Frederic H. Brown

Died	2002-12-07
Fence Viewer
In Office	1948 - 1957
Select Board
In Office	1948 - 1957
Town Meeting
In Office	1956 - 1984
Cemetery Commissioner
In Office	1959 - 1974

Frederic H. Brown (died 2002) was a Billerica selectman and member of the Board of Public Works from 1948 to 1957, and afterward served the town for more than thirty years on its cemetery and sewer boards. He owned land on Salem Road and Boston Road at Brown's Corner, where Boston Road meets Pollard Street, and lived on Salem Road. In 1946 he petitioned town meeting to rezone part of that land from residence to business, which the Planning Board opposed; in 1947 the town voted unanimously to rezone a part of his Boston Road land for business, and in 1953 he sought business zoning for the rest of the tract, running from Brown's Corner along Pollard Street and Salem Road to the Concord River.

He was elected a selectman in March 1948, leading the field with 1,054 votes, and was re-elected in 1951 with 1,710 votes and in 1954. In the five-member board of those years he was secretary from 1948 to 1952, and he served on the committees for highways and bridges and for parks; the park reports he signed describe the summer band concerts on the Common in the Center, the care of the Kohlrausch Playgrounds and the lighting of the fir trees on the Common and the North Billerica triangle at Christmas. The selectmen of his first year installed a two-way radio for the police, refused to renew the license of the 101 Club in East Billerica, hired the J. M. Cleminshaw Company to revalue the town, and planned a new bridge on Gray Street with the county. The selectmen also sat as the Board of Public Works and as fence viewers.

When Chairman Keaney resigned in May 1952 to take a government post, Brown served as chairman and secretary for the rest of the year, and he was chairman again in 1953 and 1954. The board's reports in those years are dominated by the town's rapid growth. In 1953 the selectmen noted that 58 percent of the tax revenue now went to the schools, carried out the vote for a sixteen-inch water main from the pumping station, prepared for a new water treatment plant, and welcomed three new industries; in 1954 they let the contract for the treatment plant to the Beacon Construction Company, extended the water mains under a $150,000 bond issue, cleaned up after Hurricanes Carol and Edna, and saw the legislature pass the bill for a representative town meeting, which the board believed would give "a much more balanced operation of our local government." He served on the Tercentennial Commission that planned the town's 300th anniversary celebration of May 1955, and in 1956, his last year on the board, he was its vice-chairman.

He was elected a Cemetery Commissioner in 1959 and was chairman of the commission through most of the 1960s and into the 1970s. His reports describe the development of new land at Fox Hill Cemetery, where "practically all the burials are now taking place," in spite of the "shale-type ledge" there, the building of a garage on the Fox Hill property, and the commission's use of trust funds and lot sales to keep the department from adding to the tax rate. From 1973 he was a member of the elected Sewer Commission, as its secretary and clerk from 1977, during the years when the town built its first large sewer system, and when the town charter replaced the commission with an appointed Sewer Extension Committee he served on that committee until 1990. That year his colleagues wrote that he had "decided not to seek reappointment" and to retire to Florida, adding that he had "dedicated much of his time and life unselfishly to the town." He was also a Town Meeting member for many years. He died on December 7, 2002, and the town report of 2003 listed him among its memorials.

Frederic H. Brown

Frederic H. Brown

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