Paine to William Harlow Jr. of Malden, and Harlow to Daniel W. Averill of Boston, whose name is on the 1853 map.

In March 1854 Averill sold "the Shed farm," about thirty acres "bounded Easterly by the road leading from Boston to Lowell ... Westerly by Concord River," to J. Russell Spalding, a Boston apothecary, whose parents, the teacher and Baptist deacon Amos Spaulding and his wife, lived there. Amos Spaulding was one of the first trustees of the Howe School and president of its board. Russell Spalding died in 1861, and by his will he made the trustees of the Howe School "legatees of the place on which his parents lived," the income to support the school after their deaths; Hazen described the house as "on the west side of the Lowell road, a half-mile north of the school." Amos Spaulding died in 1866 and his widow in 1880, and the 1875 map marks the house "Mrs. Spaulding."

The school's trustees held the farm for about sixty years. In 1920 the Superior Court authorized them to sell it, and in 1921 the Land Court registered the title: 862.82 feet on the County Road, running back to the Concord River, with the Boston and Maine Railroad on the south. In 1922 it was sold to Carrie C. Corkum, a widow of Everett, and in 1928 to Edward P. and Mary E. Collins. The Collinses sold off the roadside corner beside the railroad in 1928 and two more lots on the road in 1949 and 1950, and by 1973 a bowling alley, the "Bowladrome," stood on the frontage. The rest of the farm, about thirty-seven acres in 1973, with the house, has stayed in the Collins family since 1928.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.157
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Amos Spaulding and the bequest of the place to the Howe School

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.