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Billerica Veteran Association, G.A.R.

The Billerica Veteran Association, G.A.R., was the organization of the Union veterans of the Civil War living in Billerica, who kept the town's Memorial Day from the 1880s until the last of them died in the 1930s. It carried the letters of the Grand Army of the Republic, the national order of Union soldiers and sailors founded in 1866, and beside it stood two auxiliaries, the Asa John Patten Circle No. 20 of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic and a camp of the Sons of Veterans. The town reports and the monthly The Billerica give it no post number, and no chartered Grand Army post in Billerica was found in the records searched; the veterans appear in the town's accounts simply as the Billerica Veteran Association.

The veterans gathered around the Soldiers' Monument on the Town Common, the white granite shaft crowned with the figure of a soldier that the town dedicated on October 8, 1873, with the names of twenty of its dead cut on its sides; Gardner Parker was on the committee that built it. The first town money for the day appears in the report for the year ending February 1889, when a committee chosen by the annual meeting, E. B. Haskell, C. S. Smith and P. W. Tulley, spent its $100 on flowers, markers and holders for the graves, flags and a band, an oration, repairing graves and "a barge from Lowell." From then on the warrant asked each year for a sum "for the use of the Veterans on Memorial Day," and the money was paid to Coburn S. Smith, a lieutenant in the war, as "Treasurer of Billerica Veteran Association," who accounted for it in the town report. In 1890 the $100 went for flowers, holders, an oration, repairing graves, teams, the hall and painting the holders, and A. W. Allen's band; in 1892 the Talbot Mills band played. The sum was $125 in 1895 and $100 in 1899, and Smith was still receiving $125 "for veteran's use" in 1909. The veterans' standing in town did not extend to taxes: the assessors reported in 1890 that, asked by "one of the tax-paying veterans" in 1888 whether veterans were exempt from the poll tax, they had been advised by lawyers, the Adjutant General and the Tax Commissioner that they could not exempt them unless age, infirmity or poverty prevented payment.

In 1908, at the request of "a representative of the resident veterans of the Civil War" and on the motion of Sidney A. Bull, the town meeting authorized the selectmen to ask the Secretary of War for a cannon and voted $150 to bring it and mount it. It came that summer by way of Watervliet, New York, and the Boston and Maine Railroad; the veteran Marcus M. Cowdrey was paid for labor and Mahan and Meehan built the foundation and base. The naval cannon, on its granite base on the north side of the Common, was recorded there in the state's inventory of the Common's monuments in 1973. In 1912 The Billerica listed "The Billerica Veteran Association. G. A. R." with Franklin Jaquith, postmaster and veteran of the 6th Massachusetts, as president, Marcus Cowdrey as vice president and Coburn Smith as treasurer, with eighteen members. Its one meeting of the year was held on Memorial Day, in 1913 in the town hall, and on the Sunday before, the Unitarian church held special services "to which all veterans are invited." On March 25, 1913, the forty-eighth anniversary of the battle of Fort Stedman, the Billerica veterans entertained "a big delegation" of survivors of the 59th Massachusetts Infantry in the town hall at Billerica Centre, with a banquet served by the Ladies of the G. A. R. In the town's welcome home parade for the soldiers and sailors of the World War on July 4, 1919, the Civil War veterans rode in automobiles at the head of the line with the selectmen, and in 1921 the town voted $20 to add the names of four more of their dead comrades, Hiram E. Davis, Henry Newbury, Edward H. Persons and Calvin Tuttle, to the monument.

The Ladies of the G. A. R. took their circle's name from Asa John Patten, an eighteen-year-old cabinet maker of Company D, 33rd Massachusetts, who died at Chattanooga on November 1, 1863 of wounds received at Wauhatchie. In 1912 the circle had seventy members, with Mrs. Mina L. Gardner as president, Mrs. Lenora Bruce senior vice president, Hattie E. Proctor secretary and Mrs. Genevive Morley treasurer. It met on the first Wednesday of each month in I. O. O. F. Hall, and at times in Gardner Parker Hall, and a sewing circle, with Mrs. Jasper Bruce, wife of the grocer Jasper F. Bruce, as chairman, met monthly "for sewing and sociability" at members' homes. At the installation on January 1, 1913 Mrs. Gardner was again president, with Mrs. Leonora Brewster senior vice, Mrs. Susan Cowdrey junior vice, Mrs. Susan Jaquith chaplain and Mrs. Hallie P. Whitney treasurer. The department president, Emma T. Thurlow, made her annual visit on November 6, 1912; in February 1913 the circle met in Gardner Parker Hall to plan the year's work and decided to meet once a month instead of twice, and on Lincoln's Birthday Mrs. Gardner entertained the circle, "the comrades and sons of Veterans" at her home. Billerica had no Woman's Relief Corps of its own; the women of the Medford corps gave a concert in the town hall in February 1913.

The circle served the town as well as the veterans. The town paid the Ladies of the G. A. R. for suppers for the election officers in 1910 and 1911, and for years the women served the town meeting dinner, for which the meeting of 1931, on the motion of Mr. McLaughlin, gave them a unanimous vote of thanks "for serving the town meeting dinner on so many occasions in the past." The circle had a float in the 1919 welcome home parade, and the same year gave the schools a blue spruce tree "in memory of former pupils who gave their life in the World War." It gave the schools a silk national flag in 1926 and ten silk schoolroom flags in 1928, with more in 1929 and 1930, gifts the school reports credit to the Asa John Patten Circle.

The Sons of Veterans, the order of the veterans' sons, also had a camp in town. The officers it elected at the end of 1912 were Arthur Smith, commander, Fred Barton, senior vice commander, Harry Pasho, junior vice commander, Charles L. Burton, secretary, and Josiah Folsom, treasurer, with George Pasho, George Dole and H. W. Essex as the camp council. The Sons of Veterans marched with the Spanish War veterans in the parade of July 4, 1919. The records found give no name or number for the camp and no later notice of it.

After the First World War, Memorial Day passed to the new veterans of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (see Memorial Day in Billerica), though the town's accounts still carried a "G. A. R. Expense" of $245.15 in 1929, $230.29 in 1930 and $268.68 in 1931. Franklin Jaquith died in 1922 and Coburn S. Smith in 1927. Elias D. Hannon died on January 18, 1933 and Marcus M. Cowdrey on November 3, 1933, and the town report for 1933 printed memorials to both as members of the Grand Army of the Republic; at the next annual meeting, on the motion of Mr. Lloyd, the voters stood in silence for them and for the town officers who had died that year, "after which taps were sounded." The Ladies' circle outlived the veterans. In 1936 the warrant asked $75 "for rent and other expenses" of Asa John Patten Circle 20, but a letter was read from Mr. Wardell stating that no law allowed the town to pay the rent of the circle, a motion for money "to take care of the Grand Army records" was ruled out of order, and the article was dismissed; the meeting then asked a committee under Dr. A. Warren Stearns to raise the $75 from the citizens of the town. No later record of the circle was found.

Billerica Veteran Association, G.A.R.

Billerica Veteran Association, G.A.R.

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