Peter B. Bohonan

Born	1812-03-31 Salisbury, N.H.
Died	1899-02-12 Billerica, MA
East Billerica Postmaster
In Office	1877 - 1889
Succeeded by	Everett W. Livingston
Howe School Trustee
In Office	1879 - 1896
School Committee
In Office	1884 - 1886
Father	Ananiah Bohonan
Mother	Lucy Stanley
Spouses	Susan Tibbetts (m. 1842-10-11 )

Peter Bartlett Bohonan (1812 to 1899) was for more than thirty years the Boston and Lowell Railroad's station agent at East Billerica and the village's first postmaster. He was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, on March 31, 1812, a son of Ananiah Bohonan and his first wife Lucy Bohonan (Lucy Stanley), whose children were all born in Salisbury; his father later came to Billerica, married Abby Spaulding in 1838, and died in 1859. Peter's older brother Benjamin Stanley Bohonan also worked on the railroad, as a repairer of track.

On October 11, 1842, he married Susan E. Tibbetts of Rochester, New Hampshire, and in 1845 he built a house for the family on Gray Street, facing Mill Lane and the railroad tracks at East Billerica, with a shed beside it. The birth records of their two children describe him first as a mechanic and "railroad tender" and then as one who "works on railroads." Their son, Francis Bartlett, born July 4, 1845, also went to work for the railroad and died on October 23, 1872; their daughter, Harriet Augusta, born April 8, 1848, taught the winter term of one of the district schools in 1868 and lived on in the family home until her death in 1922.

Hazen's history of 1883 says that he "has been for many years the station agent of the Boston and Lowell railroad," a post he held from the 1850s until about 1891, and when a post office was opened at East Billerica he was appointed its postmaster on December 21, 1877, keeping the office in connection with the depot and his home. In 1879 he became a trustee of the Howe School, and in the 1880s he served on the School Committee; the town accounts for 1884 and 1885 pay him for his services on the committee, for "taking census of school children," and for a "journey to Woburn to procure teacher," and later accounts show him supplying wood for the schools and gravel for the roads.

Susan E. Bohonan died on January 24, 1890, aged 69. Peter Bohonan died on February 12, 1899, aged 86 years, 10 months and 12 days. Ten days later the School Board adopted a memorial calling him "a long resident and respected citizen of Billerica" who, as a member of the board for several years, had "served the town faithfully and well" and "always manifested considerable interest in the success of our public schools." In January 1901 his daughter, as executrix, gave the town $75 as the Bohonan Fund for the care of the family lot in Fox Hill Cemetery, and a Peter Bohonan fund was still carried among the town's cemetery trust funds in the 1920s.

Peter B. Bohonan

Peter B. Bohonan

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