Town Farm

The Billerica Town Farm was the town's poor farm from 1824 to 1945, where the town housed and employed its poor and aged residents. It was the old Rogers homestead in the north part of town, on the lane now called Town Farm Lane, which ran west from the road to Tewksbury and Lowell (now High Street) to the farmhouse and barnyard. The farm reached west across the later railroad to the meadows and woodland on the Concord River. The town reports called it the Town Farm or the Almshouse, the Home Farm in the 1920s, and the Town Infirmary from the late 1920s.

The land had belonged to the Rogers family, one of the first families of Billerica, since the early 1700s. In 1717 John Rogers bought from his brother Samuel the land on either side of his own, including 48 acres "on the side of the Road leading to Wamessett." When John Rogers died in 1736 his inventory began with "the Homestead containing about eighty five acres," bounded east by "the highway that leads to Wamesset," south by William Kidder, west by the Concord River and north by John Leavestone, with "an old Mansion house thereon standing and a barn." After his widow Abigail's thirds were set off, the rest went in 1738 to his sons Zebediah Rogers and Samuel Rogers, and their brothers released their shares in 1754. In 1758 and 1764 the two brothers also bought the neighboring Levistone homestead to the north, later called the Leviston or "Beaverstone" farm. Samuel's lands passed to his son Thomas under his will of 1789, and Zebediah's, by his will proved in 1803, to his son Josiah Rogers, who farmed the homestead until he died in February 1822. A family tomb was built on the farm in 1803.

Josiah Rogers left no will. His inventory lists "The Homestead farm containing about 50 acres" and "The Beaverstone farm containing about 90 acres," and his fourteen heirs chose to sell. At a public vendue in December 1822 Nathan Mears, a neighbor, bought the shares of the minor children; on January 23, 1823 he bought those of the adult heirs by deed and resold the homestead, the Leuston farm, the Weston place, the river meadow and a lot in Broad Meadow to Josiah's son Jacob O. Rogers for $3,300. The deeds describe the homestead as bounded "southerly by a lane leading from said road to the dwelling house," except "a small house lot on the lane" belonging to Mears, and mention a barn Josiah had built "about two years ago" near the house.

Before this the town had kept its poor in a poorhouse on the Andover road, the house John Jefts built in 1799 at what is now 57 Andover Road (see Deacon Edward Wright House). On April 5, 1824 Jacob O. Rogers sold the Rogers farm to "the Inhabitants of the Town of Billerica" for $3,100: 175 acres "with the buildings thereon standing," "reserving in said lot the seven square rods of land on which the Tomb stands." On June 21, 1824 the town sold the Andover road property at auction as "the house recently occupied by the Town as a poor house." In 1826 land around the Rogers tomb was set off as a burying place for the farm.

The farm buildings stood at the west end of the lane. The 1824 deed runs its line north "to a lane, across the lane to the southeasterly corner of the barn yard," then around a small lot north of the lane, which was Nathan Mears's walled house lot, later the McGlone Homestead at 11 Town Farm Lane. The Hales map of 1831 shows the lane from the highway with buildings at its end, the Walling map of 1853 marks "Town Farm" there beside "M. McGlow," and the Beers atlas of 1875 places "Town Farm" and "M. McGlone Est." side by side on the lane. The farmhouse, with its barn and sheds, stood near where Town Farm Lane now meets Billerica Avenue, on what is now 95 Billerica Avenue. The McGlones sold hay and grass to the farm for decades.

In 1880 more than half of the inmates were described as mentally or physically debilitated, but it was very much a working farm, with horses, cows, pigs and chickens, and the inmates worked as they were able. The almshouse also lodged tramps: the report of 1892 counts 362 tramps lodged and 747 meals served in a year. A Superintendent and his wife, the matron, ran the farm under the Overseers of the Poor, who were frequently Selectmen. The town insured the "town farm buildings," asked in 1892 for money for "repairs and new hen house," and painted the buildings in 1900. In 1922 "the main house was thoroughly gone over and interior of outer buildings renovated, the most important a new barn floor." The town's insurance schedule of 1932 lists the "Town Farm House, Town Farm Road, Frame" at $5,000 and the "Town Farm Barn & attached sheds" at $4,500. The farm sold milk and produce, $4,349.80 worth in 1942.

The town sold off pieces of the farm over the years. Strips went to the Boston and Lowell Railroad in 1833 and 1835. In 1896 the Selectmen sold land west of the railroad, bounded on the McGlone land and with a right of way to "the bridge and way leading across said railroad," to Gustavus F. Swift of Chicago and Edwin C. Swift of Lowell, partners in the Lowell Rendering Company, for $2,500, which went to repair the Corner bridge. Smaller lots went to Emily Rogers and others in 1881 and to Thomas J. Sanborn, Nancy S. Dewhurst and Michael Collins in 1898 and 1899, and in 1920 the town sold the Consolidated Rendering Company a strip 32 feet wide, "being a part of the Town Farm land."

After the Social Security Act of 1935 the need for the farm declined. In the early 1940s it cared for seven to eleven people a year, and by 1944 the Overseers reported that keeping its two to five inmates in boarding homes would cost less. The town meeting of February 24, 1945 voted to dispose of the Town Infirmary; all inmates "were placed in homes to their liking," and the Selectmen sold the infirmary and its equipment on April 7, 1945, the real estate bringing $7,500 and the livestock and personal property $4,453.70. The deed, dated June 29, 1945, went to Charles J., Albert J. and Romeo J. Rotondi of Stoneham as trustees of the Rotondi Real Estate Trust, and describes the land "with buildings thereon" on "both sides of Billerica Avenue," its boundary crossing "a lane, now known as Poor Farm Lane" at "the southwesterly corner of the barnyard." The Rogers burial ground stayed with the town. In 1947 a town meeting article proposed a greyhound track at "the former Town Farm." In 1948 the trustees conveyed the land to the family company, S. Rotondi & Sons, Inc., later renamed Rotondi Realty Corporation.

In 1962 the corporation gave the town an option on twenty acres of the old farm west of the railroad, between Town Farm Lane and the New England Power Company line, for a sewage treatment plant, and in 1964 the town bought it back under a town meeting vote of $20,000. The town's first sewage treatment plant was dedicated in 1967, and the town's plant still occupies the site at 70 Letchworth Avenue. When the Rotondi company was liquidated in 1983, the 31.47 acres north of Town Farm Lane between Billerica Avenue and High Street, with 8.80 adjoining acres in Tewksbury, were surveyed as "vacant land," and in 1984 they were sold through Robert M. Hicks, Inc. to Yvon Cormier Construction Corp. and its Y-CEE Investment Trust, which laid them out as an industrial subdivision in 1996. The northern part of the farm is now the Axis Park North office park at 101 Billerica Avenue, and Lot 5, 13.12 acres at 95 Billerica Avenue on the site of the farm buildings, has an industrial building built about 2001.

References

1. The Town Farm – A Victorian-Era Solution to Poverty
2. Billerica assessor, 95 Billerica Av (parcel 3-2-6): Lot 5 of Plan 191-55, 13.12 acres, building about 2001, sales 1984-2021

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.