The 'Chase' is on for 'Chace' name history

Streets with multiple possible names can cause controversy and confusion.

In both Lancaster and Sterling, one of these streets is Chase Hill Road. Or is it Chace Hill Road?

Running through both towns, online maps show both names for both towns with no geographic lines, and in Android GPS, both street names are included. So even Google can’t be sure. It listed both spellings. Real estate agents can’t decide, either; a search of Redfin and Zillow each show both spellings at properties in Lancaster and in Sterling.

So is this a problem of modern times?

The road itself is very old, according to Marcia Jakubowicz, special collections librarian at Thayer Memorial Library in Lancaster. She said long before white settlers came to the area, it was a Native American trail. Later, it was called “The Mile” and was the first county road to Worcester.

In 1830, there was no Chase/Chace Hill Road on any old Lancaster maps - it only turned up on maps later, though no one seems to know exactly when.

Chase/Chace is not mentioned in the 1872 Parkhurst history at the Sterling Historical Society, which stated the land at approximately #190 on what is Chase/Chace Hill Road was an “ancient tavern.”

Heather Lennon, chairman of the Lancaster Historical Commission, said the road was most likely “named for a family that long ago settled in an area of Lancaster known as the ‘South Meadow Woods’.”

The birth, marriages and death records for the town of Lancaster “show the prominent family spelling to be Chase with a couple of very early exceptions,” Jakubowicz said.

In the Lancaster Assessor’s office, it is spelled “Chase” in old deeds of property.

In Sterling, there is a Chase Farm or homestead on the Lancaster end of Chace/Chase Hill Road,” said Loret Schur, president of the Sterling Historical Society. “How the name got changed is beyond me.”

But could those early spellings of Chace be the accurate ones?

“In 1959, Lancaster town officials attempted to clarify the confusion by declaring the correct spelling to be Chace Hill Road,” Lennon said.

This proclamation from the selectmen did not work (and may or may not have been accurate). Lennon said she thought “perhaps confusion over the correct spelling of the name came about from a misspelling on a posted street sign.”

If that is what happened, the confusion continues.

In both Sterling and Lancaster, town officials and public works departments may have hedged their bets somewhat. A drive down the street shows that in Sterling it is Chase Hill Road at the intersection with West Boylston Street (Route 110), but Chace Hill Road where it meets Swett Hill Road; in Lancaster, it is Chace Hill Road where it crosses with Sterling Street, but Chase Hill Road where it intersects with Deershorn Road.

Even at the Board of Assessor’s offices, it only says Chace Hill for Lancaster, but in Sterling says both Chase and Chace for houses that sit on the same road. Lists of streets in the town and property valuation documents for various fiscal years vary on the name, likely based on who was recording them.

According to a couple of Lancastrians who live on the street, all of their postal mail comes to Chace Hill Road. An informal Facebook poll on Lancaster’s Facebook group showed, for the majority, the answer is Chace Hill Road (though the option was given to be able to choose both answers; some did). An even more informal poll of Sterling residents was more mixed.

Jakubowicz suggested it could all be down to a “mistake” or “familiarity with the spelling most prominent in town.”

But really the Chase/Chace family may have come from Clinton after all. In Andrew E. Ford’s "History of the Town of Clinton, 1653-1865," published in 1896, the family is Chace “with a C,” said Terry Ingano, president of the Clinton Historical Society. Clinton has a Chace Street and anything else is a “typo,” Ingano said, though on the Water Street end it does say Chase.

In Ford’s history book, Charles Chace of Bellingham (from the Rhode Island family of Chaces) and William Jenks of Wrentham bought the Tucker House and farm on what is now known as Chace Street in the spring of 1798.

That house was never completed, but Charles Chace built a “large, square New England mansion” between what is now Chace Street and the Nashua River. Jenks relinquished his claim on the land and property in 1802, which may be because Chace had married his daughter, Ruth Jenks.

They had four sons (three survived) and two daughters, and had “great earnestness of religious belief.” While the family “attended public worship at the old church at Lancaster Center,” Chace brought the Baptist denomination to Clinton and Lancaster, “gathering their neighbors to worship with them and thus became the originators of the Baptist organization in town.”

This is the earliest written history of any Chace or Chase family in the area, and it is likely that Charles Chace’s sons and daughters - and further generations - settled in what is now Lancaster, Sterling and Clinton.

At least one of his grandsons, Charles H. Chace, was born in 1826 in what was Lancaster and later became part of Clinton; he married a Boylston woman in 1850 and was involved in Clinton’s split from Lancaster and subsequent incorporation as an independent town. He owned a country variety store on the corner of High and Union streets, and later on Mechanic Street. He was a member of the Baptist Society and served as selectman for three years in the early days of Clinton.

C.H. Chase, his son, owned significant land in Lancaster on what would eventually be the road in question, as found on an 1870 map which bore his name.

At No. 190 Chase/Chace Hill Road in Sterling, the site of an ancient tavern, mentioned above,  C.H. Chase - who is listed as both Chase and Chace in the records of both towns, though C.H. seems to have preferred the ‘S’ - bought the “Buss Place” in 1898. It was close to his existing tract of land making up what would eventually be his family’s namesake street.

A year later, that house - as well as the house and barn across the street - burned to the ground. According to a newspaper clipping at the Sterling Historical Society, “two little boys named Schauberg” were playing with matches on the hay in C.H.’s barn; “the engines did not arrive in season to extinguish the fire,” the 1899 newspaper blurb said. It was rebuilt.

By sometime between 1830 and the early 1900s, over 100 years after the first Charles Chace came to town, his descendants had spread throughout Lancaster and Sterling, taking both spellings across the region. The longevity and land ownership in the area of the (generally wealthy) family, some of whom made a name for themselves, resulted in a name of a street just for them that traverses two towns.

It is inevitable that there are still Chase/Chace relations living in this area - and so is that their name will be spelled both ways.