Samuel Kimball Homestead

The house at 23 Salem Road stands on one of the oldest small house lots at Jones Corner, the crossing of the Salem (Lowell) road and the road from Boston to Lowell north of the Center. For a century and a quarter the deeds placed it by a landmark across the road: in 1829 it was the lot "at the corner so called nearly opposite the Tavern House formerly owned by Thomas Richardson deceased", and from 1838 on, "nearly opposite the house of Anthony Jones", whose family gave the corner its name. The assessor dates the house to about 1900, but a building already stood here before 1829.

The earliest record found is the deed of June 6, 1829, in which Asa Richardson of Boston sold to Henry Poor Jr. of Billerica, for $350, "about one quarter of an acre of land ... with a building thereon formerly occupied for a store", bounded north by the road from Billerica to Lowell, east by Timothy Davis Jr. and south and west by Josiah Stearns. Thomas Richardson, the tavern keeper, had died the summer before, and a widow, Sally Richardson of Boston, released her dower in the lot for $50. In 1833 John Russ of Methuen quitclaimed his own claim to it, and Poor mortgaged it to John and Henry Baldwin. Poor, by then of Lowell, sold it in March 1837 to Jonathan E. Forbush.

Forbush made the old store into a home. When he borrowed $203.34 from the town's share of the federal surplus revenue in August 1838, his mortgage described "a Dwelling House thereon", and the place was afterwards known by his name, "The Furbish Place". Forbush moved to Wrentham and in 1841 sold the house, "occupied as a dwelling house", to George N. Waitt of Sharon for $500; Waitt sold it in 1845 to Nathaniel Stearns, a Billerica yeoman, for $457.50. Stearns died that same year, and his will ordered his executor, Marshall Preston, to sell all his real estate at auction. On March 25, 1846, Preston sold "the dwelling house thereon called 'The Furbish Place'" to Jerome B. Stewart for $77.50, the buyer taking on the old town mortgage.

Stewart resold to Alden B. Richardson in January 1847 for $300. That April Richardson bought from George Gilman Davis "a certain small slip of land" thirteen feet along the Salem road at the northeast corner of the "Fur Bush Place", with a promise not to build on it for five years, and three weeks later sold the house and slip to John A. Dix for $350, taking back a mortgage of $150. In January 1854 Dix, then of Lowell, sold to Samuel Kimball for $600, Kimball assuming the mortgage, which Anthony Jones held by assignment and discharged in 1856.

Samuel Kimball lived here for more than thirty years, and the deeds of the next half century call the lot "the Samuel Kimball Homestead". After his death his administrator, Dudley Foster, sold the homestead at public auction on May 14, 1887 to Frederick C. Bemis, the highest bidder at $400. Bemis had it surveyed by Osgood and Snell in December 1888 (Plan Book 20, Plan 28), and in 1907 sold it to Lilla A. (Burton) Duren, wife of Edwin Arthur Duren, as "the Samuel Kimball Homestead" situated "near Jones Corner so called". The Durens also owned the old house lot to the east on the Boston road (see Stephen Barrett House).

In 1936 the Durens put the homestead into their joint names through a straw deed, and in 1937 sold it, widened with a strip from their own land to 11,997 square feet and 82 feet on Salem Road, to Richard F. and Grace P. Dole. The Doles sold it back in 1939, and in October 1944 the Durens sold the house to Joseph W. and Gladys M. Ellis. The Ellises sold it in 1953, and the house has since passed through private owners, every deed repeating the same bounds "with the buildings thereon".

References

1. Billerica assessor, parcel 31-44-0: current deed and sales history

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.