Talbot Textile Mill Worker Housing at 48-50 Wilson St

The double house at 48-50 Wilson Street in North Billerica was built by C. P. Talbot and Company for the workers of its woolen mill on the Concord River. It stands on the southeasterly, or river, side of Wilson Street, which began as the "passage way" laid out through the homestead of Nathan Mears when his land was sold in lots after his death. The Middlesex Canal proprietors had sold Mears 27 acres of the old Richardson farm in 1819, and at the guardians' auction of his children's lots in 1832 the land along the river was cut into numbered lots on a plan by S. Livingston.

Most of the house lot was the "Mill yard lot" of Nathaniel Stearns, once the lumber yard of the Mears homestead. After Stearns died, his executor Marshall Preston sold "the southerly lot of the said deceased's 'Mill yard lot'", about an acre running from the centre of the passage way to the Concord River, to Daniel Wilson in March 1846. Wilson already owned half of Mears lot 9 just to the south, bought from Joel Dix in 1832, and he bought the other half from Dix in 1848. The southern edge of the later house lot may fall in lot 9.

Daniel Wilson died in 1861. His administrator, Gardner Parker, sold the homestead farm in 1863, and Parker took it back the next year. In February 1869 Parker sold the river end, "ten acres and thirty nine rods" bounded "by a wall and an open passage way" and "being a part of the homestead of the late Daniel Wilson deceased", to Charles P. Talbot and Thomas Talbot. The land was still bare then. The duplex appears on the 1875 map and on the company's 1881 plan of its property west of the river, one of a row of double houses on both sides of the street, so it was built between 1869 and 1875; the assessor gives about 1873. The historic survey's date of about 1865 is too early, since the Talbots did not own the land until 1869. The rear ell was enlarged in 1902 or 1903, when the sewer was put in.

In 1884 the Talbot heirs and Thomas Talbot conveyed the mills and the village to The Talbot Mills, which rented the houses to its workers for the next half century. When the company sold off its housing in 1936-1940, the lot became Lot 11 on its Plan A, surveyed by J. C. and W. T. Monahan. On November 6, 1939 the company sold Lot 11 "with the buildings thereon", 16,441 square feet with 93.08 feet on Wilson Street, to Frank Gagnon and Blanche R. Gagnon. The deed kept open the right of way behind the houses from Wilson Street through Lots 9 to 17, and the company kept the common sewer. The Gagnons paid with help from a $700 mortgage to the Lowell Five Cent Savings Bank.

Lot 11 wrapped around the back of the B and L Laundry lot of Neil Byam. In June 1950 James B. Monahan drew a plan for Byam that divided it along the right of way into Lot 11A, 7,900 square feet with the house on Wilson Street, and Lot 11B, the rear 8,541 square feet. In 1951 the Gagnons sold Lot 11B to Byam, whose land it adjoined, and kept the house. They are the owners named in the historic surveys of 1974 and 1981. Blanche R. Gagnon, by then a widow, sold the house in 1988 after 48 years. It has changed hands among private owners three times since, most recently in 2019. In 2024 the town accepted Wilson Street as a public way.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.121
2. Billerica assessor record for 48-50 Wilson St (parcel 15-226-0): Lot 11A on Plan Book 80 Plan 21, 0.181 acre, two-family house built about 1873

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.