Albert W. Stearns

Albert Warren Stearns (1885-1959), known in town as Dr. A. Warren Stearns, was a Billerica-born psychiatrist who became dean of the Tufts College Medical School and Massachusetts Commissioner of Correction while serving his home town in one office or another for nearly forty years. He was born in Billerica on January 26, 1885, the son of George Edward Stearns and Helen Maria Stearns. He worked for a time in a hardware store before entering Tufts College, and he received his M.D. from Tufts College Medical School in 1910.

He was a staff psychiatrist at the Danvers and Boston state hospitals and opened a private practice in 1913. He served in the Navy Medical Corps in both world wars, from 1917 to 1919 and from 1942 to 1945, and retired as a captain in the Medical Corps. He was dean of the Tufts College Medical School and professor of psychiatry from 1927 to 1945, Massachusetts Commissioner of Correction from 1929 to 1933, and associate commissioner of the Department of Mental Diseases from 1935 to 1938, and after 1945 he chaired the department of sociology at Tufts. He wrote The Personality of Criminals (1932), was a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Tufts in 1945.

On December 28, 1912 he married Frances Matsell Judkins at her parents' home in Billerica, with Lyman V. Rutledge officiating. That year he was associate editor of the town magazine Billerica and read a paper "On the Growth of Billerica" to the Parish Club. Their son Albert Warren Stearns Jr., born December 19, 1913, was the first winner of the Howe High School's Class of 1930 Cup at his graduation in 1931 and became a physician, but died before his parents, who gave a yearly award in his memory. A second son, Charles E. Stearns, became a dean at Tufts and later chaired the Billerica Historical Commission.

Stearns was elected to the School Committee in 1912, and in 1921 the selectmen and cemetery commissioners chose him to fill a vacancy on the Cemetery Commission, where he served into the mid 1930s and again from 1944 until his death. He sat on the Town Forest Committee with Warren H. Manning and on the Finance Committee in 1927 and 1928. Elected a selectman in 1930, he returned to the board in 1933 when it grew to five members and also served as the Board of Public Works; he was vice-chairman in 1934 and 1935 and chairman in 1936. He was president of the Bennett Public Library Association and later a library trustee, chaired the School Committee and the schoolhouse building committee in the late 1940s, and was moderator of the town meetings from 1949 through 1953.

He died on September 24, 1959. At the next annual town meeting the voters stood in silence for "Dr. A. Warren Stearns, Selectman and public servant in many other capacities."

References

1. Harvard Library, Albert Warren Stearns papers, biographical note
2. Tufts University Archives, Stearns, Albert Warren
3. In Memoriam, 1959
4. Marriages, 1912
5. BILLERICA magazine, vol. 1 no. 1 (June 1912), masthead (associate editor)
6. Town Officers, 1936
7. School Committee, 1946
8. Annual Town Meeting, 1950