Frank H. Alexander

Frank H. Alexander (about 1856 to 1920) was a market gardener in the north part of Billerica, near the Wilmington line, who served the town as an assessor for most of the years from 1906 to 1915 and then on the Finance Committee. The town's record of his death gives his age as 63 years, 9 months and 14 days, placing his birth in June 1856. He was one of several Alexanders on the town's voting list of 1880, and he had entered the Howe School in 1871.

His farm work drew the notice of the Billerica magazine, which in its first volume, in 1912 and 1913, had F. W. Barclay, a graduate of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, interview him with John E. Rowell, Clarence Bowman and Edward F. Dickinson about the town's soils and crops. Alexander's best vegetable land, the article reported, was a mucky, sandy loam, "sometimes less than three inches deep, over sand that gives good natural drainage," which he dressed each year with fifteen cords of city stable manure to the acre, or five cords with six hundred pounds of fertilizer. On new muck land he recommended potatoes as a first crop, grew cabbage and allied crops only one year in a field "on account of club root," and noted that where purslane and hogweed thrived he got his largest vegetable crops.

He was elected an assessor in 1907 and again in 1908 and 1909, and he signed the board's annual reports with William H. Hutchins and Sears J. Cook. At the annual meeting of 1910, on his motion, the town voted $40 "to be expended by the Assessors in connection with transfers of property." He lost his seat to John J. Nuttall in 1911, 252 votes to 201, but was elected again without opposition in 1913 and served with Hutchins and Edward A. King. In 1914 he was chosen to the town committee of the Progressive Party, and in 1915 and 1916 he ran for the Select Board without success. From 1917 to 1919 he sat on the moderator's Finance Committee, and in 1917 it was on his motion that town meeting chose Warren Holden for the Bowers Fund Committee. He was often appointed a teller at town meetings. He died on March 25, 1920, aged 63.

References

1. Billerica magazine, 1912-13, "Billerica Soil and Crop Yields": F. W. Barclay's interviews with Frank Alexander and others on muck land and vegetable crops
2. Billerica Town Report 1909, assessors' report signed by Frank H. Alexander
3. Billerica Town Report 1910, annual town meeting, Article 15: moved by F. H. Alexander, $40 for the Assessors for transfers of property
4. Billerica Town Report 1913, annual election: Assessor, Frank H. Alexander, 363 votes
5. Billerica Town Report 1914, assessors' report signed by Frank H. Alexander, E. A. King and Wm. H. Hutchins
6. Billerica Town Report 1914, state primary, Progressive vote: town committee including Frank H. Alexander
7. Billerica Town Report 1917, Finance Committee for 1917 as appointed by the Moderator, including Frank H. Alexander
8. Billerica Town Report 1920, deaths: Frank H. Alexander, March 25, aged 63 years 9 months 14 days