John A. Barrington

John A. Barrington was a son of Roger Barrington and Alice Winstanley of North Billerica, and he made his own name as a manufacturer and as one of the town's watchdogs over its spending in the 1920s. He invented Barrington Compound, which was made in Billerica by the Barrington Manufacturing Company. He and his wife, Kate Rhea Barrington, settled in Billerica Centre, where she bought land on River Street in 1919. In August 1921 he bought Lots D and E on Maple Avenue, a short way running from River Street west to the Boston and Maine railroad, from Ethel J. Casey and Frank A. Casey. Lot E, at the railroad end of the street, already had a building on it.

He sat on the Finance Committee, appointed by the Moderator, through the middle of the decade, alongside Thomas Talbot Clark. At the February 1924 town meeting he was named chairman of a committee to investigate the Highway and Water Departments and recommend the best way to spend their appropriations; its report to the 1925 meeting found the Water Department well managed. In 1929 he was one of the citizens named to the town's highway safety committee, formed at the request of Governor Frank G. Allen to reduce motor vehicle accidents, and in 1930 town meeting put him on a three man committee with Thomas T. Clark and Wilfred N. Oliver to investigate the street lighting contract between the Selectmen and the Lowell Electric Light Corporation. The committee reported that Billerica was paying the same rates as Lowell and its neighbors and that nothing could be gained by reopening the contract.

After his father's death he sold his father's house lot on Treble Cove Terrace in North Billerica to Roy Kirk in 1942. In 1947 he and Kate granted rights over the Maple Avenue land to the Lowell Electric Light Corporation, and in 1952 town meeting voted, 88 to 1, to rezone his two Maple Avenue lots from residential to industrial use. He died before the end of 1956, when Kate, then living in Vienna, Virginia, sold both lots "with the building thereon" to the Knights of Columbus of Billerica Building Association, which kept its hall there for more than forty years. Maple Avenue has since been renamed Wedgewood Avenue.

References

1. 1923 Billerica Town Report: Finance Committee, John A. Barrington.
2. 1923 Billerica Town Report: committee under Article 4, John A. Barrington, chairman.
3. 1925 Billerica Town Report: report of the committee on the Highway and Water Departments.
4. 1925 Billerica Town Report: Finance Committee appointed by the Moderator.
5. 1929 Billerica Town Report: highway safety committee.
6. 1930 Billerica Town Report: committee on the Lowell Electric Light contract.
7. 1930 Billerica Town Report: report of the street lighting contract committee.
8. 1952 Billerica Town Report: rezoning of land of John A. Barrington on Maple Avenue.
9. 1951 Billerica Town Report: warrant article to rezone land of John A. Barrington on Maple Avenue.
10. 1952 Billerica Town Report: Maple Avenue rezoning voted, 88 to 1.

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.