Frederic S. Clark

Frederic Simmons Clark (1850-1929) ran the Talbot Mills at North Billerica for the family of his father-in-law, Governor Thomas Talbot, and for four decades was one of the town's leading citizens. According to the age given in the town's record of his death, he was born on October 9, 1850. He married Isabella White Talbot, the Governor's daughter. After the deaths of the founders, Charles P. Talbot in 1884 and Thomas Talbot in 1885, he became treasurer and general manager of the newly incorporated Talbot Mills, and he was later its president, the title the magazine Billerica gave him in 1912.

The Clarks lived at Red Gables on Mount Pleasant Street in North Billerica, which appears under his name on the map of 1889 and which they enlarged into an estate with gardens and a tennis court. For many years they also kept a house in Boston's Back Bay, at 17 Commonwealth Avenue from 1896, and after about 1914 they seem to have lived chiefly in North Billerica, where the 1920 census found them. He was remembered as the man most associated with village improvement in the mill village. He gave St. Anne's Mission in North Billerica its parish house, awarded the Talbot Mills' annual prizes for the best-kept premises and gardens of its workers, and served on the Billerica Improvement Association's Home and School Grounds Committee. He and his wife gave paintings to the town's schools in 1916, among them Thomas Hill's "The Sentinel," and Mrs. Clark gave a music cabinet to the Town Farm.

In 1885 he succeeded Governor Talbot as a trustee of the Howe School, and for years he conferred the diplomas at the school's graduations. He was chosen moderator of the town meetings of 1894 and 1896. In 1894 the town put him on the committee with J. Nelson Parker and Joseph Jaquith that built the new Town Hall, and in 1896 he presented its final report. He was a water commissioner from 1897 to 1907 and a sinking fund commissioner from 1901 to 1907, chaired the committee that drafted the town's resolutions at the memorial service for President McKinley in 1901, and sat on the Finance Committee in 1910. At town meetings he was a frequent mover of the appropriation votes. When the town created its park commission in 1913 he was one of the first three park commissioners, with Parker and Warren H. Manning, and he stayed on the board until 1926.

He died on February 18, 1929, aged 78.

References

1. Back Bay Houses, 17 Commonwealth
2. Cornell University Library, Guide to the Talbot Mills Graphics (company history)
3. Catalogue of the Howe School (1897), list of trustees
4. Annual Town Meeting, 1894
5. Annual Town Meeting, 1896 (Town Hall building committee)
6. Annual Town Meeting, 1913 (Park Commissioners chosen)
7. BILLERICA magazine (November 1912), Talbot Mills prizes
8. Deaths, 1929