Winning Farm

The two-story farmhouse at the northeast corner of the Middlesex County House of Correction grounds on Treble Cove Road is the last building of the farm that Dr. John M. Bailey and his wife Jennie made famous in the 1870s and 1880s, and that later generations called Winning Farm after nearby Winning's Pond. The deeds show that the farm was much older than the Baileys, and that the house stood for most of the nineteenth century as the homestead of the Jefts and Abbot families and then as a double house shared by two owners.

The land lies west of the Concord River, in the ranges laid out in the great division of 1708. In 1757 Henry Jefts gave his son Simeon Jefts a house lot on "the Treble Cove path," with "the House standing thereon" and, "over against the House lot," a two-acre lot "with the Barn standing thereon." Simeon died in 1777; his inventory lists "One House and Barn with about 85 acres of Land." His widow Mary kept her thirds, and in April 1791 his heirs released their shares to Henry Jefts, who the same day sold "one hundred acres more or less with the buildings" on both sides of the road to Nathan Abbot of Danvers, "excepting that part of said buildings which is set off for my Mother's thirds." In 1801 Abbot bought the widow's thirds as well, from John Winning and the Jefts daughters. (The 1757 bounds could also describe the farm's later lot east of the road, so the identity of the first Jefts house with the present one is likely but not certain.)

Nathan Abbot farmed here for half a century. After his death his eight heirs sold "the Homestead Farm of the late Nathan Abbot" in February 1842 to Daniel Conway and Samuel Shed Jr. for $3,500: a hundred acres west of the road from Billerica to Carlisle "with the dwelling house thereon," beginning "near where the School house formerly stood," and fifty acres east of the road "with the barn thereon," running "to the Winning pond, so called." Conway's half passed through an assignment for his creditors to Theophilus Manning Jr. in 1849. In 1851 Shed and Manning had Cyrus Thompson survey the farm and divided it, and the house with it: the line ran "through the middle" of the house from the road front to the back, then "through the centre of the well" and "through the centre of a large Elm Tree," with the front entry and stairs in common. A second division in 1854 even split the rooms, giving Manning "the sole use of the bed room in the first story of said house" and Shed the one above it.

In June 1864 both men sold their halves to Orrin Bragdon of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, reuniting the farm of about 125 acres. It changed hands quickly after the Civil War: to John S. and Hiram W. Loring in 1866, to Adonijah Pennock of Rutland, Vermont in 1867, and in 1869 to the brothers David A. and Isaac R. Stackpole. On September 27, 1871 David A. Stackpole sold the two lots, "this lot has a dwelling house &c. thereon," to J. B. Bailey of Charlestown for $6,000, and in 1877 John B. Bailey conveyed them to John M. Bailey and Jennie G. Bailey of Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The Baileys enlarged the farm with the seventy acres between Winning's Pond and the river (1880-81) and later lots east of the road, and in 1883 a pair of deeds through Enoch G. Sweatt put the home farm in the name of Phebe J. (Jennie) Bailey alone. Here Dr. Bailey carried out the experiments in storing green fodder in silos that he described in The Book of Ensilage (1880); the Historical Commission credits him with introducing the French system of ensilage.

Mrs. Bailey's will was proved in 1916, and in January 1920 her executor, John C. Cosseboom of Woonsocket, sold "the Bailey Farm," then "three hundred acres, more or less," on both sides of "the Treble Cove Road, formerly called the Concord Road," to Edward T. Murphy of Medford. Murphy mortgaged it to the Exchange Trust Company of Boston, which foreclosed in December 1927 and sold it at auction to J. Edward Maloney of Newton for $19,000. Under the Acts of 1929, chapter 381, the Middlesex County Commissioners took the whole farm by eminent domain on March 21, 1930 for a new house of correction to replace the unsafe one in Cambridge, awarding $53,000. The prison was built on the ridge behind the old farmhouse, which was kept as a residence, and the inmates worked the farm, producing dairy products and other foods. In 1994 the county gave 194 acres of the old Bailey Farm, not including the prison grounds, to the town as parkland. The farmhouse itself remains on the House of Correction parcel (assessor's parcel 58-1-1), whose deed of record is still the 1930 taking.

The MACRIS inventory form for the House of Correction places the Winning family at the site and says that John M. Bailey bought the farm in 1872; the deeds show that J. B. Bailey bought it in 1871 and that the farm had been the Jefts and then the Abbot homestead; the Winning family lived to the south, near the pond and the mill on its brook, and the name came to the farm from the pond.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.369
2. Billerica assessor (Patriot Properties), 269 Treble Cove Rd, parcel 58-1-1: House of Correction, 64.77 acres, Legal Reference 788-215 (the 1930 taking)
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Genealogical Register, ABBOT 9-10 (Nathan Abbot and his heirs), JEFTS and WINNING; Winning's Pond and the Winnings' saw-mill

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.