13 Elm Street and 15 Elm Street

Structures at 13 and 15 Elm St.
  • Historic Name: None
  • Uses: Single/multi-family homes (15 Elm was a grocery store early 20th century)
  • Date of Construction: Circa 1830s (15 Elm); circa 1850s (13 Elm)
  • Style/Form: 15 Elm has Greek Revival elements
  • Architect/Builder: Abraham Fifield and Josiah F. Nelson
  • Foundation: Rubble stone
  • Wall/Trim: Vinyl siding
  • Roof: Gable roof (15 Elm); flat roof (13 Elm)
  • Major Alterations: Both buildings have been altered with vinyl window and siding
  • Condition: Good
  • Included in Hengen survey? No
  • Related oral interview? No
  • Portuguese owned? Yes (1904)
  • Recorded by: Gregory Gray Fitzsimons and Marie Frank
  • Organization: UMass Lowell
  • Date: July 2023

Description

This lot on Elm Street has two dwellings. The oldest (15 Elm Street) is a 1-1/2 story wood-frame cottage built in the 1830s and has Greek Revival elements. It has an entrance on Elm Street and a second (side) entrance on the east façade which features a small projecting roof supported by ornamented wood brackets. At an unknown date, a one-story addition with a flat roof was constructed to the rear of the cottage, yielding an L-shaped plan. In the early 20th century this cottage contained a small commercial space along Elm Street and was used for a grocery store. It ceased operating as store by 1904 when Manuel S. Medina acquired the property.

To the rear of the lot is a second dwelling (13 Elm Street) constructed ca 1850s. It is a two-story wood-frame structure with a flat roof. It has an irregular, trapezoidal plan and symmetrical fenestration, with a central entrance. Originally these two houses were built on separate, adjoining lots. By the late-19th century, however, the two lots were merged. Until 1950 a single owner held both lots and owned both dwellings. During these years, the owner lived primarily in the house at 13 Elm Street while renting the 15 Elm Street property.

The lot was subdivided in 1950 and since then it has contained two fee-simple properties. Both dwellings have been greatly altered in recent years with vinyl siding and vinyl windows. The cottage (15 Elm Street) has a newly built main entrance on Elm Street with the original windows removed. For the new windows, the window openings were enlarged, and new vinyl windows were installed.

History

This property on the north side of Elm Street, between Central and Chapel streets, is associated with two early housewrights, Abraham Fifield and Josiah F Nelson, in the town of Lowell, after Lowell received its town charter in 1826. Born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, Nelson (1809-1858) moved to Acton, Massachusetts, before settling in Lowell in his early twenties. Around the same time, Fifield (1807-1883), from Weare, New Hampshire, moved to Lowell. In addition to engaging in carpentry, both men, especially Fifield, speculated in real estate, including in the Chapel Hill neighborhood in the 1830s.

In March 1832 Fifield and Nelson purchased a tract of land from Aaron Mansur on an unnamed street, east of the “county road” (Central Street) across from the Universalist Meeting House. This unnamed street would soon be called Elm Street. Either Fifield, or Nelson, or both men were responsible for the small Greek Revival cottage erected on this lot around 1833. Soon after the transaction between Mansur and Fifield (and Nelson), Fifield purchased Nelson’s share of the property. But in 1833, Nelson repurchased part of the lot and within a short time Nelson was likely responsible for erecting a larger dwelling on the Elm Street next to and set back from the Greek Revival cottage (that would subsequently have the address of 13 Elm Street).

Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, Nelson and Fifield lived on Elm Street. Nelson, his wife Mary (McCoy), whom he married in Acton around 1830, and daughter, lived in the larger house (13 Elm Street). Fifield resided in the Greek Revival cottage until he left Lowell in 1848 and settled Milford, New Hampshire. Assuming ownership of the property was Horatio N. Welch (1809-1881), formerly a teamster who had entered the soap-making business with a small factory in the Chapel Hill neighborhood. Born in Cornish, New Hampshire, Welch settled in Lowell in the 1830s, initially worked as a teamster, and married Agnes A. Wilson (from Candia, New Hampshire) in Lowell in 1839. They had a son, George, born in 1841, and a daughter, also named Agnes, born in 1849.

