Fitch Tufts House

The Fitch Tufts House stood on the east side of Boston Road just south of the Billerica common, on the lot where the post office at 460 Boston Road has stood since 1966. Its land was the south end of the old Abbot homestead near the meeting house, which Oliver Abbot bought in 1757. After his death in 1796 the widow's dower lands there went to his daughter Dorcas and her husband Jonathan Bowers Jr., Billerica's first postmaster, who bought out the other heirs' shares between 1798 and 1801. His will of 1799, proved in 1804, left the residue of his estate to his son Alexander Bowers.

In 1810 Alexander Bowers and his mother Dorcas sold "a certain messuage and parcel of land ... near the meeting house" to George Bruce of Boston, merchant, for $2,000, along with the third wall pew in the meeting house. They sold the land to the south, the 24-acre "Alexander Bowers lot", to John Parker, and in 1812 Bruce paid Parker $50 for a strip that squared the line between them "as the stone wall recently erected now stands". Bruce's will, proved in 1826, gave the homestead "with a dwelling house and all the other buildings" to his sisters Hannah Upton and Abigail Bruce and his niece Martha B. Wait for their lives. In 1827 they and his brothers William and Charles Bruce sold the whole place, about thirteen acres "with all the buildings thereon" and the same pew, to Fitch Tufts of Boston, distiller, for $3,400. Tufts mortgaged it to Ephraim Tufts of West Cambridge in 1830 and paid the mortgage off in 1832.

Fitch Tufts died without a will in 1852 or early 1853, leaving his widow Mary and two daughters, Mary and Martha. Martha was appointed administratrix in June 1853. That April the three women had already divided the place. They sold the south two acres, "near the common in the Centre village ... with a dwelling house thereon standing", 147 feet on the road and about 550 feet deep, to the carriage smith William G. Alley, who gave Martha a $1,000 mortgage for part of the price. The north part, where the old Abbot house stood, went to Jefferson Cutter and later to Paul Hill (see Golden More House).

Alley sold the house lot in 1855, together with his blacksmith shop lot farther south, to Mark Lund of Clinton, blacksmith, for $2,750. Lund kept it for 34 years, moving to Greenville, New Hampshire, and in 1889 sold the two acres "with all the buildings thereon" to Moses P. Greenwood for $2,100. The Greenwoods built the Greenwood Building at 462 on the lot about 1890, and in 1899 George P. Greenwood also bought the store lot next south (see John H. Parker Store). The family held both lots through a series of estates until 1963, when Oliver P. and Laurence J. Greenwood sold the combined 2.96 acres "with the buildings thereon" to the Middlesex County National Bank of Everett.

The bank cleared the old buildings, built its branch at 464, and in August 1965 sold the north 25,015 square feet, 125 feet on Boston Road with the Amelia Stone land on the north, to a private buyer, using a plan by Emmons, Fleming and Bienvenu. The buyer put the lot into his family's Trapelo Realty Trust in December 1966, and the post office building went up about that time. Meadow Park Development Corp. of Augusta, Maine, conveyed the lot in 1987 to Trapelo Realty, Inc., which sold it in 2024 for $1,517,100 to APIF - Massachusetts, LLC.

Earlier accounts had the post office lot pass directly from the bank to Trapelo Realty; the deeds show the 1965 sale, the 1966 trust deed and the 1987 corporate transfer. They also show that Fitch Tufts, a Boston distiller, bought the whole thirteen-acre Bruce place, not just this house lot, and that his heirs split it after his death.

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.