Josiah B. Richardson House

The small Greek Revival house at 9 River Street stands on the street line on a lot of about a tenth of an acre, 86 1/2 feet along River Street (long described as "the road leading from the centre of the town to the Middle Bridge") and 55 feet deep. The lot was cut from the corner tract at Boston Road and River Street that the Joseph Locke House family sold in 1835 and that Joel Richardson of Billerica bought from Justin Smith of Newburyport in December 1838 for $3,500. That 1838 deed still ran the whole three acres south to the road to Carlisle.

The house first appears in the records on January 30, 1846, when Joel Richardson, yeoman, sold Marshall Preston, the lawyer who lived across Boston Road, "the one undivided half of the following parcel of land ... with a dwelling-house thereon" for $150. The lot ran 55 feet north along "the back side of the Horse sheds at the Universalist Meeting house," which Richardson had sold to the First Universalist Society in 1842, then 84 feet west along Richardson's own land and 54 1/2 feet along the heirs of Dr. William Bowers. So the house was built between 1838 and 1846, earlier than the c. 1850 date in the MACRIS inventory. The "Preston and Richardson" on the 1851 map are these two co-owners. Joel Richardson died in 1849. His will left his widow Susan L. Richardson a life estate and gave the remainder to the Boston lawyers William Minot and William Minot Jr. as trustees. In September 1854 Preston, then of Lexington, sold his half back to the widow for $237.50.

In September 1868 Susan L. Richardson, by then living in Philadelphia, joined the Minot trustees in selling the whole lot "with a dwelling-house thereon" to Josiah B. Richardson of Billerica for $600. Her daughter Susan E. Hutchins asked the trustees to make the sale. From then on the neighbors' deeds describe the Locke corner as bounded "by land of Josiah Richardson and the Town's First District School lot," and this is the "J. Richardson" on the 1875 and 1889 maps. The deeds never give him a middle initial. The deeds do not settle which of the town's several Josiah Richardsons he was: Col. Josiah Brown Richardson, the blacksmith and selectman, died in Medford, and Josiah the son of Josiah died in 1866. In January 1877 Josiah and his wife Sarah J. B. Richardson mortgaged the house for $500 to John O. Richardson. In 1879 Josiah put the title in his wife's name through Francis D. Foster of North Andover, and that September she released it to Dudley Foster, subject to the mortgage. The mortgage itself passed to Rebecca B. Warren in 1879.

By 1895 the mortgage, with its unpaid interest, was worth $1,000. Charlotte S. Parker of Billerica bought it that October, and on October 25, 1895, with Albert M. Jones and Fred H. Parker as witnesses, she made "an open peaceable and unopposed entry upon the premises ... for the purpose ... of foreclosing said mortgage." The registry indexed the mortgagor as Josiah Richardson's estate. The foreclosure became absolute in 1898, and the Parker family owned the house for the next fifty years, renting it to tenants. Charlotte S. Parker left it by will in halves to Frances P. Farquhar and George N. Parker. Mrs. Farquhar released her half to George N. Parker in February 1938. In August 1948 he sold the house to William C. and Mary H. Smith. The deed describes the lot as bounded by "the School House Lot, now of Dr. A. Warren Stearns" and by land "formerly of Joel Dix, now of said Stearns," the Locke house grounds.

The Smiths sold the house in November 1950 to a couple who added the pedimented doorway around that time and owned it until 1982. It changed hands privately in 1982, 1984, 1987, 2001 and 2005, and in 2016 it was placed in a family trust. The lot has the same 86 1/2 by 55 foot bounds it had in 1846. The house is in the Billerica Centre local historic district (1990).

References

1. MACRIS BIL.54
2. Billerica assessor, parcel 51-98-0 (9 River St): 0.108 acres, sales history 1987-2016.
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register, Richardson: Josiah Brown Richardson and other Josiahs.

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.