Marginal Brook

Marginal Brook is a brook on the east side of the Concord River below North Billerica, in the part of old Billerica that was set off as Tewksbury in 1734 and is now partly within Lowell. It rises just beyond the present Billerica line, near the north end of Billerica Avenue, runs northwest and then north through low ground, passes through a small pond, and turns west to enter the Concord River about a mile and three quarters above the river's mouth at the Merrimack, a short way above the old Lowell and Lawrence railroad bridge. The present name is the one used on modern maps; no record of its origin has been found.

In the colonial records the brook was Bacon Brook. When the town divided "the great common field" on the east side of the river in November 1659, the lots began "at the little swamp next below the falls," a little south of North Billerica village, and ran "down Concord river, towards Pawtucket, so far as the brook called Bacon brook," along the cart path toward Pawtucket, near the line of the present road. Hazen placed the brook "just south of the Salem Railroad crossing of the Concord River." When the line of Mrs. Winthrop's farm was run it was found to reach south of Bacon Brook and to cut off the eight northernmost lots of the division, and their owners were given other lots near the head of Heath Brook, in "a plain called, no doubt for good reason, Recompense Plain." In March 1664 the town laid out a highway two poles wide through the common field, from Samuel Trull's fence past the mill place and William Hamlet's swamp, "and from thence the way is to lye as the road is now trodden, toward bacon brooke."

Bacon Brook was also the south bound of the Indian plantation of Wamesit. Danforth's survey of April 1664, returned to the General Court by its committee, Simon Willard and John Parker, described five hundred acres "laid out unto the Indians, who are the inhabitants of Waymesick," on the east side of the river, running "vpon Concord Riuer about one mile & three quarters, which reacheth to Bacon Brooke, & bounded by the sajd brooke on the south fower score poole," and from the mouth of the Concord down the Merrimack 250 poles. The land was taken from Mrs. Winthrop's farm, and her heirs were granted six hundred acres elsewhere. Hazen wrote that "the mouth of Bacon Brook, which bounded this Indian plantation southerly, is a few rods south of the Salem Railroad bridge," and his Map of Ancient Billerica marks Bacon Brook in the Tewksbury part of the old town. The brook is not named in the Billerica town reports, since the land it drains left the town in 1734.

Marginal Brook

Marginal Brook

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