Patterson Garrison

Address	Boston Rd & Corcoran Rd (Patterson house lot)
Built	1675

The Patterson Garrison was the house of James Patterson, one of the nine garrison houses into which Billerica gathered its families during King Philip's War. On Oct. 8, 1675, acting on an order of the Council sent by Major Simon Willard, the selectmen and committee of militia ordered "James Patterson's house for garrison & to entertaine John Baldwin, Edward & Thos. Farmer, Henery & John Jeffs & two soldiers; 8 soldiers & 4 families," with Jonathan Danforth as overseer of its fortifying. The families assigned were Patterson's nearest neighbors on the road north of the town, and the men were to fortify the house, clear the brush around it and repair to it on an alarm. Hazen calls it "the most northerly garrison, near Mr. Sanborn's."

Patterson was a Scot, taken prisoner by Cromwell at the battle of Worcester in 1651 and shipped to New England, who settled in Billerica about 1658. His house lot, as the town laid it out, was "thirty and two acres of land ... on ye North side of ye Township, on ye West side of ye highway called long street," running back to the Concord River, with John Baldwin on the south and Thomas Hubbard on the north. This marker stands at the road end of that lot, just behind the site of the Joshua Abbott House, where the house itself would have stood. The deeds fix the lot: in 1666 the Hubbard farm to the north was sold with its own dwelling house, bounded "James Paterson south," and the Patterson homestead passed by deed from 1707 onward as the farm later owned by the Abbotts, John Foster and William F. Sanborn, now the Woodside Manor neighborhood between Boston Road, La Salette Road, Corcoran Road and the river.

Billerica's garrisons were never put to the test. The town's worst moment came on Sunday, April 9, 1676, when hostile Indians were reported in town and troopers rode up from Woburn, but no house was attacked, and on Aug. 1, 1676 the garrison soldiers were dismissed. Patterson died on June 14, 1701, "aged about 68," and the inventory of his estate begins with "The Homestead 30 acres, with one acre at ye east end of ye house, with the housing, orchard." His son Andrew sold the homestead "with all the buildings" in 1707, and it changed hands as a "messuage" (a house with its land) in 1717 and 1727.

The garrison was possibly the old farmhouse that stood here until about 1869, known in the 19th century as the Joshua Abbott House, which was replaced by the present William F. Sanborn House at 357 Boston Road. A house is recorded on the lot without a break from 1701, but no record describes it closely enough to prove that the house taken down about 1869 was the building fortified in 1675; it may have been rebuilt or replaced in the intervening century. When Hazen wrote in 1879-1883, he named the Danforth house on West Street as the only surviving structure of the war.

Patterson Garrison

Patterson Garrison

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