By 1850 the Welch household included one non-family member, a 21-year old male who worked in a textile mill and apparently rented a room in the small cottage. At 13 Elm Street, Josiah Nelson, his wife Mary, and their three children, ranging in age from 13 to 17, resided in this larger house. But Nelson also rented part of the dwelling to four other adults, including John Baker, a bobbin maker. One other renter was Caroline M. Nelson, age 18, from New Hampshire, who was likely related to Josiah Nelson. In 1855, Josiah sold the property to the Lowell Mutual Loan & Fund Association and moved his family to Lynn, Massachusetts. Josiah died in Lynn in 1858.

It appears that the 13 Elm Street property was eventually purchased by Joshua B. and Stephen K. Fielding, who were brothers, each with a house on Elm Street. Josiah B. ran a home interior decorating business while Stephen K. was a foreman in the (Perez) Richmond paper mill along the Concord River at Massic Falls. The Fieldings then rented 13 Elm Street. Residing in this house by 1858 was David M. Erskine, a sea captain from Pittston, Maine. Erskine’s parents moved to Lowell from Maine in the early 1840s during which time he served as a pilot for vessels entering the harbor of Galveston, Texas. He continued to command vessels into the 1850s, making his home in Lowell, where his parents lived. Erskine rented the Elm Street dwelling until the early 1860s by which time he had ended his maritime career and lived with his wife, Ellen, age 37, also born in Maine, two sons, born in Massachusetts, and an Irish servant, Mary Boyle, age 25. Around 1863 he bought a building on the corner of Hanover and Merrimack streets where he and his family moved. Erskine opened a fish market in this building, operating it until he died from cholera in 1866.

While Horatio Welch and his family continued to reside at 15 Elm Street, the former home of Josiah Nelson remained a rental property. In 1870, New Hampshire born Issac H. Presho bought the land and building at 13 Elm Street from Joshua Fielding. According to a deed, Presho ran a restaurant in Lowell but departed for Northfield, Minnesota. During the 17 years Presho owned the property he rented the house to various tenants who were mostly wage earning Protestant New Englanders. Next door, Horatio Welch, who had returned to working as a teamster, lived with his wife Agnes (until her death in 1873), married daughter Agnes Gilbert, son-in-law Oscar J. Gilbert, and grandson Arthur D. Gilbert, born in 1873. Oscar Gilbert labored as an iron moulder before leaving this industrial job to work as a clerk in a provision store and then owning a provision store on Central Street. Upon Horatio Welch’s death in 1881, Agnes and Oscar Gilbert assumed ownership of the Greek Revival cottage. The lived there until they sold the property in 1887 and moved to neighboring Tewksbury.

By 1870 Julius B. Conant (1829-1878) lived at 13 Elm Street (where the Erskine family had resided) along with his wife Laura, their five children, and a servant. A successful and well-known proprietor of a livery, Conant rented the Elm Street house although he owned the stable that was located on Central Street between Tyler and Church streets. He was considered a shrewd judge of horses and in one much publicized transaction he sold a two-year-old male horse to a Boston client for the considerable sum of $3,000 (nearly $60,000 today). Following Conant’s death in 1878, a number of tenants resided at 13 Elm Street, including Frank W. Greenwood, a printer for the Lowell Morning Mail newspaper and his wife Adelaide.

The properties of 13 and 15 Elm Street were held by a few owners in the 1880s. But it appears that by the 1890s the two lots were merged into a single property. In 1897 Alice (Ratcliffe) Hulme, a widow who was born in Preston, England, bought the two dwellings from Maria and Caroline Bunce, two elderly and unmarried sisters, born in Westford, Massachusetts, and speculators in Lowell real estate. Born in 1847, Hulme immigrated to the United States at age 40 and settled in Lowell. It is unclear if she was a widow at the time of her arrival in the United States. She and her husband Henry, had nine children, all born in England, and at the time she bought the Elm Street property, two of her daughters, Minnie (born 1872) and May (born 1874) were living with her. With the assistance of Minnie, Alice Hulme ran a small grocery store on Central Street in a building owned by the Cady family (see entry of 507 Central Street). Her other daughter, May, worked as a weaver in cotton mill until her marriage in 1901 to a plumber, Douglas Firth, also from England and who was a widower 15 years older than May.

