Thomas A. Ellis

Born	1877-04-24 Billerica, MA
Died	1951-04-25
Sealer of Weights and Measures
In Office	1912 - 1913
Preceded by	Charles C. Johnson
Succeeded by	John J. Ritchie
Board of Health
In Office	1914 - 1920 1922 - 1925
Finance Committee
In Office	1930 - 1932
Building Inspector
In Office	1938 - 1951
Preceded by	Roger W. Barrington
Succeeded by	Malcolm J. Dutton

Thomas Allen Ellis was a Billerica plumber who served the town for nearly forty years, first as its sealer of weights and measures and a member of the Board of Health, and for the last thirteen years of his life as its Building Inspector. He was born in Billerica on April 24, 1877, the son of James Ellis and Mary Ann (Haigh) Ellis, and served in the Spanish-American War. On June 27, 1905, he married Sarah Jane Buckley at Lowell; their son Maurice Buckley Ellis was born in 1911. The family held land on Treble Cove Road near Boston Road: deeds recited in a 1951 street layout show Thomas, as conservator of his mother Mary A. Ellis's property, conveying land there to Sarah J. Ellis in 1914, and Thomas and other family members conveying lots to his brother Herbert B. Ellis in 1919 and 1920.

Ellis's trade brought him into the town accounts long before he held office. He was paid in 1901 for "Repairing service joint", in 1905 for labor and supplies at Union Hall, and in 1912 and 1913 for plumbing at town buildings. The town officers' list for the year ending February 28, 1913, names him Sealer of Weights and Measures. At the annual election of March 1914 he won a seat on the Board of Health with 409 votes, joining Dr. Maurice A. Buck and Dr. Neil K. Forhan.

The board's reports show the routine of a small-town health department. For 1919 it recorded twenty-two cases of diphtheria, nine of scarlet fever and three of measles after a late-year run of whooping cough, and warned that "The expenses of the board are constantly increasing," asking $1,200. By 1924 Ellis was chairman, serving with Frederick G. Brown as secretary and James F. Delmege. That year the board established a dental clinic in the schools, appointing Dr. J. F. MacDonald as school dentist and Ruth H. Leach, a graduate of the Forsyth Dental Institute, as dental hygienist, and reminded residents that a permit was needed to build septic tanks, cesspools or drains.

Town meeting also used him on its committees. In 1927 he sat with highway surveyor Warren E. Metcalf and Bernard W. Kearney on a committee that spent $25 of a $100 appropriation surveying and drawing plans for drainage on Walnut Street. He was a member of the Finance Committee by 1930 and its chairman in 1931 and 1932, with Florence R. Ritchie as secretary, signing its recommendations on the warrants of the depression years.

In April 1938 Ellis succeeded Roger Barrington as Building Inspector. His first report, for the nine months to December 31, 1938, noted that "No account has been kept of inspections, but a great deal of time has been devoted to this part of the work," and that he reported every new building to the assessors and filed monthly records with the State Department of Labor. After the war the work grew quickly. For 1946 he reported seven hundred inspections of building and plumbing work, and argued that if the town had adopted the new building laws drafted by a moderator's committee it "would have received approximately six or seven hundred dollars in fees," adding that the new zoning by-law had brought considerably more work. He issued permits for 122 new dwellings in 1948 and 164 in 1950, when he handled 468 permits in all and paid $337 in fees to the treasurer. Civil Service examinations in 1950 confirmed him in the post.

Ellis died in office on April 25, 1951. The selectmen recorded that he had "served the town faithfully as a Building Inspector for a good many years" and appointed Malcolm J. Dutton on May 7, 1951, to carry on until a civil service examination could be held. He was buried in North Cemetery, Billerica, where his wife Sarah, who died in 1968, also lies.

Thomas A. Ellis

Thomas A. Ellis

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