Pollard Street

Location	Map
Neighborhood	Fordway Park Concord River Park Ferncrest Glenmere
Laid Out	1700
Right of Way	50 ft
Pavement	28 ft

Pollard Street runs north from Boston Road, below the old Corner, to the Concord River at The Fordway and across the Fordway bridge to North Billerica. It is the surviving part of the first road from Billerica to Chelmsford. No description of the Chelmsford road was ever recorded, but Henry A. Hazen showed that it "crossed the river at the Fordway, and not as now at the Corner," over the "great bridge" that was in use by 1659 and was rebuilt by Job Lane in 1667 and 1668. When that bridge was carried away by a flood in the late 1690s, the towns built the new bridge in 1699 "considerably higher up the river," at the Corner, and, as John Farmer wrote in 1816, "it became necessary to alter the road between Chelmsford and this town." From then on the old line north from the Corner was only the road to the Fordway and to the farms near it.

That is what the early records call it. Thomas Pollard, a nephew of Edward Farmer, came to Billerica in the 1690s, bought the place that had been William Hale's "near the fordway," and received a grant of thirty acres "between the road to the fordway and the road which turns east from it." The road turning east, which Hazen traced from "the 'Pollard' place" toward Jefts' or Trull's Cove, follows the line of Call Street. The Pollards stayed in the neighborhood for generations: the 1776 tax list places Benjamin Pollard "east of Fordway" and Edward Pollard "southeast of Fordway," and Asa Pollard, "whose home was near the 'fordway,'" was the first soldier killed at the battle of Bunker Hill. A memorial inscribed "Asa Pollard first to fall at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775" stands beside the street near the Fordway bridge, and the lists of historical sites in the town reports of 1969 and 1970 give the corner of Pollard and Call Streets as the "Site of Asa Pollard Home." The Old Corner Burying Ground, set aside in 1707, lies on the street near the Corner. In a conveyance of 1873 the road was still called the Fordway Road. The street naming committee chosen in 1896 called it "Pollard street, running south from Fordway bridge to Main street," and the Billerica Historical Society's list, accepted at town meeting on March 27, 1899, kept the name, "Pollard street, from Fordway bridge running south to Boston road." Neither report explains the choice, but the Pollard family's long residence here and the memorial to Asa Pollard leave little doubt about it.

There was no bridge at the Fordway for almost two hundred years after 1699, and the road ended near the Pollard homestead at Call Street. Interest in a street railway from Lowell to Billerica Centre led the town to appropriate money in 1892 and 1893 for a new iron bridge at the Fordway, completed late in 1893 with help from the railway company, and the trolley line then ran over Pollard Street. In 1896 the Middlesex County Commissioners laid out "the road from the Fordway bridge to Jones' Corner" and established its bounds, and the town straightened and widened it in 1896 and 1897, the county later repaying $200. The iron bridge was replaced by the present concrete Fordway bridge in 1912.

Pollard Street was resurfaced several times in 1918 and 1919, and part of it was tarred and sanded. The town voted money for macadam in 1919, and in 1920 the highway surveyor called it "the only through, or main road, in the Town that is not in good condition." The macadam was laid in stages under the highway surveyor to the State Highway Commission's standard: 2,000 feet from the Fordway bridge in 1921, 1,450 feet in 1923, 1,700 feet to Jones' Corner in 1924, and the last 600 feet between Brown's Corner and Jones' Corner in 1925, giving "the Towns people a direct route from the North Village to the Center Village." In 1932 the car rails were removed and the road widened with macadam to a 24 foot traveled way from the Fordway bridge to Maple Street. It was rebuilt with Chapter 90 state and county money from McGrath's Square to Call Street in 1941 and over most of its length in 1946 to 1948, and in 1955 the junction of Floyd Street, Pollard Street and Boston Road was changed for the relocation of Route 129.

It was formally accepted as a public way at the Fall Town Meeting of October 2016, which voted, 124 to 19, under Chapter 82, sections 21 to 24, of the General Laws, to accept the 57 old roads "the layout of which is shown on the official Town of Billerica Map of 1831." The town manager explained that the state already treated these roads as public ways, but the town had no record of accepting them and so could not spend money to maintain them. The list gives it from Boston Road to a point 950 feet past High Street; the part beyond, to the Fordway Bridge, had been laid out by the County Commissioners in 1896.

Historic Buildings

Name	Alternate	Address	Built	Demolished
Jones Schoolhouse	District Number 2 Schoolhouse	Pollard Street	1791	1870
Francis Blanchard House	Wallace Lot	202 Pollard St	1800
Stephen Barrett House		201 Pollard St	1800
J. B. Richardson House		202 Pollard St	1852	1969
W. Pollard House		104 Pollard St	1852	1971

Pollard Street

Pollard Street

Historic Buildings

References