Where Alice Hulme had obtained enough capital to open a grocery business is not known. But it appears she prospered at the Central Street store to the extent that she was able to afford the construction of a commercial space in her home, the small Greek Revival cottage. In 1900 she moved her grocery store to 15 Elm Street. For reasons unknown she did not rent rooms at 13 Elm Street and the dwelling remained vacant during the years she owned the property. In 1903, however, with both daughters married and living elsewhere, she decided to return to Preston, England. She had a Lowell auctioneer sell her property. An ad noted that the cottage had “six very pleasant rooms” and a store with “large show windows,” and could command a rent of $20 per month (nearly $750 today). The other dwelling, “setting in from the street,” contained “seven large rooms with a pantry and wash room,” and although it had been vacant for nine years, it was in good repair and had “good walks and a pretty garden.” The ad also pointed out that it could be rented for $13 per month and that the owner had spent around $700 fixing up the property (about $26,000 today). Hulme was unable to sell her Elm Street property for nearly one year. She subsequently returned to her native Preston before moving back to Lowell in 1907 and buying a house on Quimby Avenue, near the Ayer’s City section of the city. She remained in Lowell until 1915. Her fate is unknown.

Hulme sold her Elm Street property in 1904 to Emanuel S. Medina (1857-1926), a textile worker. One of Lowell’s early Portuguese residents, Medina was born in the Azores on the island of Graciosa. It appears he immigrated to the United States in the 1870s and lived initially in Lawrence where he worked in a cotton mill (he appears in the 1880 federal census of Lawrence). In the early 1880s Medina returned to Graciosa where he married Maria Julia Silva (1864-1926) and where they had their first of five children (all sons). He returned to the United States with his wife and son, Joseph, and settled in Lowell. By the late 1880s he worked at the Faulkner (woolen) mill on the Concord River and rented an apartment on Auburn Street. Prior to buying the Elm Street property Medina and his wife lived at two other tenements in Back Central, one being in Proctor’s Court (later Reis Court) off of Central Street.

Emanuel and Maria had four sons. Three were born in Lowell. When they moved to Elm Street the family lived in a part of the dwelling at 13 Elm. In the other half of the house the Medinas rented to another Portuguese family. At 15 Elm Street they ceased using the commercial space and instead rented the cottage to various Portuguese families in which most of the adults worked in textile mills.

By the 1910s Elm Street, which included a number of tenements, was home to a range of nationalities, including Portuguese, Irish, French Canadian, Greek, and Armenian. In addition Elm, between Linden and Chapel streets, had the largest concentration of Turkish immigrants in Lowell. The Medina family continued to rent to Portuguese families, although sometime in the late 1910s, they moved into the cottage at 15 Elm and rented the larger dwelling at 13 Elm. In 1926, however, Maria and then Emanuel died. The following year Rose (McCaughey) McGlinchey (1877-1934) purchased the property.

Born in Ireland, Rose McCaughy immigrated to the United States in 1894 and settled in Lowell. She worked in a cotton mill where she likely met her husband, Irish-born Patrick McGlinchey (1872-1925), a loomfixer. They married at St. Peter’s Church in 1899 and subsequently had two sons. By 1920 they rented a tenement at 41 Chapel Street where Rose operated a boardinghouse while Patrick continued as a loomfixer. They had as many as a dozen lodgers, all Irish males, between the ages of 26 and 72, in the Chapel Street tenement. Soon after 1920, Patrick and Rose had saved enough money to buy a two-family house at 9-11 Elm Street. Within two years Patrick McGlinchey died and soon after, Rose purchased the Medina property next door. She continued to live at 11 Elm Street and rented not only 9 Elm Street about also the two dwellings at 13 and 15 Elm Street.

After Rose McGlinchey died in 1934 her oldest son Patrick, often called by his middle name, Joseph, assumed ownership of the Elm Street properties. A police officer for the City of Lowell, McGlinchey was married and had three children. He lived with his family at 13 Elm Street, but shared the house with his brother Arthur E. McGlinchey and his brother’s wife. For a number of years he rented the cottage to John (João) Pestana, his wife Josephine, and two children. Born respectively in 1901 and 1902, John, who was from Funchal, Madeira, and Josephine, born in the Azores, were Portuguese immigrants who worked in the textile industry. For many years John was as a spinner at the Merrimack Mills and Josephine worked as an inspector in a knitting mill. Their two children were born in Lowell.

