Lund T. Eastman House

The Lund T. Eastman House stands on Lot 3 of a plan of the Bowers land drawn by Samuel Sage in 1871, a lot of 1 acre 86 rods with 8 rods of frontage on the west side of the main road to Boston, just south of Billerica Centre. The land was part of the "Old Homestead" of the William Bowers family. Dr. William Bowers died intestate in November 1820, and the inventory of his estate listed "The homestead containing 25 acres with all the buildings thereon". It was never divided. His son William died in 1851, and his three unmarried daughters held the land together until their deaths; Priscilla Bowers' inventory of 1869 lists her "1/3 of Old Homestead 24 acres". Priscilla left her share to the Baptist Church in Billerica, and Mary and Fanny Bowers left theirs to the Town of Billerica for the benefit of the poor.

In May 1871 the town, by a committee of Dudley Foster, Israel A. Colson and David L. Mason, and the First Baptist Church and Society, by Edward Spaulding and George C. Gilman, sold the land in lots. Lot 3, between the lot "this day sold to Mark Lund" on the north and the lot sold to G. W. Gragg on the south, went to the blacksmith Lund T. Eastman for $305: $203.33 to the town for its two thirds and $101.67 to the church for its third. The deeds were not recorded until July 1879. Eastman built the L.T. Eastman Blacksmith Shop at the south corner of the lot, and the 1875 atlas shows the shop there with no house.

When Eastman, who was unmarried, sold Lot 3 to Clara E. Sexton of New Boston, New Hampshire, on August 8, 1879, the price was $1,350 and the deed conveyed "a certain parcel of land with the buildings thereon". The house was therefore built between 1875 and 1879, while Eastman owned the lot. Clara E. Sexton mortgaged it for $850 to Mary H. Crosby and paid the mortgage off in 1892, when she was settling Crosby's estate as administratrix. Her husband, William H. Sexton, worked the shop as a blacksmith and horseshoer; in 1901 the directory gave his home as across the road from it. The 1889 map shows two buildings on the lot under his name.

In April 1892 Clara E. Sexton put the lot in her husband's name through a straw deed to John Sexton. In 1897 William H. Sexton deeded it to Charles S. Hill of North Andover, who gave him back a $3,000 mortgage the same day; the mortgage was assigned to William C. Phillips, Hill deeded the lot back in 1899, and in November 1900 Sexton sold it to Susan U. Phillips, who took it subject to the $3,000 mortgage held by William C. Phillips. On January 15, 1903, Susan U. Phillips, by then a widow, quitclaimed the lot to Charlie L. Burton, a blacksmith and bicycle dealer whose home was near the shop, and Burton gave a $1,000 mortgage to Moses P. Greenwood.

Burton owned the lot for more than forty years. In 1923 he sold the southeasterly 57 feet, with the shop, to Archie J. Vondal; that corner later held garages and is now part of the gas station at 441 Boston Road. He kept the house and the rest of the land, which a straw deed of 1944 put in his and his wife Hattie C. Burton's names. On August 6, 1945 the Burtons sold "the land in said Billerica with the buildings situated near the center thereof", Lot 3 less the shop lot, to Harlie G. and Florence D. Bohannan, keeping the right to use the cess pool on the premises. The Bohannans, florists, lived on Whiting Street, and the house was let. Harlie G. Bohannan died in 1958, and after Florence's death the lot passed by her estate to her sister. A town meeting warrant of 1968 described the station lot next door as bounded on the west and north by this land.

The property has been sold privately since 1969, in 1971, 1974, 1979, 1983 and 2000, and was transferred to a family trust in 2001. It is now a parcel of 1.6 acres with a house of three apartments, which the assessor dates to about 1900; the historic district survey of 1989, which recorded it as a two-family house with clapboards and a side wing, took the same date from the assessor's cards. The deeds and the 1875 atlas place its building in the late 1870s, under Lund T. Eastman. A second building stands behind the house on the same lot.

References

1. Billerica assessor, 435-437 Boston Rd (parcel 61-59-1): 1.6 acres, three-family house built about 1900 (assessor date), two building cards

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.