Rev. John Chandler House (before 1800)

This is the older house at 411 Boston Road as it stood before it was enlarged and given a new front about 1800. Robert E. Valyou, who grew up in the house, told Charles E. Stearns of the Billerica Historical Commission that a much older house, facing south, had been considerably enlarged and remodelled, with the present facade added. The age of the older house is not known. The lot was the 1656 house lot of William Patten, "one acre ... on which his house now standeth," and a tannery grew up behind it early on.

The Rev. John Chandler, the town's third minister, bought the house in 1748, the year after he was ordained, and his daughters held it after his death. In September 1797 Reuben Duren, the housewright who had just finished the new meeting house, bought the land and the next day sold the house to Jonathan Bond, a cabinetmaker, for $715. When Bond sold in 1802 the price had risen to $1,190, and Stearns suspected Duren's hand in the new facade, with its two-story portico and fine pilasters. The later history of the house is told under Rev. John Chandler House.