George C. Crosby

George C. Crosby (about 1856 to 1939) served Billerica for more than thirty years as its superintendent of streets in the 1890s, as a fire engineer and forest warden in the 1900s, and as an assessor in the 1920s. The record of his death gives his age as 82 years, 4 months and 12 days, which places his birth in August 1856, and he was already a voter in 1880. His home stood on the main road near the hill the town called William Crosby hill, which the highway men gravelled along with the road "near G. C. Crosby's" in 1898.

As Superintendent of Streets from 1894 to 1899 he was paid $50 a month and worked the roads with the town teams, hiring them out for other town work and returning the earnings to the treasury. His report for 1895 lists a season of gravelling in every part of town, from the main road by Dane's blacksmith shop and the Town Hall to Farmers' Lane, Stewart's Lane and the woods road at South Billerica, a "large job at the new bridge," where the road was widened, straightened, stoned and gravelled to the top of the hill, about 800 feet of paved gutter, five culverts laid over and three bridges repaired; besides this, he wrote, "I have earned with town teams $160.00 for work done at the Town Hall." His last report, for 1898, is a long list of the same kind of work, ending with the gravelling of River hill and the road between Dr. Noyes' place and the pond. He also served at times as a special police officer.

He was assistant foreman of Hero Engine Company No. 2, the hand tub company off Andover Street near the Pollard School, about 1901, and from 1903 to 1911 he sat on the Board of Fire Engineers, by 1911 as chief, with William B. Chambers and John H. Baker. The engineers' reports he signed list every alarm of the year, most of them grass and brush fires and chimney fires, along with an inventory of each company's apparatus, and asked for larger appropriations as the firemen's pay rose. From 1908 to 1912 he was also the town's Forest Warden, under the State act of 1908 for the protection of forest and sprout lands from fire. In 1914 he ran for Overseer of the Poor and finished fourth.

On March 27, 1922, at a joint meeting of the selectmen and the assessors, he was chosen to fill the vacancy left on the Board of Assessors by the resignation of Ralph L. Dodge, and he signed the assessors' reports for 1922 with Edwin P. Simpson and Charles H. Kemp, in the years when automobiles first appeared in the town's valuation (370 in 1921 and 543 in 1922). He was elected to the seat in 1923 and re-elected in 1925 without opposition, but in 1928 he lost it narrowly to Herbert J. Tivey, and he lost to Tivey again in 1931. The jury lists of the 1920s and 1930s describe him as retired. He died on January 3, 1939, the first death recorded in the town that year.

References

1. Billerica Town Report 1895, town officers: Superintendent of Streets, George C. Crosby
2. Billerica Town Report 1896, highway report for 1895 signed by George C. Crosby, Superintendent
3. Billerica Town Report 1899, highway report signed by G. C. Crosby, Superintendent (gravelled main road near G. C. Crosby's)
4. Billerica Town Report 1910, report of the Fire Engineers signed by George C. Crosby, Owen O'Toole and John H. Baker
5. Billerica Town Report 1911, town officers: Engineers of Fire Department and Forest Warden, George C. Crosby
6. Billerica Town Report 1922, selectmen's records: George C. Crosby elected assessor March 27, 1922, on the resignation of Ralph L. Dodge
7. Billerica Town Report 1922, assessors' report signed by Edwin P. Simpson, Charles H. Kemp and George C. Crosby
8. Billerica Town Report 1939, deaths: George C. Crosby, Jan. 3, aged 82 years 4 months 12 days