Person

Burton O. Sanford

Fence Viewer
In Office	1912 - 1916 1926 - 1927
Select Board
In Office	1912 - 1916 1926 - 1927

Burton O. Sanford was a farmer on the Boston Road near Bridge Street, close to the Corner Bridge over the Concord River, who served on the Select Board from 1912 to 1916 and again in 1926. The 1912 Lowell directory lists him on "Boston rd. n. Bridge," and the fire alarm box at the corner of Bridge and Boston Roads was described as "nr B. O. Sanford's." The town's jury lists give his occupation as farmer from 1909 to 1930 and as machinist from 1931 into the 1940s. In 1912 he was superintendent of the Sunday School of the North Billerica Baptist Church, which then had 190 members, and his wife, Mrs. Sanford, spoke before the Nineteen Hundred Club. A child was born to Burton and Alice Sanford in December 1915.

He was already a selectman when the board, with Thomas F. Sheridan and Francis A. D. Singhi, signed the warrant for the annual meeting of March 1912, and that month he headed the poll with 320 votes; he was re-elected in 1913 with 364 votes, in 1914 and in 1915, and was chairman of the board in 1914 and 1915, serving with Josiah Wright and Ralph E. Manning. Like the other selectmen he also served as a Fence Viewer. At the March 1912 meeting he moved that a committee prepare resolutions on the "long and faithful service" of the late moderator Charles H. Kohlrausch Jr.. In July 1912 the town named him, Sheridan and Wright the building committee for a new bridge over the Concord River at the Fordway, and the board reported that the concrete bridge was "one of the finest in the County of Middlesex." It cost $25,000, shared by the town ($8,950), the Bay State Street Railway ($8,950) and the county ($7,100); the county accepted it in 1914 after a retaining wall was built on its west side, and in 1915 the old bridge iron was sold to David Ziskind and Company of Lowell at $6 a ton.

The board's reports under his chairmanship describe a steady program of road and light improvements. In 1914 the selectmen installed eleven new street lights, extended the macadam on the Boston and Concord Roads with money from the state's "Motor Vehicle Fund" and the county, perambulated the town's bounds with all its neighbors, and with the highway surveyor bought a ten-ton Buffalo-Pitts steam roller for $2,000, believing the town would now "obtain better roads at less cost." In 1915 they let the contract for a new concrete bridge over the Shawsheen River on the Boston Road to Harvey W. Tarbell of Lowell for $7,436.50, bought fire extinguishers for the Pinehurst Park district, and warned that the old wooden Middle Bridge was "fast falling away." He was also one of the committee that investigated the need for a new high school and then, with Charles H. Eames, Maurice A. Buck, Nathaniel R. Jones and Thomas T. Clark, one of the building committee for the Howe High School. The committee bought 6.8 acres south of Bennett Hall on Main Street from Fred W. Fisher for $6,000, laid the cornerstone on November 22, 1915, and opened the building to classes on October 16, 1916; it was dedicated on December 8, 1916.

Sanford did not run again in 1916. In 1917 he served on a committee to report on a Board of Public Works or a town manager, and in 1918 town meeting named him to the committee to draft a town manager bill and petition the legislature for it. He ran for selectman each year from 1922 to 1925 without success, finishing fifth in 1925 with 698 votes, a result confirmed on a recount. That year he gave the town, through the Town Forest Committee, two strips of land fifty feet wide along the western shore of the Concord River, one of them running about a thousand feet to the Corner Bridge.

In February 1926 he was elected to the board once more, with Buck and Sheridan. Their report for 1926 tells of a new Maxim motor ladder truck bought for $7,000, a year in which the town spent more on snow removal "than Westford, Dracut and Tewksbury combined," and a lawsuit brought by Highway Surveyor Edgar F. Twombly to stop the selectmen's contracts for macadam on Mount Pleasant and River Streets and the Concord Road; the Superior Court dismissed the bill in January 1927. The board opposed the abandonment of the Bedford branch railroad, proposed moving the Kohlrausch Memorial Fountain to the north end of the common to ease traffic in Billerica Square, and put policewomen on duty at the dance halls at Pinehurst Park and Nutting's Pond. He was defeated in February 1927 and did not hold town office again. His name remained on the jury lists as a machinist until 1947; the town reports examined do not record his death.

Burton O. Sanford

Burton O. Sanford

References