Pinehurst Community Congregational Church

The Pinehurst Community Congregational Church stands at 803 Boston Road in Pinehurst, on the west side of the road at the corner of Community Road. It began in 1923 as the Peoples Community Church, a society of the growing summer and year-round settlement at Pinehurst, and by 1932 it was known as a Congregational church. Its present building dates from about 1950; the congregation, now the Community Congregational Church of Pinehurst (United Church of Christ), still owns it.

The land was part of a farm that Isaac Beard of Billerica owned at his death in 1810. His administrator sold it in 1812 to Joshua Wyman of Medford, who in 1816 quitclaimed it to his mortgagee, Peter C. Brooks of Boston, and in 1817 Brooks sold it to Ruel Carter and John Parker of Wilmington; Francis Carter bought Parker's half in 1818 and Ruel's in 1824. Most of the farm lay east of the road, but it included a lot of about 29 acres on the west side, running back to the Shawsheen River between a brook and the land of the Haynes and Foster heirs; the inventory of Carter's estate in 1867 calls it "twenty nine acres with the Buildings thereon situated on the west side of the Street called the Barn lot." Carter's heirs sold the farm in 1889 to Henry Sheldon of Wilmington, James T. Eames of North Reading and Kimball M. McLaughlin, and in October 1893 Sheldon and Eames had it surveyed by James A. Bancroft (Plan Book 10, Plan 27). On Nov. 2, 1893 they sold the land east of the road to Clara N. Wonson (later Pinehurst Manor) and two parcels to Hezekiah H. Bryant of Somerville, one of them "lying on the southwesterly side of said road containing thirty and one half acres (30 1/2) more or less with barn thereon," from the wall on the north side of the brook at Joshua Harnden's heirs to the river. In 1895 and 1896 the land passed through Charles N. Jackson of New Hampshire to Bryant's wife, Martha J. Bryant, and in April 1896 the Bryants sold the 30 1/2 acres to Frederic H. Mixon of Cambridge.

The Mixons kept the land for more than forty years. Frederic H. Mixon deeded the north ten acres to his son Frederic A. R. Mixon in 1898, and in 1903, through the son, the rest of the lot "with the buildings thereon" to his wife, Eliza B. Mixon. On July 14, 1924 Frederick A. R. Mixon sold the Peoples Community Church two adjoining lots on the great road, each fifty feet on the road and one hundred feet deep, the northern one bounded by land of Ellen F. Eaton. Because the deeds had not named the trustees, Mixon gave a confirmatory deed in July 1925 to George I. Ryder, Amelia E. LeFord and Florence E. Loye "in trust, nevertheless, for the uses and purposes of the said Peoples Community Church." The society then incorporated, and on July 21, 1925 the trustees deeded "two certain adjoining parcels of land and the buildings thereon" to the new corporation, so the first church building was standing by then. A release of the same month was signed by the 25 people "being all the members of the Peoples Community Church, an unincorporated religious society," among them the Rev. Marvin H. Sweet and Bessie M. Sweet, the Ryders, the Taylors, the Lowes and Lois K. Sellew.

The 1931 Lowell directory lists the "People's Community Church, Boston rd, Org 1923," with the Rev. H. L. Coole as pastor; the same directory notes that Catholic services in Pinehurst were then held at the hall of the Pinehurst Improvement Association, a separate body, across Boston Road from the Pinehurst School. By 1932 the directory calls it the Pinehurst Congregational Church, and from 1941 the Pinehurst Community Congregational Church. Its pastors in the directories and town reports include the Rev. William W. Clark (1941), the Rev. Edwin A. Olson (1942), the Rev. Louis S. Thompson (1943) and the Rev. Leslie H. Perdriau, pastor from the late 1940s through at least 1957, who lived beside the church at 801 Boston Road.

Frederick A. R. Mixon died in Boston before 1938, and the Mixon land had been sold for unpaid taxes of 1932 and 1934. In 1940 the church bought it all. John K. Oldmixon, his heir and administrator of his estate, deeded the church a strip south of its lot with a forty-foot right of way, and quitclaimed to it all the land Mixon had owned at his death, including the 30 1/2 acres; deeds of December 1939 were made over in April 1940 because they had named the grantee "Pinehurst Community Congregational Church" instead of the corporation's name, The Community Congregational Church. The church also redeemed the tax titles to Eliza B. Mixon's "19 and 3/4 acres of land, more or less, with buildings thereon" and to 9.3 acres "known as Harnden Land." In 1946 and 1947 the town meeting voted to buy part of this land from the trustees of the Community Church for a Pinehurst playground, but in 1948 the matter was referred to a committee "to see if some better arrangement can be made," and the town's Pinehurst playground was eventually made on the grounds of the Ditson School.

The church sold house lots from its land in the 1940s and built a new church beside the road about 1950; the town's building inspector issued one permit for a church in 1949, and the assessors date the building to about 1950. In March 1954 E. P. Simpson surveyed the "Layout of Community Road" for the church (Plan Book 84, Plan 110), showing the "New Church" on the north side of the new road, the "Old Church Lot" north of it on Boston Road and the "Parsonage Lot" beyond, with house lots along the road to Carson Street; the town accepted Community Road in 1956. In 1970 the church had the back land laid out as Community Park, and in 1971 it sold those lots, on Sesame Street and Colleen Circle, to Content Homes, Inc. In 1968 the church mortgaged the old church lot to the Middlesex County National Bank for $13,000.

Later pastors named in the town reports include the Rev. Lloyd Martin (1968), who also served the Dale Community Church at Nuttings Lake, the Rev. Lawrence Wood, interim pastor in 1988, the Rev. Kenneth Evitts (about 1992 to 2003) and the Rev. Deborah Ennis (2010 to 2014). The church sold a house lot on Community Road in 2001 and its land by the brook on Boston Road in 2002. From about 2017 to 2021 a Montessori preschool rented space in the rear of the church. In 2007 the church lot was divided, and in 2024 the church sold the former parsonage at 801 Boston Road. The church keeps the 1.9-acre lot with the church building at 803 Boston Road.

References

1. Billerica assessor, 803 Boston Rd (99-134-1-1): church, built about 1950, 1.898 acres, Lot 1A Plan 225-149; preschool leased part of the church 2017-2021
2. Lowell Suburban Directory 1932-33, Billerica churches: Pinehurst Cong Church, Boston rd
3. Billerica Annual Report 1968, printed p. 30: invocation by Rev. Lloyd Martin, pastor of the Community Congregational Church in Pinehurst and Dale Community Church, Nuttings Lake
4. Billerica Annual Report 1994, printed p. 117: invocation by Rev. Kenneth Evitts, pastor of the Community Congregational Church in Pinehurst
5. Billerica Annual Report 2014, printed p. 118: invocation by Rev. Deborah Ennis of the Pinehurst Community Congregational Church

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.