Kitchener Farm (original house)
Kitchener Farm (original house)
| Also Known As | Nathaniel Tay House |
| Address | 29 Lexington Rd |
| MACRIS ID | BIL.202 |
| Built | 1656 |
| Demolished | 1750 |
| Other Lot Structures | Kitchener Farm (1750 - 1974) |
This is the first house on the homestead of William Tay on the west side of Lexington Road, north of Nuttings Pond, before the house that stood until 1974 was built around it. Tay, who came from Boston, was one of the first two settlers to take a house lot on the town's common land, in 1656: 56 acres west of Bare Hill, "his house standing upon part of the same." According to Stearns, the family went back to Woburn in 1675, and a son sold the place to Simon Crosby in 1691.
Charles E. Stearns of the Billerica Historical Commission, who recorded the farmhouse in 1974, credited it to John Blanchard's son Samuel Blanchard, who married in 1747, but noted that the lack of facing and an originally tiny cellar implied that it might incorporate 17th century work. The later history of the house is told under Kitchener Farm.