Mears Tavern

The Mears Tavern stands at the southeast corner of Old Elm and Wilson Streets in North Billerica, a much-altered house that began as the home and tavern stand of Nathan Mears beside the mills of the Middlesex Canal. Its deeds can be followed from the canal company's first sale in 1802 to the present house lot of 6,950 square feet.

On December 6, 1802 the Proprietors of the Middlesex Canal sold Nathan Mears, trader, for $30, "half an acre of land in said Billerica near the mills and on the south westerly side of the highway on the westerly side of Concord river," 8 rods along the road and 10 rods back, with the strip in front left "open and uncovered" as a way, and with leave "to remove his shop on the land sold him from where it now stands within a year." (The MACRIS form dates this deed 1812; the record reads 1802.) In August 1815 the proprietors sold him two more strips that widened the lot by five rods, measured "from the line of the front of said Mears house," so the house was standing by then. In 1819 Mears bought from the canal company 27 acres of "the Richardson farm" behind the company's small house lots, reaching to the river north of the ford way, and this became his homestead farm.

Mears lived here. When he died in June 1828, leaving five minor children and no widow, his inventory began with "The Homestead place, containing about 27 acres, with the dwelling house of the deceased, two other small dwelling houses and all the other buildings thereon," followed by his saw mill, forge and the woolen factory leased to Francis Faulkner (see Faulkner Mills). The earlier statement that he lived at "The Corner" does not fit these records. In March 1832 S. Livingston drew a plan dividing the homestead into lots, and on March 20 the children's guardians, Nathaniel Stearns and John Baldwin, sold at auction to Joel Dix "a part of the homestead of said deceased, situate at the Canal Mills so called, containing three acres and fifty five & a half rods, with the Tavern house, one small house in the rear of said Tavern house, two barns and other out buildings," lots 1 and 11 on the plan. Dix already lived next door; the boundary began "in the front yard between said Tavern house & said Dix's dwelling house" (see Captain Joel Dix House). The western neighbor was "the widow Anna Wood's house lot" (see [[Anna Mears Wood's "Red House"]]).

In 1834 Dix sold Daniel Wilson an undivided third of lot 1, "one acre and sixty four and a half rods ... with the buildings thereon standing formerly known as the Mears Tavern stand," and the two held it together for almost thirty years; the 1853 map shows "Dix and Wilson." Dix was placed under guardianship in 1859, when his inventory listed the "Tavern Stand" of 4 acres at $3,667, and he died in December 1860. Wilson died in November 1861. In 1863 the administrators of both estates sold their shares at auction to Anthony Jones, Lyman Haynes and Dudley Foster, and the widow Mary Wilson released her dower.

The three partners sold the back of the old tavern lot on the passage way to Charles P. and Thomas Talbot of the Talbot Mills in 1865 and joined the tavern to the Dix homestead. When Lyman Haynes's heirs sold his third to Jones and Foster in 1869, the four acres held "a new store & dwelling house & barn, two red houses, Mears Tavern house & hall, Dix House and barn." This is the hall that Matthew Kohlrausch remembered as Middlesex Hall over the People's Store, where Methodist preaching was held before the Methodist church was built in 1870 and where the village later celebrated Edward Talbot's wedding. The 1875 map shows "Jones and Foster." After Anthony Jones's death his half went to his widow Judith, and in 1883 Dudley Foster released his half to her for $4,500, with "all the buildings thereon, comprising the 'Mears Tavern building' 'The Dix House' and what was formerly the two 'Red Houses' and a shoemaker's shop." The 1889 map marks it "Mrs. J. Jones."

Judith Jones left the property by will to her daughter Nellie M. Bemis, and in January 1907 Nellie and her husband Frederick C. Bemis sold to the Talbot Mills "a certain lot of land with the buildings thereon (formerly known as the Mears Tavern and Dix House)," 64,793 square feet from the corner of Elm and Wilson Streets to Concord River. When it divided its village land into house lots (Plan A, surveyed 1926-27-36, Plan Book 60, Plan 25), the tavern became Lot 2, and in June 1937 Talbot Mills sold it to Margaret J. Fitzgerald of Lowell, reserving the common sewer under the lot. She sold it in 1946, and the house was resold in 1947, 1964 and 1965. The owners recorded on the 1974 MACRIS form had bought it in 1965; by then the long ell that held the hall was gone and the house was "much remodelled."

After a private sale in 1985, the house was bought in 1986 by CRT Development, which owned the old Talbot mill property on Faulkner Street, and in 1998 it passed with the neighboring lots to Cambridge Tool & Mfg. Co. In 2002 the company sold the house lot to a realty trust; it was sold again in 2005 and conveyed to its present private owner in 2025. In 2024 the Town took a public-way easement over Wilson Street, the old passage way along the west side of the tavern lot.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.94

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.