Roger W. Barrington

Roger Barrington was a North Billerica carpenter who spent half a century in the town's public life, first as one of the most persistent speakers at town meeting and at the end of his career as the town's Building Inspector. He was born on June 19, 1862, at Worsley, near Manchester, England, the youngest son of Roger Barrington and Rachel Worrall, and nineteen years younger than his brother James. In 1881 he married Alice Winstanley of Manchester, and their daughter Matilda was born at Pendlebury in 1884.

He followed James to North Billerica, and in 1887 he bought the lot next to his brother's on the east side of the new Billerica Avenue from Martin Conway. The house he built there, the Roger Barrington House at 43 Billerica Avenue, stood on the 1889 map under his name, and he kept it until he sold it to Joseph Nadeau in 1922. His other children were born in Billerica: James Louis in 1887, Frederick H. in 1889 and Mary in 1891, as well as twin sons, Warren Stanley and Clarence, who were born early in 1895 and died within days of each other that February.

Barrington was a working carpenter, and much of his early town work was the kind a handy man in the village picked up: building work for the highway department in 1889, repairs and later the janitor's work at Union Hall, special police duty on the Fourth of July, watching fires and serving as a call fireman, and service as an election inspector. He was also a fixture at town meeting. From 1896, when he moved to finish the part of the town stable used by the fire department, through the 1910s, the records show him moving appropriations for the veterans on Memorial Day, for sidewalks, for shingling Union Hall, for repairing the Bridle Road and the iron fence around the Common, and arguing over the salaries of the assessors and the highway surveyor. In 1902 he had the $700 voted for village improvement divided equally between the associations at North Billerica and Billerica Centre.

In 1915 the town warrant proposed extending the water main from near his property on Billerica Avenue to the Town Farm. He was still listed as a carpenter on the jury list of 1925, and in 1930, at 68, he became the town's Inspector of Buildings, filing the annual report of building permits through the depression years until 1938. Alice Barrington died in March 1936, and Roger died in 1941. Both are buried in the North Cemetery.

References

1. Find a Grave: Roger Barrington (1862-1941), North Cemetery.
2. 1889 Billerica Town Report: Roger Barrington, building, highway department.
3. 1896 Billerica Town Report: town meeting, his motion to finish the fire department stable.
4. 1902 Billerica Town Report: town meeting, village improvement appropriation divided.
5. 1903 Billerica Town Report: special police, July 4, 1902.
6. 1909 Billerica Town Report: town meeting, Bridle Road appropriation.
7. 1909 Billerica Town Report: paid as janitor.
8. 1915 Billerica Town Report: warrant article, water main from near his property on Billerica Avenue to the Town Farm.
9. 1925 Billerica Town Report: jury list, Roger Barrington, carpenter.
10. 1930 Billerica Town Report: Building Inspector.
11. 1937 Billerica Town Report: report of the Inspector of Buildings.