North Billerica
North Billerica
| Location | Map |
| Established | 1708 |
| Area | About 52 acres |
| Roads |
Colson Street Faulkner Street Jones Ave Letchworth Avenue Lowell Street Mason Avenue Millstone Way Mt. Pleasant Street Old Elm Street Rogers Street Ruggles Street Station Street |
North Billerica is the old mill village at the falls of the Concord River, where Old Elm Street and Faulkner Street cross the river below the mill dam between the Talbot Mills on the west bank and the Faulkner Mills on the east. Around them lie Rogers Street, Lowell Street, Colson Street, Mt. Pleasant Street and Station Street, with the railroad depot. For more than a century the place was known as Billerica Mills or the Canal Mills, and Henry A. Hazen wrote of North Billerica in 1883. The Talbot company tenements on Wilson Street and Talbot Avenue, divided into house lots in 1936, are described under Talbot Mills Housing, and the cooperative houses built from 1914 north of Faulkner Street under Billerica Garden Suburb.
The village grew from a town grant. Hazen doubted "if there was any mill at North Billerica before the grant to Osgood, in 1708." On October 4, 1708 the town granted Christopher Osgood Jr. of Andover the neck of land west of the river "with the stream at the falls," on condition that he "Erect and maintain a good grist mill upon said River." In 1711 the proprietors east of the river gave Dr. Roger Toothaker other land "for his medow lot, flow'd by Mr. Osgood's mill." The privilege passed from Osgood's heirs through Nicholas Sprake, William Kidder and John Carleton, and after the Revolution the mills were known as "Richardson's," for Thomas Richardson. Across the river stood the old Toothaker homestead, which William Rogers bought in 1782; his brick William Rogers House on Rogers Street is dated to 1807 by family notes.
On March 25, 1794 the Middlesex Canal company bought Richardson's mills and water rights, and Hazen says ground was first broken at Billerica "Mills" in the spring of 1795. The mill pond fed the canal's summit level, and boats were towed across it on a floating towpath. The company rebuilt the dam in masonry in 1828 (see Middlesex Canal Dam and Locks), ran the Canal Mills, and sold house lots beside them on a plan of 1816. From those years date the Mears Tavern, the Captain Joel Dix House and The Canal Block, a canal company tenement of the 1830s that burned in 1984.
In 1811 Francis Faulkner came from Acton and began making woolen goods in the canal company's fulling mill, which he bought in 1825; Hazen called it "the second enterprise of this class in New England." His son James R. Faulkner lived beside the mill in the house that is now the Faulkner Kindergarten. Charles P. Talbot came in 1839 and was joined by his brother Thomas Talbot; they began with a dyewood mill, started chemical works in 1849, bought the canal's dam and mill privilege on September 22, 1851 for $20,000, and built their woolen mill in 1857. In 1864 the town released them from the 1708 obligation to keep a grist mill. In 1883 the Faulkner mill employed seventy-two hands and the Talbot mill two hundred.
The Boston and Lowell Railroad opened past the Faulkner mill in 1835, and an 1847 deed already speaks of "the Billerica Mills Depot so called." The present North Billerica Railroad Depot dates from about 1867, with the Depot Warehouse of about 1852 beside it. The first North Billerica postmaster was appointed on January 26, 1852; Hiram C. Brown, postmaster from 1878, kept the office in his Hiram C. Brown Postmaster's House near the depot until the Talbot Mills Library and Post Office was built about 1895. The village store was the Jones & Foster Store, built in the late 1860s at Elm and Wilson Streets, and Union Hall (1870 to 1967) on Station Street was the village school, hall and fire station.
The North Billerica Baptist Church was organized on May 14, 1869 with twenty-two members from the Centre church; its meeting-house, a gift of Thomas Talbot, was built in 1870 and dedicated on January 19, 1871. In 1868 the Roman Catholics bought the old Universalist meeting-house in the Centre and moved it to Rogers Street as Saint Andrew's Church on Rogers Street, used until the parish built Saint Andrew's Roman Catholic Church on Talbot Avenue.
The Massachusetts Historical Commission surveyed the mills area in 1970, and its survey sheet urged that it "be worked up for the National Register." The Billerica Historical Commission recorded its houses in 1973 and 1974, the district was resurveyed in 1981 and 1982, and it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on November 10, 1983 as the Billerica Mills Historic District. The town made it a local historic district on September 24, 1992.
Historic Buildings
Points of Interest
References
- Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Osgood mill grant of 1708, Richardson's mills, Middlesex Canal, Faulkner and Talbot mills (pp. 273-281), Baptist church, St. Andrew's, North Billerica postmasters.
- Wikipedia: Billerica Mills Historic District, North Billerica, listed in the National Register of Historic Places November 10, 1983 (ref. 83003996).
- Wikipedia: Middlesex Canal, which drew its water from the Concord River at the North Billerica mill pond.