Charles E. Hosmer

Dr. Charles Edward Hosmer (1837-1929) was a Billerica physician for half a century and one of the town's keepers of its history. He was born in Bedford, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1837, the son of Leander Hosmer and Sophronia Wilson, whose father Isaac Wilson was a Billerica man; in old age Leander came to live with his son in Billerica. His grandfather John Hosmer fought at Lexington and was present at the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga, and his college magazine called the doctor "probably the only living real grandson of the Battle of Lexington." He prepared at Phillips Academy, Andover, and graduated from Brown University in 1861.

He was taking advanced courses at Brown when the Civil War began, and he left his books to serve a hundred-day enlistment in Company B of the 10th Rhode Island Volunteers. On June 2, 1864, he entered the United States Navy as an assistant surgeon, and he was honorably discharged on October 13, 1865. He then finished at Harvard Medical School, taking his M.D. in 1867, and on April 16 of that year he married Sarah E. Breck of Newton. After four years of practice in Waltham he settled in Billerica in 1872, where he remained doctor and surgeon until he retired about 1923. The couple's children included Mary Agnes, born in 1868, Victor Jerome, born in 1872, who became the town's tax collector (Victor J. Hosmer), Alice Amy, born in 1874, and Maurice William, born in 1875.

Hosmer served the town in many ways. He sat on the School Committee in the mid 1880s and wrote its annual report, and in 1894 town meeting chose him with Dr. O. A. Flint and Dr. John B. Tyler as the town's Board of Health. Its report, which he signed, described inspecting wells, cesspools and vaults, analyzing drinking water, and warning of sickness in the North Village caused by polluted wells. In November 1895 the Twentieth Middlesex District elected him its representative, and in 1896 he was re-elected as a Republican from the new Twenty-seventh District, serving in the legislatures of 1896 and 1897. He was a regular voice at town meeting, moving money for macadam roads and for wiring the Town Hall for electricity, and in 1903 he and Sidney A. Bull, with others, gave the town a Chickering grand piano for the hall. He was also active in the Grand Army post, was president of the Billerica Public Library Association, and in 1912 was elected president of the Billerica Board of Trade, where his address on "What Billerica Needs Most" named public spirit and civic pride.

His love of local history ran through all of it. Henry A. Hazen thanked him in the History of Billerica (1883) for important aid in preparing the map of ancient Billerica. He was active in the Billerica Historical Society from its organization in 1894: as its Historian he wrote the society's notes on the events of the year for the 1896 town report, he was secretary of a citizens' meeting at the society's room that revised the proposed names of the town's streets, and he was still a director in 1912. Clubs and societies in town repeatedly asked him for his reminiscences of Billerica history and for talks such as one on John Brown.

Dr. Hosmer died at the Lowell General Hospital on April 8, 1929, aged 91, after fracturing his hip, the injury complicated by pneumonia. He was survived by two sons, three daughters and three grandsons.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 75, HOSMER family
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Preface (Dr. C. E. Hosmer and the Map of Ancient Billerica)
3. Brown Alumni Monthly (1929), obituary of Dr. Charles Edward Hosmer
4. Hosmer Genealogy: Descendants of James Hosmer (1928), no. 1303, Charles Edward Hosmer
5. Journal of the American Medical Association, 27 April 1929, Deaths
6. Board of Health Report, 1896
7. Billerica Historical Society notes by C. E. Hosmer, Historian, Town Report 1896
8. BILLERICA magazine, vol. 1 no. 5 (October 1912), Board of Trade (Hosmer elected president)