Wilson Street

Wilson Street runs from Old Elm Street, opposite the Talbot Mills at North Billerica, south and southwest along the west bank of the Concord River to Treble Cove Road and Pollard Street at the Fordway bridge. No laying out of it is recorded. It grew up as the street of the Talbot mill village. Joseph Salter, a carpenter, bought a lot here from the administrator of Nathaniel Stearns on March 5, 1846 and built the house that now stands at 42 Wilson Street; it "stands alone on the 1853 map." In 1850 he sold it to C. P. Talbot, and the company then lined the street with its mill housing, the oldest of the double houses dating from about 1860 and the last from 1892. The town's Talbot schoolhouse lot was also "situated on Wilson street," as the deeds of an exchange of land between the town and the Talbot Mills in 1886 describe it.

The name was in use by 1886, in the school lot deeds, and in 1888 the town paid for "relaying wall on Wilson street." No record explains it, but it very probably comes from the Wilson family of the early mill village: Daniel Wilson, a carpenter known in the village as "Boss" Wilson, came to Billerica about 1820, bought land from the Proprietors of the Middlesex Canal in 1831 and 1832, and in 1848 built the house at 38 Old Elm Street near the head of the street, while Levi Wilson built one of the first housing blocks there in 1836. The street naming committee chosen in 1896 (Martin Conway, John E. Rowell and Coburn S. Smith) listed "Wilson street, running southwest from Elm street to Fordway bridge, No. Billerica," and the Billerica Historical Society's revised list, accepted at the annual town meeting of March 27, 1899, kept it as "Wilson street, from Elm street running southeast to Fordway bridge, No. Billerica." The iron bridge at the Fordway had been built only in 1893; before that the south end of the street met the old Treble Cove road near the river, and a mortgage of 1905 still placed the Cyrus Ham estate "at the junction of Wilson St. and Triple Cove Road."

In 1895 the town voted $520 "for the purpose of draining Wilson Street," and the selectmen reported that "the most extensive work was on Wilson Street." The corner of Elm and Wilson Streets was graveled 400 feet in 1900. The street was macadamized under the town's macadam appropriation in 1906 and 1907, when the highway surveyor, Edgar F. Twombly, charged "Building new road on Wilson Street," and in 1916 it was among the "macadam roads" resurfaced with Tarvia and sand. When the Talbot Mills sold off the village in the 1930s, the land on both sides of the street was divided into house lots on the company's Plan A, surveyed by J. C. and W. T. Monahan from 1934 to 1936 and recorded in Plan Book 60, Plan 25.

Wilson Street was not one of the roads on the official town map of 1831 and so was not among the ways accepted in 2016. The town's list of streets accepted, printed in 1956, gives "Wilson St., From Elm St. southeast to Fordway Bridge" with no date, the wording of the 1899 list. A different Wilson Street, on the south side of Nutting Lake, appears in the directory of 1931 and has nothing to do with this one.

Historic Buildings

References

1. Billerica annual report 1888: payment to J. Wright for "relaying wall on Wilson street" (earliest use of the name found)
2. Annual report 1895: selectmen, "the most extensive work was on Wilson Street"
3. Annual report 1895: town meeting votes 20 "for the purpose of draining Wilson Street"
4. Annual report 1897: street naming committee, "Wilson street, running southwest from Elm street to Fordway bridge, No. Billerica"
5. Annual report 1899: Historical Society list, "6. Wilson street, from Elm street running southeast to Fordway bridge, No. Billerica"
6. Annual report 1900: street list accepted at the annual town meeting of March 27, 1899
7. Annual report 1900: corner of Elm and Wilson Streets gravelled 400 feet
8. Annual report 1906: macadam account, "Building new road on Wilson Street"
9. Annual report 1907: macadam, "Building new road on Wilson street" (Edgar F. Twombly, surveyor)
10. Annual report 1916: macadam roads resurfaced with Tarvia, Elm Street, Wilson Street, Talbot Avenue
11. Annual report 1956: list of streets accepted, "Wilson St., From Elm St. southeast to Fordway Bridge"

Deed References Expand all

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