William Hamlet House
William Hamlet House
| Also Known As | Caleb Farley House |
| Address | 570 Boston Rd |
| MACRIS ID | BIL.197 |
| Built | 1680 |
| Demolished | 1982 |
The great chimney, anterior to the ridgepole, marked this as an older house that had been enlarged. It sat low to the ground and certainly 17th century in origin. Ownership records in 1700 indicate that the house was already there.
In 1656, this was the site of William Hamlet's grant, and in 1679, he exchanged homesteads with Caleb Farley of the second generation of Farleys. Both the Hamlets and Farleys were Anabaptists, and the Farleys had gone to Woburn from Billerica in 1675 to join with other Anabaptists. The 1679 swap allowed Hamlet to move closer to the Woburn Anabaptists and Caleb Farley to retire from the controversy.
Ebenezer Farley was the only child of Caleb's to stay in Billerica, with the rest moving to Roxbury. However, Ebenezer stayed in the village at his grandfather's (Gold More) place.
The house changed hands several times before Harvey Crosby acquired it in 1818. Harvey Crosby's descendants still own much of the land, including the Salt Box Nursery. The lot where this house stood, however, was subdivided off and sold to Shield Car Wash in the early 1980s. It's unclear when exactly the house was razed.