Manning Manse

The Manning Manse is a saltbox farmhouse on the south side of Chelmsford Road in the western part of Billerica, set well back from the road as it was relocated in 1935 and surrounded by the Manning State Forest. Dated by the family's records to 1696, it is one of the two oldest buildings in town and, according to its National Register nomination, "certainly the closer of the two to its early form." It has belonged to the Manning Association since 1904 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

No farmsteads were settled west of the Concord River until after 1690, and this was probably the first. Samuel Manning (1644-1711), town clerk, selectman and representative, whose first house lot was on Long Street near the later Pillsbury place, had land here by 1673; the family's magazine of 1912 says the town granted it to him in 1674. Hazen thought he "prob. built the old garrison-house, long known as the Manning Tavern," and that it served as a garrison. When Samuel made his will in February 1711 he left everything to his wife, noting that "al my other children they have had considerable out of my estate": the farm had already gone to his son, Ensign William Manning (1677-1764), whom the Historical Commission named as the first owner. On February 4, 1734 Ensign William gave his own son William (1707/8-1776), "in full of his part and portion," thirty-four acres "on the south side of the County Road ... as it was recorded to Ensn Samuel Manning" and forty-nine acres in the first range of lots on the Chelmsford line.

Standing alone on the old road to Chelmsford and Amherst, New Hampshire, the house was "reportedly used as stopover by wayfarers very early," and in 1752 it became a tavern, which it remained until after 1800; its account books survive. The younger William, commissioned a lieutenant by Governor Shirley, died in 1776 leaving "the Homestead containing about 200 acres with all the buildings thereon." His widow's thirds, set off that November, included the west room and part of "a house that they use on Sabbath day noons," and in January 1777 his other children sold their shares to the eldest son, William, for forty pounds each; in 1792 William bought his brothers' rights in their mother's dower as well. Tradition says troops from Amherst camped here on their way to Bunker Hill, and the foundation of a Revolutionary "salt-peter house" can still be traced on the grounds.

That William Manning (1747-1814), a lieutenant in the Revolution, was the author of "The Key of Liberty" (1798), a plain farmer's argument for the organization of working people. In 1807 he sold his son William "the one half of my farme with halfe of all the buildings thereon," 130 acres on both sides of the road from Boston to Amherst, for $1,600, and in 1812 his son Jephthah Manning took the other half on a judgment for debt, the sheriff's appraisers dividing the house down the middle and setting off to Jephthah "the easterly end of the said dwelling house containing one front room half the kitchen with the chambers and garrett over the same." When the elder William died in 1814 his estate held little more than a half share of a small house lot.

The farm then passed among his children, eight of whom lived here all their lives. In 1834 Jephthah's heirs released his half to their brother William, who in 1838 sold his sister Jerusha forty acres with the west half of the house and barn for $1,000, the line running "through the centre of the barn floor" and "through the centre of the house at right angles to the road." The owners of each half kept the use of the well, the pig sty, the front entry, the front stairs and the kitchen in common, along with the "salt Petre House," so the Revolutionary building was still standing then. Jerusha sold a third of her purchase to her sister Lucinda Manning the same day. After William died his heirs quitclaimed his estate to Lucinda and Jerusha in 1852, and after Jerusha's death the rest of the family released her share to Lucinda in 1858. Lucinda, the last of the children, left the homestead by will to trustees, to be leased and the income used for religious worship and instruction in "that part of the town of Billerica, which is known as school district No. 4," and the house gradually fell into neglect. She died in 1880, according to the 1912 magazine and the National Register nomination.

In the 1890s members of the family began to take an interest in the "old homestead." Warren H. Manning (1860-1938) of Brookline, a landscape architect who had worked for Frederick Law Olmsted, leased the house in 1899 and began a careful restoration, and the Manning Association was incorporated by a special act of the legislature in 1901. On February 27, 1904, under a Probate Court decree, the trustees under Lucinda Manning's will sold him "about forty-five acres ... known as the Manning Homestead," on "the road leading from Chelmsford to said North Billerica," for $1,800, and the same day he deeded the house with 3.9 acres to the Association, subject to his mortgage to the trustees. He made the place his summer home, wrote about the planning of the town in his magazine "Billerica" (1912-1916), and assembled the woodlands around it that became the Manning State Forest.

In 1935 the county relocated "the road leading from North Billerica to Chelmsford, past the 'Manning Manse,' so-called," taking a highway easement over part of the Association's frontage, and in 1995 the strip left between the lot and the new road was deeded to the Association by a member of the family. The Association furnished the house with family pieces and papers and leased part of it as a tea room, in an ell added in 1930, and from 1949 as a restaurant, for which a dining room was added in 1960, to pay for its upkeep. A fire on March 30, 1994 badly damaged the house, but the Association restored it, and in 1997 the restoration received a Preservation Award from the Massachusetts Historical Commission. The Manning Association still owns the Manse.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.129
2. Wikipedia
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): the Manning family
4. 'Billerica' magazine, 1912 (The Manning Association: the Manse, the 1674 grant and Lucinda Manning's will)
5. National Register of Historic Places nomination, Manning Manse (1982)

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.