William French House

The William French House stood on the east side of Allen Road, close to the road at the corner of the old Marshall farm, until it was lost in April 1976. It was the oldest surviving house in town associated with the French family, among the first settlers of Billerica. William French came as early as anyone and settled his grown sons John and Jacob on house lots east of the township; the road now called Allen Road ran along the head of their lots, and this house stood on John's. When the Historical Commission recorded it in 1974 it judged the house to date from about 1735, noting that it sat very low to the ground with its chimney set in front of the ridge, which suggested an older house enlarged.

The probate files carry the homestead down the family. When John French died without a will, his widow and children agreed on Oct. 27, 1712 that "William French the second son" should "have & quietly possess ... all the Housing & Lands," his mother keeping "the Lower room & chamber over it at the West end of the Dwelling House." When Deacon William French died in 1723 his inventory listed "the homsted Containing about 105 acres & the Buildings," and the division of January 1723/4 described "the homestead on the East side of the Road Containing seventy one acres," with "the old house" and the barn; the remainder of the homestead went to his second son, William French Jr., who was born in 1712. When that William died in 1745/6, his son William French Jr. administered the estate and kept the farm.

On Oct. 8, 1766 William French Jr., husbandman, and his wife Tabitha sold it for 360 pounds to Nehemiah Kittredge of Tewksbury: fifty acres bounded south by Isaac Marshall and west by the highway, "with the House and Barn thereon standing," and twenty acres across the road; "the abovesaid Premises are my homestead." In 1817 Nehemiah deeded "all my lands & buildings in said Billerica & Tewksbury" to his son Si Kittredge for $2,000, and his will of 1818 left Si only two dollars. On April 18, 1823 Si sold "my homestead farm," 135 acres, to Daniel Shed for $2,725, the deed beginning "at the road leading from the dwelling house on said farm to Boston about five rods south of a school house at the corner of Isaac Marshall's land." That schoolhouse corner appears in every deed for the next century.

In 1845 Shed sold the farm for $3,050 to Lyman Haynes, Dudley Foster and Edward Mansfield, who bought it to divide and resell. On Dec. 9, 1847 Haynes and Foster sold the house part, 55 acres "with the buildings thereon" running "southerly by said road and the school house lot," with 20 acres across the road, to Charles Whittemore of Groton, taking back an $1,100 mortgage. What followed was a tangle of mortgages: Whittemore sold half of the house lot to Jonathan M. Guilford in 1850; both sold to Alonzo H. Evans, a Malden broker, in 1851; Evans foreclosed a mortgage on Guilford's half at auction in 1852 ("about one half of the well known 'Shedd farm'"); in 1853 Evans sold the 58 acres with the buildings to John Bubier of Cambridge, who sold them back to Evans's wife Sarah R. Evans in May 1855. The Evanses sold in July 1855 to Charles G. and Eliza Ann Edwards of New York, reserving to Haynes and Foster a cart way across the land, and in 1856 the Edwardses sold to George C. Gilman of Malden for $2,700. Gilman cut off the "South field" for Gideon Gilman in 1857 and on April 27, 1869 sold the house with 38 acres and 20 acres across the road to Hugh M. Sanborn of Brighton for $2,800.

Sanborn mortgaged the farm in 1876 to Mary J. Sanborn, a single woman of Billerica. She entered for possession on July 13, 1877 and sold it at auction "at the dwelling house on the premises" on Aug. 13, 1877 to John Baldwin of Chicago for $1,070; on the day both deeds were recorded Baldwin quitclaimed it to her for the same sum. She kept the farm for the rest of her life as Mary J. Shedd, having married Daniel Shed Jr., son of the earlier owner. In 1910 her administrator sold the 38 acres "with the buildings thereon" and the 18 acres across the road to Gladys E. Holden of Boston for $1,500, and in 1920 she and her husband Herbert B. Hosmer sold them to Harriet E. Grovenor and Clara E. Burnham of Chelmsford, in the first deed to call the road Allen Road. The two owners had the land registered in the Land Court in 1921 as Lot A (the house lot, 565 feet on Allen Road) and Lot B (across the road), still subject to the 1855 cart way; in 1942 it passed to Amasa H. and Harriet E. Grovenor, who granted a gas pipeline right of way across both lots in 1951.

In 1953 the farm was sold to private owners, and a private owner held it in February 1974, when the Historical Commission found the house standing only five feet from the road amid "lots of houses here now." In its report for 1976 the Commission noted "with regret the loss of another two ca. 1740 farmhouses this year: the William French house, on Allen Road," and a Hill house on Meadow Lane. That year Land Court plans divided the old farm into house lots on Shane Lane and Jon Lane, and the house at 2 Shane Lane, on the corner lot by Allen Road, was built in 1977.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.166
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): William French and his sons John and Jacob
3. Billerica Annual Report 1976: Historical Commission notes the loss of the William French house
4. Middlesex probate 13382: will of Nehemiah Kittredge of Billerica, 1818

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.