Warren Holden

Warren Holden (1850-1928) was a Billerica farmer whose service to the town ran from the 1880s to the year of his death. He was born on March 23, 1850, one of the eight children of Amasa Holden and his first wife, Celia Foster, a daughter of Levi Foster; his brothers and sisters were Martha Foster, Mary Munroe, Thomas, Amasa Albert, George Henry, John and Walter. His mother died in 1858 and his father, a selectman in the 1850s, in 1876.

He was one of the town's constables from 1884 to 1888 and again in 1891 and 1892, and an Overseer of the Poor in 1890 and 1891. He was one of the charter members of Talbot Lodge No. 41 of the New England Order of Protection, founded in June 1888, and in 1913 was one of its twelve surviving charter members. From 1900 to 1903 he was one of the three engineers of the fire department, with Lawrence W. Buckley and Charles A. Wright, and in the same years he was also sworn in as one of the town's special police. In 1907 he became a Bowers Fund Commissioner, and town meeting kept re-electing him to five-year terms, as in 1912 and 1922. He returned to the Overseers of the Poor in 1914 and stayed on when the board became the Board of Public Welfare in 1927; from 1916 he was also a Water Commissioner, and chairman of the board in the early 1920s. The town's lists of jurors in the 1920s give his occupation as farmer.

Warren Holden died on June 26, 1928, at the age of 78, still a member of both the welfare and water boards, and both boards closed their reports for the year with an In Memoriam page for him. At the annual meeting of 1929 the town named a committee to prepare resolutions, and the following year it adopted them, recalling his special service on the welfare and water boards and describing him as "a man bluff in speech but with a heart as tender as a woman's, of a character standing forth because of integrity and uprightness, representing the type of New England townsman which is rapidly disappearing from our midst."

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 73, HOLDEN family #4
2. 'Billerica' magazine, February 1913 (New England Order of Protection, charter members)
3. Annual Town Meeting 1912, Bowers Fund Committee (Town Report 1913)
4. List of Jurors, 1922 (Warren Holden, farmer)
5. Deaths, 1928 (Town Report)
6. In Memoriam, Board of Public Welfare, 1928
7. In Memoriam, Water Commissioners, 1928
8. Resolutions on the death of Warren Holden, Annual Town Meeting 1930