Shedd Family Homestead

The Shedd Family Homestead stood at 38 Concord Road, on the east side of the road near the First Baptist Church, on the house lot of Daniel Shed. Shed came from Braintree and was in Billerica by 1659, when he bought from George Willice the original right of Joseph Parker. His house lot was "twenty and three acres of land, be it more or lesse, lying upon the township," running to the Concord River and "divided neer ye East end by Concord road lying crosse it four poles wide." He died in 1708.

Charles E. Stearns of the Billerica Historical Commission, recording the house in 1973, thought portions of Shed's original house might survive, unidentified, inside it. The "original" house, by then an ell, faced south and at some point was given a gambrel roof, a form not common in Billerica and possibly still within the 17th century. Repeated remodelling had gutted much of the interior. The front of the house was a full-sized addition facing the street, probably from the second half of the 18th century, with a pilastered doorway. Stearns summed it up as having "grown like Topsy."

The lot passed from Daniel Shed to his son Nathan and then to Nathan's son William Shed, a cordwainer. In March 1745 William sold "part of my Homestead lying on the East side of the Road that leads to Bedford," about three and a half acres "together with all the Buildings thereon standing," to Josiah Brown for 75 pounds, keeping sixteen feet square at the southwest corner for himself. In 1781 Brown sold the house and three and a quarter acres to Jacob and Sarah Richardson for 100 pounds, still reserving the sixteen-foot square to William Shed. The Richardsons held the place for 56 years, and in 1837 their heirs, most of them by then in New Hampshire, sold it to Joseph Eames for $1,000.

William C. Parker, a tanner, bought it in 1838, and in 1849 he sold the "dwelling house and barn" and nearly four acres to William Pitt Putnam Pollard for $1,800. Pollard, a Boston eating-house keeper, married Emma Jane Bartlett in 1854 and the next year put the house in her own name. He died in Boston in 1866, and in 1868 his widow sold the place to Albert R. Richardson, who sold it in 1869 to Samuel Sage of Bedford. Samuel Sage and then his widow, Martha (Hill) Sage, held the place for fifty years, and in 1919 Martha sold the homestead to Frank R. and Emma M. Holden.

The Holdens registered the lot in the Land Court in 1924 and a week later sold it to Flora Gertrude Colgate, wife of Ellis F. Colgate. The Colgates kept it until 1952, when they sold to Dr. George H. Boynton and his wife Josephine. In 1972 the Boyntons sold to Ralph W. Neilsen, and the house stayed in the Neilsen family until Paul W. Neilsen died in 2015. The lot was divided in two, and in 2019 the part with the house was sold to a builder. The ancient house was demolished that year and a new house was built on the lot in 2020.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.67
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Daniel Shed's house lot in the Genealogical Register

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.