Jones Schoolhouse

The Jones Schoolhouse, also called the District Number 2 Schoolhouse, was one of the ten one-room district schools that served Billerica in the nineteenth century. It stood on the east side of what is now Pollard Street, a few rods south of Jones' Corner, the junction of the Salem Road and the old Fordway Road. The corner took its name from Anthony Jones, who bought the old Richardson tavern there (the Tavern at the Corner) in 1836; deeds of 1908 still describe his farm as "situated at Jones's Corner, so called". In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries this stretch of Pollard Street was simply "the Boston road", or "the road leading from Boston to Amherst".

The town began building schoolhouses for its outlying "squadrons" after a committee report of September 12, 1791, but no deed of a school lot at the Corner was ever recorded. The grantee indexes for the town and for the school districts list deeds for Districts 1, 3, 7, 8 and 9 before 1855 and none for District 2. The deeds of the surrounding land explain why. When Thomas Richardson sold the one-acre corner lot (now 202 Pollard Street, the Francis Blanchard House) to the blacksmith Francis Blanchard in 1800, its south line ran "on Boston road to the burying ground" and then "by said burying ground nineteen rods". This "North burying place" was the town's old graveyard on the Boston road, and every later deed of the corner lot, in 1820, 1862, 1899 and 1909, repeats the same bound.

The spot at the road end of that burying ground was a separate lot "three Rods square" bounded "West on the road; North on said Burying yard". Timothy Foster, a tailor, sold it in 1786 to the blacksmith Nathaniel French, who sold it in 1788 "with the Buildings thereon standing" to the sisters Martha and Rebecca Wyer. Rebecca Wyer's will of 1820 left her estate in trust for a Boston friend, and her executors sold the lot in 1847 to Aaron Maynard, another blacksmith; Maynard sold it in 1857 to Rufus R. Russell, who still held it in 1880. None of these deeds mentions a school, so the schoolhouse cannot have stood on the lot itself. It most likely stood beside it, on the burying-ground land or on the road allowance at the corner, which is town land and needed no deed. The five-acre lot to the south, mortgaged by Bernard M. Cann in 1868, likewise ran "westerly by said Burying Ground" to "land formerly of Aaron Maynard" with no school lot in its bounds.

The school appears on Hales' 1831 map of the town. It was still running in the 1860s: the 1866 town report shows District No. 2 drawing $66.43 for the 1864-65 school year and $107 for 1865-66. The School Committee's reports for 1853-54, 1861-62, 1867-68 and 1868-69 give its teachers and attendance (see the table below). Its last teacher was Miss Alice Bragdon, who kept both terms of 1868-69, when the committee found the school "much reduced in numbers, and the pupils are young." No School No. 2 appears in the committee's report for 1869-70. Massachusetts abolished the district system in 1869, the town took over the schools, and the Jones schoolhouse is gone from the 1875 map. No deed recording the sale or removal of the building has been found.

* Wages in 1853-54 were reported including board. No School No. 2 appears in the reports after 1868-69.

When the town voted in 1868 to abolish its school districts, the School Committee set out to replace the small district schools with fewer, better ones. Its report for 1868-69 recommended that "the schools in what were Districts Nos. 1 and 2" be united, since "neither of the buildings used by these schools is fit for its purpose," and that "the building in No. 2" be sold. No school No. 2 was kept after that year, and its pupils presumably joined the District No. 1 schools at the Centre. The building was not sold at once. In the winter of 1869-70 the committee considered opening "the vacant school-house at the corner" to relieve the crowded North Billerica schools and to give "those in that neighborhood a school, for a while, nearer them," but "careful investigation, especially as to distances, showed this to be impracticable." Because the number of children "at or near the Corner" was growing, the committee asked that the disused schoolhouse there be kept from sale, and recommended that it be allowed to open a school there whenever the number of children warranted it. No later report mentions a school at the Corner. The reports do not name Jones' Corner, but the old District No. 2 house is the most likely building meant.

The lot itself was remembered. In the warrant for the town meeting of April 1, 1912, Article 15 asked whether the town would "seize by 'right of eminent domain' the Jones schoolhouse lot at Jones Corner as a site for a fire hose house". Mr. McElligott moved that the town take the land, but on Mr. Corkum's motion the article was dismissed, so no taking was ever made. A few years earlier the town had voted to "procure sufficient fire hose and locate the same at Jones' Corner". In 1923 the park commissioners spent about $100 "grading and seeding the triangle at Jones' Corner". The town's own burying ground at the Corner is the North Cemetery on the Salem Road, which Thomas Richardson gave in 1816 "for the purpose of a burying ground" and Anthony Jones's widow Judith enlarged by three and a half acres in 1883. The older burying ground on the Boston road, beside the schoolhouse site, appears to be the long, unbuilt strip of town parcel that still runs east from Pollard Street just south of number 202.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), pp. 255-256: the 1782 squadrons and the 1791 report on squadron school-houses.

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.