Clarence A. Bowman

Clarence Augustus Bowman (1858 to 1935) was a Wyman Road farmer who served Billerica as an assessor, sat for twenty years on the Bowers Fund Committee, and worked at the town's elections for a quarter of a century. Hazen's genealogical register records his birth on February 27, 1858, the eldest child of Ebenezer Bowman and Lucretia A. Bowman, and he is on the town's list of voters in 1880. He was admitted to the Howe School in 1876, and in 1884 he married Annie Louise Knowles, who had graduated from the school in 1877.

The 1901 directory lists him as a farmer with his house on Wyman Road opposite School Lane, where his widowed mother lived with him. In 1912 the Pollard School teacher Grace L. Knowles and Mary A. Knowles, also a teacher, boarded in his household. By 1901 he was treasurer of the grange that the Patrons of Husbandry had organized in Billerica on January 3, 1900, meeting at Odd Fellows' hall, and in 1913 he was guide of Talbot Lodge No. 41 of the New England Order of Protection.

He served at the polls from at least 1896, when he was deputy warden at the election held in Gardner Parker Hall, through 1913, as warden, deputy warden, deputy clerk and precinct officer. He was elected an assessor for 1903 and 1904, and at a special town meeting on August 7, 1905, he was elected by ballot, with 21 votes, to fill a vacancy on the board for the rest of the year. On motion of E. B. Haskell he was first chosen to the Bowers Fund Committee, which managed the Bowers and Stearns funds for the care of the town's poor, and he was re-chosen for five-year terms until 1921. At the primaries of the mid-1910s he was voted onto the Republican town committee.

He died on August 8, 1935, at the age of 77 years, 5 months and 18 days, according to the town's death register.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 16, BOWMAN 6 (child list)
2. Town of Billerica Annual Report 1902: town meeting, Clarence A. Bowman chosen to the Bowers Fund Committee for five years
3. Town of Billerica Annual Report 1906: special town meeting of August 7, 1905; C. A. Bowman elected assessor
4. Town of Billerica Annual Report 1935: deaths, Clarence A. Bowman, Aug. 8, aged 77 y. 5 m. 18 d.