Old Talbot School

The Old Talbot School was the town schoolhouse of the North Billerica mill village from 1885 until 1902. It stood on the northwest side of Wilson Street near its south end, where Wilson Street and Talbot Avenue now meet above the Fordway, on the land that is now 46 Talbot Avenue. It was called the Talbot School after the family that ran the Talbot Mills, and became the "Old Talbot School" when the new Talbot School opened on Talbot Avenue in 1902.

The neck of land west of the Concord River at the falls was granted by the town to Christopher Osgood in 1708 for his mill. Thomas Richardson bought two thirds of the Osgood land and mills from the Carleton family in 1783 and sold about forty acres with the mills to the Middlesex Canal in 1794, and the canal proprietors later sold the land around the mills in lots. Much of the ground along the lane that became Wilson Street was gathered into the homestead farm of Daniel Wilson, a carpenter, who bought canal lots in 1831 and parts of the Nathan Mears homestead at the guardians' auction of 1832. When Wilson died in 1861 his son-in-law and administrator, Gardner Parker, sold the farm of about twenty-eight acres at auction in December 1863. It was then bounded on the south "by the Concord River and the Common", the old town land at the Fordway. The buyer, James Faulkner, deeded it back to Parker in 1864, and in 1869 Parker sold the river end of the farm to Charles P. Talbot and Thomas Talbot.

The school lot came to the town directly from Parker, not from the mills. On February 13, 1873, "in consideration of two hundred dollars", he sold the Inhabitants of the Town of Billerica "a certain tract of land, situate at North Billerica on Wilson street", beginning "71 1/4 feet from the end of the wall at land of C. P. & Thomas Talbot" and running 94 1/2 feet along the street, 153 1/2 feet back to a wall, 129 1/4 feet along the wall and 66 1/4 feet back to the street. The land was still "subject to right of dower of the widow of the late Daniel Wilson". When Parker sold the rest of the farm in 1882, and his son sold it to the Talbots in 1883, it was bounded by "the School House lot" and Wilson Street. In 1869 the School Committee had urged that the schools of Districts 4 and 6 be united in one building in the village, and in 1870 it proposed keeping one of the old schoolhouses as a primary school, "moving it to some desirable spot in the village of North Billerica". The surviving reports do not say what stood on the new lot in the 1870s; the old Fordway School was still being repaired by the town in 1884 and 1885.

The building known as the Talbot School was put up in 1885. The town borrowed $2,000 "for the new school house, at North Billerica" and paid W. D. Cheney $2,144.50 on his "contract for building the Talbot School House", with $80 to W. L. Floyd for "making plans, specifications and contracts" and smaller sums for hardware and setting up the desks, $2,286.30 in all by February 1886. The next year the town paid Josiah Wright $166.50 for "moving schoolhouse, &c." On April 6, 1886, the town and Talbot Mills traded land to square the school grounds: the town gave the mills "a certain triangular piece of land, the same being a part of the School House lot", at its northeast corner, running back to "a hole in the wall", and for $150 the mills gave the town an 81-foot strip along the street on the southwest side.

The school grew with the village. In 1889 and 1890 an addition was built to plans by Warren Floyd, under a contract with D. Warren Fitch, who sub-let the raising of the roof to Josiah Wright, and the committee reported that "the building now stands an ornament and a credit to the town". A third school was opened in it, and the pupils raised money for a staff and flag. When fire destroyed the schoolrooms in Union Hall in 1891, the school property was "safely deposited in the Talbot School building", and all the children of the North district were taught there in four grades.

After the new Talbot School on Talbot Avenue was finished in 1902, the town meeting in March 1902 directed the Selectmen to sell "the old 'Talbot School' building and land belonging with it at public auction, and with the proceeds pay the note of $2000 due on account of money borrowed to build said school". Auctioneer Fred L. Gleason sold it on July 19, 1902 to Talbot Mills, the highest bidder, for $2,225, and the deed of August 6, 1902 conveyed the lot "with the buildings thereon" on the westerly side of Wilson Street, with Talbot Avenue, laid out a few years before, along its west side. The mills kept the building as housing until, by some accounts, it burned in 1935. The plan of the mill village surveyed in 1934 to 1936 (Plan Book 60 Plan 25) shows the ground empty, as Lots 18 and 19.

Talbot Mills sold Lots 18 and 19 to Frank A. Kelley in 1939 with other leftover parcels of the village. After his death his heirs conveyed them in 1946 and 1947 to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, owner of Saint Andrew's Roman Catholic Church across Talbot Avenue, which kept the land vacant for more than fifty years. In 2005 the Archdiocese sold the lots for $200,000 to a local builder, restricted to one single-family house or a two-unit condominium. The house built on them is 46 Talbot Avenue, which has since been sold to private owners in 2005 and 2017.

References

1. Billerica assessor, 46 Talbot Av (parcel 15-211-1): the old school land, Plan 60-25 Lots 18-19 combined, 0.803 acre

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.