Rowell Road
Rowell Road is a private way in North Billerica running east from High Street for about 520 feet, between Sheldon Street and Burnham Road, across High Street from the Marion Road area. It and Burnham Road were laid out together on a "Plan of Land in Billerica" made in 1913 by Dudley and Sawyer, civil engineers, for land registered in the Land Court (case 5089); a copy of the part showing the two streets was filed in the Land Registration Office on October 1, 1914 and registered on January 21, 1915 as Land Court Plan 5089-A (Registration Book 6, Page 9). It shows Rowell Road and Burnham Road, each 50 feet wide, running back from High Street, with lots 1 to 36 and A to H between and beside them, most of them marked as lots of John E. Rowell.
The road takes its name from John E. Rowell, the owner of those lots. He was a North Billerica farmer who lived at the corner of Mt. Pleasant and High Streets from at least 1901 to 1919, treasurer of the North Billerica Baptist Church, and in 1896 one of the three townsmen named to give names to the town's streets. Unlike Burnham Road, which the town accepted in part in 1953 and extended in 1972, Rowell Road was never built up in his time and does not appear in the directories.
A 1979 plan of the land on its north side shows "Rowell Road" along the south side of two house lots fronting High Street (Plan Book 130, Plan 5). In 1990 John A. Hammer III drew a plan for the Zoning Board of Appeal dividing the corner lot at 115 High Street into two lots, the rear one fronting 353 feet on "Rowell Rd. (Private - 50 ft. wide)" (Plan Book 177, Plan 77, recorded December 19, 1991). The Wildwood Realty Trust, whose trustees were George T. Allen Jr. and Bryan P. Duby, bought that rear lot in August 1994 and built the first house on the road, sold in December 1994. No vote accepting Rowell Road as a public way was found.