Bowers Fund Commissioner

The Bowers Fund is Billerica's oldest charitable trust for the poor, and its board, called in turn the Bowers Fund Committee (from 1871), the Bowers Fund Commission (from about 1921) and again the Bowers Fund Committee or trustees (in recent reports), is chosen by Town Meeting. Members serve staggered five-year terms, one seat falling vacant each year.

Origin. The fund was left by Mary (Polly) and Fanny Bowers, unmarried daughters of Dr. William Bowers (1744-1800, Harvard 1769), who lived on the Bowers homestead on the south corner of West Street, facing the Common. Hazen's History of Billerica (1883) records that Mary and Fanny "left about $11,000 to the town, the income to be used for the benefit of the worthy poor of the town", while their sister Priscilla left her estate to the Baptist church. According to a history printed in the 1963 town report, the two sisters made almost identical wills on December 9, 1862, leaving their entire estate (except one bequest of $500) to the town "for the benefit of the poor of said Billerica". Mary died April 14, 1870, and Fanny on March 8, 1871. At a town meeting in May 1871 the town accepted the property (Article 5), and under Article 6 it authorized the Select Board of the day, Dudley Foster, Israel A. Colson and David L. Mason, to sell the real and personal estate at public auction and set up a fund with the proceeds. The same vote created the committee to administer the income, and provided that two of its members should be women. The committee sold two undivided thirds of the Bowers homestead (about 1 3/4 acres in the Centre) to William H. Osborn by deed of May 16, 1871 (Middlesex North Registry, Book 80, Page 253). Because the clerk's record of the 1871 meeting did not show the warrant had been posted, a special town meeting in 1896 ratified the sale and the Osborn deed.

Administration. Until the 1890s the town used much of the principal itself, giving its own notes in return (notes of December 1871, 1873, 1874, 1878 and 1885 totalling $9,160 by 1890). The published fund stood at $12,756.35 in 1887 and $13,170.84 in 1895, when the reports first list it with the Joseph Stearns Fund (a $2,000 bequest of 1885 "for the benefit of the deserving poor ... similar to the Bowers Fund", later merged with it). In 1897 the selectmen reported the fund was $3,000 smaller than the published figures, and in 1899 a committee (John A. Richardson, E. F. Dickinson and Franklin Jaquith) found the town's use of the principal "anything but favorable"; the town then borrowed $9,000 to restore the principal so that the income could be "spent as directed in the wills of Mary and Fannie Bowers". The committee also once acquired the Chessman property in Holbrook for the town, which was sold in 1912. The committee paid out its income for cash aid, fuel, groceries, shoes, clothing and medical care for needy residents; in the 1920s through 1950s its disbursements appear in the reports of the Overseer of the Poor and the Board of Public Welfare.

Election. Members were chosen at the annual town meeting, usually as Article 1 of the warrant (Article 5 or 8 in the 1890s), one each year for five years, with extra choices to fill unexpired terms. The appointment is still made by Town Meeting; from 1992 it was made to the annual fall town meeting in October. By the 1960s the Welfare Department had taken over most relief, and the fund's spending fell to under $100 a year; the 1963 town report suggested using part of it for scholarships. Michael J. Rea Jr., appointed in 1994 after the death of Henry F. Collins (a member since 1964), gave the committee's reports to Town Meeting as its chairman from 1994 through at least 2013, and was reappointed in 2024. In 2025 the principal balance was $161,285.59 with an expendable balance of $7,573.07.

Roster notes. Members are known from the town meeting minutes printed in the annual reports from 1894 (report of 1895) on; no list of the members between 1871 and 1893 has been found, and the reports for 1893, 1894, 1898 and 1912 are missing, so the 1897 and 1911 choices are unknown. Sources: Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Bowers genealogy; Billerica annual town reports 1885-2025, especially 1887, 1892, 1895, 1897, 1900, 1913 and 1963; The Billerica (1913); "Old Families of the First Parish".