Timothy Davis House

The Timothy Davis House was the farmhouse of a 40-acre farm on the north side of Sheldon Street in North Billerica, on the site of the present 32 Sheldon Street. It is marked "H. Rice" on the Walling map of 1853, for Henry Rice, who owned the farm from 1827 to 1861.

The farm first appears whole in 1817, when Timothy Davis of Billerica, yeoman, sold his son Timothy Davis Jr. of Chelmsford, trader, for $2,500 "all my lands in Billerica aforesaid and in Tewksbury with all the buildings thereon, containing one hundred and seventy acres", lying "on both sides of the road leading from the Canal mills to Tewksbury", the old name of Sheldon Street. The elder Davis had put it together from purchases of 1791 to 1813, and the deed also passed a pew in the front gallery of the meeting house. On May 1, 1827 Timothy Davis Jr. sold the same 170 acres "with all the buildings thereon" to Henry Rice of Lowell, machinist, for $2,500.

Henry Rice (born about 1800) and his wife Mary raised six children here between 1830 and 1847. He was a selectman from 1839 to 1842 and the town's representative in 1852, and the census of 1850 lists him as a farmer with real estate worth $7,000. By 1861 he had moved to the Tewksbury side, and in that year he sold Elkanah S. Smith of Billerica, for $2,450, "a certain farm ... containing forty acres" bounded "by my own land to the Road leading from the Buildings to Billerica Mills", by the heirs of William Bowers, Hermon Rogers, Charles W. French and Oren Sheldon, "with all the Buildings thereon", Smith to build the east fence as a stone wall. Rice kept the land around it, and his name stayed in the bounds of the farm for more than a century. He died in 1886, when the town paid for his funeral.

The farm then changed hands often, always by the same description. Elkanah S. Smith sold it in 1866 to William H. Smith and Coburn S. Smith for $2,000, and they sold their "Homestead Farm" in 1869 to William L. Talbot for $2,125. Talbot sold it in 1874 for $3,500 to Alden C. Dane of Billerica and George Bliss of Vermont, adding a two-and-a-half-acre wood lot on Whortleberry Hill in Tewksbury; Bliss quitclaimed his half to Dane in 1879. Dane sold "my Homestead farm" to Joseph Plummer Jr. in 1883 for $3,000. Plummer mortgaged it in 1887 to Warren A. Evans, and when he defaulted Walter W. Johnson, who had bought the mortgage, entered on the farm in April 1891 to foreclose. Johnson sold "that certain farm with all the buildings and improvements thereon" to Edward O'Toole of Billerica on April 18, 1892, for $2,600.

The O'Tooles kept it for 86 years. In 1946 Edward O'Toole's heirs (Jennie, Edward, Joseph, James and Diana O'Toole) quitclaimed the farm to Sylvester J. and Frances Z. O'Toole, who mortgaged it to the Central Savings Bank of Lowell for $3,500. Sylvester O'Toole died in 1968, and in November 1978 the 40 acres "with the buildings thereon" were sold for $100,000 to the trustees of Ledgewood Realty Trust, which laid them out in house lots on Sheldon Street, Oak Street and Jackson Road (Plan Book 127, Plans 139 and 140). The old farmhouse was taken down, and Lot 7, 52,526 square feet on the north side of Sheldon Street, was sold in April 1979 for $47,990. The split-entry house now at 32 Sheldon Street was built on it in 1979 and has been sold privately since.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Genealogical Register, Rice, Henry, and wife Mary, children born 1830-1847; lists of selectmen (Henry Rice 1839-42) and representatives (1852)

Deed References Expand all

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