Samuel H. King House

The Samuel H. King House stood on the north side of Andover Road at Pattenville in East Billerica, at what is now 350 Andover Road. It was one of the houses that grew up around Deacon Aaron H. Patten's saw mill and cabinet works on Content Brook, and it was built for Patten's son-in-law. The house was taken down about 2009 and a new house was built on the lot in 2010.

Samuel H. King was born in Landaff, New Hampshire, on 27 October 1831 and probably came to Billerica to work in the Pattenville shops. On 1 November 1854 he married Mary J. Patten, Aaron H. Patten's daughter. On 10 September 1862 Patten and his wife Eliza sold King, for fifty dollars, "a certain tract of land situate in the easterly part of said Billerica, containing one quarter of an acre", six rods on Andover Street with Patten's "own land" on both sides and the land of Henry Allen behind. Two weeks later William Gray released to Patten, for ten dollars, any claim he had to the same quarter acre, and both deeds were recorded together in January 1863. Neither deed names a building, so the house was most likely built by King about the time of the sale, or shortly before on his father-in-law's land. The 1875 map of Pattenville shows him here. In 1878 King added twenty-five acres behind the lot, "known as Marshall Meadow, Gleason and part of the Kendall land", bought from his brother-in-law William H. Patten.

King, a farmer and a deacon of the Orthodox Congregational church, bought the old Allen farm next door in 1874, and by 1883 he was living in the former Allen's Tavern. On 29 September 1884 he sold this house to Jennie T. Smith, taking back a mortgage that she paid off in 1887. In October 1887 she sold the place, "with all the buildings thereon", to Stillman H. Church of Woburn for $1,100. By then the lot ran 102 feet on Andover Street, between land of Thomas Patten and a small lot sold to the Brady family, and 302 feet back, with King's land on the north and west. King died in 1904.

In August 1894 Church sold the house to Charles A. Foster, and that October Foster also bought the bare 89-foot lot to the west, where he later built a second house (the Charles A. Foster House). Foster gave both lots to Bertha M. Foster in 1929. In 1946, as Bertha M. Singer, she had the land surveyed by E. P. Simpson. His plan shows the old house with its ell on the eastern lot of about 44,000 square feet. She sold that lot "with the buildings thereon" to Francis A. Crawford and his daughter Gladys, and kept the western lot and a garage that stood on the line. In December 1947 the Crawfords sold the house to Kenneth M. and Kathleen T. Johnson, who owned it for more than sixty years. They added land behind it in 1986 and divided the property in 1998. In 2010 Kenneth M. Johnson's estate sold Lot 7 of that division, and both old houses were cleared for the present house.

The inventory form dated the house to about 1855, the year after King's marriage, but said its later history had "not been tracked down". The deeds show that King bought the lot in 1862, sold the house in 1884 after he had moved to the Allen farm, and that it then passed through the Smith, Church, Foster, Crawford and Johnson families.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.143
2. Billerica assessor, 350 Andover Rd (parcel 27-4-2): Lot 7 of plan 197-92, new house 2010
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Genealogical Register, King; Pattenville mills and Dea. Samuel King

Deed References Expand all

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