This is based on the Ed Fogelberg article “Few will recognize Havenville,” which ran in the Daily Times and Chronicle on Tuesday, February 5, 1980. Edited and updated by BurlingtonRetro.
Most Burlington residents recognize the name Winnmere, the area bordering Woburn and bisected by Winn Street. It has a group of stores and some offices. Few people today will recognize the name Havenville. Yet for over a century, Havenville was a village center almost as important and certainly more easily defined than “Burlington center” itself. Note the prominence of Havenville on this 1875 map. The smaller breakout map shows the town “center.”
Burlington, MA 1875
At a time when Winnmere had nothing but a blacksmith shop, Havenville had a country store, a post office, a cluster of small houses, a “shoddy” shop (shoe shop), and a schoolhouse. Today that schoolhouse still stands at the corner of Francis Wyman Road and Bedford Street.
When Burlington was born in 1799, Havenville was sometimes called Pasho’s Corner because the little home of John Pasho stood close to the fork of Bedford Street and Francis Wyman Road. The home of Jonas Haven, even smaller than Pasho’s, stood nearby too. The modest houses of Havenville were surrounded by big, wealthy farming operations: Joseph McIntire was on the road to the center, Daze and Mathew Skelton were on the road to Billerica, and Samuel Nevers and Daniel McIntire were on the Bedford road.
Charles N. Haven once owned the little yellow house still standing next to St. Malachy’s Church. The Havenville country store stood directly across the street from the schoolhouse. It was owned at the turn of the century by Jonas C. Haven. His brother Charles ran the store in the 1870s, and the second floor, entered from the rise of land to the rear, was rented out for living quarters. The enterprise closed about 1920.
In 1870, Charles also owned and operated a shoe stock factory just east of the West School. It was known to local people as the “shoddy shop” or “pancake shop.” It made parts for shoes such as innersoles from leather trimmings or excess stock from the Woburn tanneries. In 1877, the business went to William Carter and Sumner Shed. It went out of business in 1900 and the building was torn down some time later. In its boom days, Carter employed about 20 people. Today, a very new church faces a very old school across a still older road, a road the first Wymans and Skeltons walked more than 300 years ago. Not to mention the many Havens of Havenville, who walked that same road a century ago.
To get an idea of how small some Havenville homes were, here is an account from Mrs. Dunham’s history: “Under a huge oak tree is the site of the tiny home of ‘Rindy’ Reed, a maiden lady from a Burlington family. She lived here all alone for many years in her tiny house, which was about 10 by 12 foot square and of two stories high, the walls covered with pictures from newspapers and magazines. The whole place was immaculate and no stick of firewood was allowed to be taken into the house until it had been brushed clean. The house burned about 1880, but Miss Reed was rescued and from that time, she made her home with the Nathan Simonds family nearby.”
The little house that Curtis Wright built some years prior to 1860 still stands on the far corner at the junction of roads. Writing of a walk in old Burlington in 1859, Martha Sewall Curtis mentions this house briefly: “We have only time to gaze over the fence at Mrs. White’s famous flower garden.” The house was assessed to Otis C. Haven in 1900. Today, heavily modified, it is the home of Louis Skelton. That fine gentleman only recently retired from the Burlington Fire Department.
Fast-forward to 2023. The name Havenville does survive on some internet maps, and smartphones sometimes evoke name when tagging photo locations. But smartphones also refer to Winnmere as “Central Square,” so who knows what smartphones are thinking.
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