By the early 1940s the Pestana family moved to another dwelling on Elm Street and McGlinchey rented the cottage to the Irish-American McGuane family. One of the McGuane sons, George, a well-known sportswriter for the Lowell Sun newspaper, lived here until his marriage in 1947. By 1950, the McGuane family vacated the cottage and Patrick McGlinchey and his family resided there. The larger dwelling at 13 Elm Street was vacant. That year McGlinchey subdivided the property and then sold 13 Elm Street in 1952, while holding onto 15 Elm Street. The new owner of 13 Elm Street, Daniel R. Correa (1924-2015), grew up on Summer Street and his father, Manuel P. Correa (1897-1975), born on the Azorean island of Graciosa, was one of the first Portuguese who worked for the fire department of the City of Lowell. Manuel had earlier worked for the Boston & Maine Railroad, at the shops in Billerica, married Maria Picanso, born in Lowell 1901, and had four children. Daniel, born in 1924, was the oldest. By 1950 he joined his father as a firefighter for the City of Lowell. He married Constance Wilson and had two sons.

By the late 1960s, living next door to Daniel Correa was Juventino and Eugenia (Espinola) Leal. Born on the island of Graciosa, they moved to Terceira before immigrating to the United States and settling in Lowell in 1967. In 1969, Juventino (1925-2002), having secured the highly skilled job of loom fixer at the Wannalancit Mills, and with his wife Eugenia working in a factory that produced women’s clothing, purchased the 15 Elm Street property. At least two of their children, Dimas and Maria, resided there. They were born on Terceira, settled in Lowell, and became well-known figures in the Portuguese community and in the City of Lowell—Maria Cunha in the fields of social work and education; and Dimas, who worked many years in the shoe industry, with a long-standing Portuguese radio program as well as a president of the Holy Ghost Society.

It appears that the house at 13 Elm Street currently remains in the hands of the Correa family. In 2005 Barbara Dunlop purchased the property of 15 Elm Street from the Espinola heirs. But more recently the City of Lowell claimed the property from Dunlop for back taxes. The house is currently unoccupied.

Sources

  • Beard and Hoar, Map of Lowell, 1841.
  • Sidney and Neff Map of Lowell, 1850.
  • Lowell atlases, 1882, 1879, 1906, 1924 and 1936.
  • Lowell city directories, 1833, 1835, 1837, 1839, 1840, 1844, 1849, 1855, 1858, 1864-65, 1875-76, 1894, 1906, 1916, 1926, 1936, 1950, and 1975.
  • Federal census, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940 and 1950.
  • Obituary of Daniel R. Correa, Lowell Sun, August 22, 2015.
  • Obituary of Juventino Espinola, Lowell Sun, November 30, 2002.
  • Obituary of John Pestana, Lowell Sun, November 26, 1976.
  • Obituary of Rose McGlinchey, Lowell Sun, November 26, 1976.
  • “Mrs. McGuane Dies after Brief Illness,” Lowell Sun, March 12, 1950.
  • Obituary of Horatio N. Welch, Lowell Sun, November 19, 1881.
  • “Auction Sale of Real Estate,” Lowell Sun, May 29, 1903.
  • Property deed, Mansur to Fifield and Nelson, March 14, 1832, book 16, pages 20-21, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Howe to Haven, April 23, 1832, book 14, pages 105-107, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Fifield to Lovejoy, April 25, 1833, book 19, pages 299-300, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Fifield to Lovejoy, April 16, 1835, book 25, pages 278-279, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Lovejoy to Douglass, April 20, 1837, book 28, pages 172-173, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Hanson to Welch, July 29, 1848, book 56, page 364, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Welch to Lowell Mutual Loan and Fund Association, September 5, 1855, book 1, pages 254-257, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Welch to Gilbert, October 12, 1881, book 148, page 319, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Gilbert to Harrington, August 11, 1889, book 199, pages 225-226, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Bunce to Hulme, May 22, 1897, book 286, pages 315-316, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Hulme to Medina, July 18, 1904, book 368, pages 410-412, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Property deed, Medina to McGlinchey, October 31, 1927, book 756, pages 166-167, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Quitclaim deed, 13 Elm Street, Daniel R. Correa, October 5, 1995, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
  • Quitclaim deed, 15 Elm Street, Juventino Espinola, January 29, 2001, Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds.