Forrest F. Collier

Forrest F. Collier was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on July 14, 1875, the son of Abram T. and Addie I. (Foster) Collier. According to his obituary in the Boston Globe, quoted on his Find a Grave memorial, he graduated from Harvard College in 1899 and Harvard Law School in 1902, worked a year as an attorney for the Boston Elevated Railway, and then practiced law in Boston and Billerica; he had also been an alderman in Chelsea. On October 29, 1903, he married Lucy Bryant Foster of Billerica, later the town's Planning Board chairman and library president Lucy B. Collier. Their son Abram Thurlow Collier became chief executive of the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Collier quickly became one of the most active speakers at Billerica town meetings, a lawyer who moved amendments, tablings and points of order. He was the champion of Tree Warden Francis J. Dolan in his quarrel with the selectmen over the gypsy moth work. At the special meeting of June 1908 he carried a resolution that the selectmen "be ordered to approve all reasonable and current bills" of the Tree Warden, and in June 1910, as a justice of the peace, he issued the warrant for another special meeting to fund Dolan's work. Selectman Francis A. D. Singhi protested that the meeting was illegal because the justice who called it was Dolan's attorney; Collier's motion to borrow $1,000 for the moth work found no seconder, and the meeting adjourned by two votes.

He sat on the Finance Committee in the 1910s, once signing a minority recommendation on fire protection for South Billerica, and he ran for selectman several times. At the special election of July 22, 1916, the registrars' recount gave Prescott L. Pasho 202 votes to Collier's 201. He was elected in 1918, finishing third behind Thomas Talbot Clark and Thomas F. Sheridan, and served a year with them on the board, which also made him a fence viewer. At the 1919 town meeting he moved the appropriation of $500 for "properly recognizing the services of all Billerica men" who had served in the World War. In the Republican primary of 1928 for representative in the Seventeenth District he ran second to Harry Dunlap Brown.

In 1928 the selectmen, troubled by the cost of the town's lawsuits of 1926 and 1927, decided it was "the part of wisdom to appoint a fellow townsman, an attorney well qualified, to act as its counsel, and named Forrest F. Collier." He served as Town Counsel into the 1930s; in 1934 the selectmen reported that the minor suits against the town "have been referred to Mr. Forrest F. Collier with authority to represent the town." The obituary adds that he was an accomplished violinist who played for many years with the Orchestra of the Harvard Musical Association and organized a Harvard Alumni Orchestra in the 1920s, and that he was a Mason and a member of the Odd Fellows and the Grange.

Lucy B. Collier died in 1947, and in December of that year he married again. He continued his practice until 1961, when he moved to Miami, Florida. He died there on December 7, 1970, at the age of 95, and was buried in the North Cemetery in Billerica.

References

1. Forrest Foster Collier (1875-1970), Find a Grave (birth, death, burial; Boston Globe obituary of Dec. 9, 1970)
2. Marriages, 1903 (Forrest F. Collier of Chelsea and Lucy Bryant Foster of Billerica, Oct. 29)
3. Special town meeting, June 1908 (Collier resolution on the Tree Warden's moth bills)
4. Special town meeting, June 30, 1910 (warrant by Forrest F. Collier, Justice of the Peace; protest; his motion)
5. Recount of the special election for selectman, July 1916 (Pasho 202, Collier 201)
6. Annual election, 1918 (Selectmen: Clark 277, Sheridan 254, Collier 200)
7. Annual town meeting, 1919, Article 17 (Collier motion to recognize the service of Billerica men in the war)
8. Republican primary, 1928 (Representative, 17th District: Harry Dunlap Brown 658, Forrest F. Collier 242)
9. Report of the Selectmen, 1928 (Forrest F. Collier named Town Counsel)
10. Report of the Selectmen, 1934 (suits referred to Forrest F. Collier)