Josiah B. Gleason House

The Josiah B. Gleason House was a farmhouse on the northeast side of Boston Road (Route 3A) at the site of today's Towne Plaza, 700 Boston Road. The 1853 map of Billerica marks it as the home of Josiah B. Gleason, and for a century after him it was the house of a working farm that ran back from "the main road" to "the back road." It was taken down in 1964, when the land became the shopping center.

Josiah B. Gleason, a yeoman, was 34 in the census of 1850, living with his wife Mary H. and their small sons Henry J. and Frederick E., with a boy of fourteen and a young woman of twenty in the household. He had come to this part of the road in 1844, when he bought "the Homestead Farm of Sereno Fiske" for $1,480. Fisk had owned the old Crosby tavern stand across the road, and the bounds of his farm run by Moses Greenwood "near the Hay Scale," Harvey Crosby and the cross road to the Lexington road, so that purchase seems to have lain mostly on the west side of the road. In 1851 Gleason also bought the seventy-acre Kershaw farm across the road, which his heirs kept until 1896. How he came by the land on the northeast side has not been found in the records, but by 1857 his "homestead farm" there was 68 3/4 acres, bounded by Haslet McKee, Seth Heaton, Abby G. West and the back road, with a lot of 18 1/4 acres across the way.

In October 1857 Gleason sold the farm "with the buildings now standing thereon" to Warren W. Marshall of Salem for $5,000. He kept the use of it until April 1858 and agreed that if the buildings burned in the meantime he would pay "$500 on the dwelling house, $300 on the barn and $100 on the carriage & wood house, granary & shed." Marshall sold the farm in 1871 to Michael Cahill of Bedford. After Cahill's death his widow Bridget, as administratrix, sold "the Homestead Farm of the late Michael Cahill" at auction in September 1873 to Benjamin E. Spalding, the highest bidder at $5,500. In 1884 the farm was put in the name of his wife, Susan J. Spalding.

Susan Spalding's administrator sold the farm in 1909 to Burton C. Pasho for $4,866, less a lot sold in 1901 to Grace Knight Babson and a strip sold to the Lowell and Boston Street Railway for its line along the road. From Pasho's estate Ernest Drew of Boston bought "all the lands on the northeasterly side of said road," with the buildings, in 1915. The County Commissioners took two small strips in front of the house in 1916 when Boston Road was relocated, and in 1917 Drew sold the 45-acre farm to Jeremiah J. Hurley of Boston.

The Hurleys farmed here for more than forty years. Jeremiah and Catherine Hurley mortgaged the farm to the Federal Land Bank of Springfield in 1932, and after his death in 1938 Catherine renewed the loan in 1950 on 44 acres "with the buildings thereon," promising "to work said premises in a good and husbandlike manner, and to keep the buildings thereon in good repair." A plan made for Daniel Hurley in 1954 cut the farm into three lots. The family sold the 31-acre back land, Lot C, in 1956 and kept the two lots on the road with the old buildings; Lot B was then used as "a roadside fruit and vegetable stand and real estate broker's office," and by local recollection the farm's barn housed George's Auction Barn in the 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1961 the Hurley heirs sold Lots A and B to a realty trust, and in October 1964 the trust conveyed them, "with the buildings thereon," to Telemachus A. Demoulas and George A. Demoulas, who were then starting the Towne Shopping Center on the whole of the old farm. The house was removed that year for the plaza.

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.