Sachem Street

Sachem Street is the river street of The Pines, the summer colony laid out in 1912 between Cook Street and the Shawsheen River in the Pinehurst section. It first appears on "The Pines, Billerica, Mass., owned by Frank W. Coughlin," a plan drawn in June 1912 by H. A. Millhouse, civil engineer, of Boston and recorded on July 19, 1912 in Plan Book 30, Plan 13. On that plan Sachem Street follows the bend of the Shawsheen from the western edge of the tract, where it runs north past May Street and Rose Street, then east above the cottage lots on the riverbank to Argyle Street at the eastern line. The other streets of the plan, among them Pines Road, Kenilworth, Aberdeen, Endicott, Ordway and Carlton Streets, run down to it from the south. No road ran along this part of the river before 1912.

The plan does not explain the name. A sachem was the chief of a New England Algonquian people, and the word is the one Native American name in a plan otherwise named for British places and titles, among them Kenilworth, Ivanhoe, Montrose, Aberdeen and Argyle. Indian names were popular for summer colonies at the time; Ranlett Grove (1909) has Ossamequin Road and Osceola Lane, and Indian Knoll Terrace was laid out in 1910. No record ties the choice to anyone in Billerica. By 1931 the junction of Pines Road and Sachem Street had been named Schofield Square, after Ralph T. Schofield.

Water mains were laid in Sachem Street in 1941, 250 feet each way from Pines Road toward Aberdeen and Kenilworth Streets, and extended by 1,150 feet in 1950 and 1,415 feet in 1952.

Pines Road was accepted as a town way as far as Sachem Street in 1930. Sachem Street itself was accepted in two pieces. At the annual town meeting of March 10, 1951 a motion to dismiss Article 53 failed and the town accepted "that part of Sachem Street which runs from Kenilworth Street to Ordway Street, a distance of about 970 feet." At the meeting of March 14, 1953 the town accepted Article 120, the laying out of "Sachem Street, Pinehurst, from Ordway to Argyle Street about 500 feet," and appropriated $400 to improve it. No vote accepting the part west of Kenilworth Street has been found. In 1981 the town discontinued May Street from Sachem Street to the river, and in 1991 the part of Dustin Young Lane, the former Argyle Street, between Sachem Street and the river. Sachem Street was not on the official town map of 1831 and was not among the roads accepted in 2016.

References

1. Billerica town report 1950: warrant Article 53 to accept Sachem Street from Kenilworth Street to Ordway Street, about 970 feet
2. Billerica town report 1951: motion to dismiss Article 53 lost; voted that the article be accepted (Sachem Street, Kenilworth to Ordway)
3. Billerica town report 1953: Article 120 accepted, Sachem Street from Ordway to Argyle Street, and $400 to improve it as a town way
4. Streets Accepted by the Town (1956 report): Pines Rd. to Sachem St. 2-8-30; Sachem St. Kenilworth to Ordway 3-10-51; Ordway to Argyle 3-14-53
5. Billerica town report 1941: water mains in Sachem Street, Pines Road to Aberdeen Street and Pines Road to Kenilworth Street

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.