Dudley Foster

Dudley Foster (1809-1895) kept Billerica's records and its money for four decades as Town Clerk and treasurer, a longer tenure than any of his predecessors. He was born in Billerica on November 15, 1809, a son of Capt. Samuel Foster and Anne Whitney, who had married in 1802. His father was a shoemaker who had settled about 1800 on the road to Boston, near the site of the later Howe School, with his shop beside the house, and when Dudley's son John was born in 1844 the town recorded Dudley himself as a cordwainer. In November 1838 his father deeded him an acre and a quarter next to the homestead, "reserving shop," and the house now at 377 Boston Road, listed in the state inventory as the Dudley Foster house, is believed to date from that time. After his father's death in 1857 he moved into the family homestead next door, and Hazen found him in 1883 living "near the Howe school."

On May 21, 1835 he married Louisa Pollard, born May 23, 1810, a daughter of William Pollard and Arethusa Manning. Their sons were Francis Dudley, born August 30, 1836, who by 1883 lived in North Andover, and John Howard, born March 9, 1844, then a merchant in Springfield, who later came home to Billerica as John H. Foster.

He was a selectman from 1847 to 1850, from 1857 to 1860, from 1869 to 1873 and again in 1881, fourteen years in all, and he represented the district in the General Court in 1867. He became town clerk and treasurer in the middle 1850s and held both offices for the rest of his life, from the 1880s also serving as registrar; during the Civil War it was he who procured and paid out the state aid and kept the town's record of its soldiers. When Zadok Howe's will founded the Howe School in 1852, he was named one of its first trustees. He was the board's treasurer, and by 1883 he was the only member of the original board still serving. As a selectman in 1871 he was one of the three men the town authorized to sell the Bowers estate and set up the Bowers Fund, and at his death he was a member of the Bowers Fund Committee.

In 1869 the town named him to the committee, with Gardner Parker, Thomas Talbot and Christopher C. Hussey, that eventually produced Henry A. Hazen's History of Billerica (1883). Hazen wrote that he was "specially indebted" to Mr. Foster and his "good wife (whose recent death makes their pleasant home desolate)" for the lists of town officers and for an alphabetical copy of the baptisms in the First Church records that the two had made. Mrs. M. H. Sage, recalling the old families of the First Parish, remembered him as "the counsellor of all his neighbors in time of sorrow, and that without pay."

He was re-elected clerk and treasurer without opposition in March 1894, and that November, at 84, he served as deputy warden of Precinct One at the election. He died in Billerica on January 3, 1895, aged 85 years and 48 days. In their annual report the selectmen mourned "our much esteemed and venerable townsman," thirty-eight years town clerk and forty years treasurer, "a longer term than occupied by any of his predecessors," through the Civil War and the railroad loans, and wrote that during his long illness his "devoted wife and son, John H." had carried on the work, so that no temporary officers had to be appointed until his death. The town meeting of March 1895 appointed a committee to draw up resolutions in his memory.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 55, FOSTER family #14, #16
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Introduction pp. iii-iv (Historical Committee; thanks to Mr. Foster and his wife)
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), pp. 304-305, lists of town clerks and representatives
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 307, list of selectmen
5. Catalogue of Howe School (1880), Trustees and officers
6. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850, births p. 82
7. Report of the Selectmen, 1895 (tribute on his death)
8. Deaths for 1895, Town Report 1896

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.