George F. Colson

George Farmer Colson (1839-1914) was a North Billerica farmer who lived on his mother's family homestead on what is now Colson Street, and who served the town as selectman, assessor and overseer of the poor through much of the 1880s and 1890s. He was born in Billerica on September 18, 1839, according to the town's vital records (Hazen's genealogical register gives September 29). He was the son of Israel A. Colson, a native of Uxbridge, and Rachel Farmer, daughter of Oliver Farmer, who had married in 1832 and lived at the Farmer place by the Baptist church in North Billerica. His father was a selectman in 1860 and from 1869 to 1873. His sisters were Caroline Augusta, who died in 1857, and Mary Elizabeth, who married Julius Jockow of Lowell in 1862.

The house, a brick-ended Federal dwelling built in 1803 by Oliver and Hannah (Sprake) Farmer, came to the Colsons through his mother. In 1884 Israel Colson sold it to George with its barn and all his tools and implements, and the 1889 map shows it under George's name. Israel died in 1889 at the age of 85. In 1882 George had married Clara Emma Proctor (1848-1928) of Lowell. A souvenir pamphlet printed for Billerica's Independence Day celebration of 1892 said of him: "Mr. Colson, who is a native of the town, has held several offices of public trust. He was for nine years selectman, assessor, and overseer of the poor." It added that he was agent for the North Billerica property of Mrs. A. Jones and ran a milk route in town.

He joined the Select Board in 1881 and served on it until 1890 with Ebenezer Baker and Coburn S. Smith. In those years the selectmen were also the town's assessors and overseers of the poor, and for a time its highway surveyors, and the accounts show Colson repairing bridges and town-owned houses, fencing a highway and perambulating the town lines. When Edward B. Haskell took his seat in 1890 he became one of the town's auditors. He came back as assessor and overseer of the poor in 1894, when he and John E. Rowell edged out Haskell and Sears J. Cook by four or five votes. He was an assessor again from 1901 to 1903, and in 1902 he led the poll for that office with 451 votes. The jury lists of those years describe him as a farmer.

Around 1900 he began selling lots on the west side of Colson Street, the road past his house from Lowell Street to Treble Cove Road, which appears under that name in the list of streets the Billerica Historical Society drew up for the town in 1899. In 1907 H. W. Sheldon surveyed for him a plan of a thirty-foot road between Lowell Road and Brick Kiln Road, and in the same year he sold the six acres on Colson Street that Lillian V. Kohlrausch offered the town in 1913 as the Charles H. Kohlrausch Jr., Playground (see Charles H. Kohlrausch). In January 1913 a high wind partly brought down his barn, and the fire department's steamer came to help anchor it. George F. Colson died on January 18, 1914, aged 74. His heirs engaged Warren H. Manning to lay out about sixty acres of the farm as the Colson Heights subdivision, and Edgar F. Twombly, administrator of his estate, began marketing its lots that year. The barn, remodeled as a house, still stands at 36 Colson Street.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 25, COLSON
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), list of selectmen, p. 307
3. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850, births, COLSON
4. Selectmen's accounts, services as Selectman, Assessor and Overseer of the Poor (Town Report 1885)
5. Warrant, Article 12: Kohlrausch Playground on Colson Street (Town Report 1913)
6. Deaths recorded in 1914 (Town Report 1914)
7. MACRIS BIL.98, Oliver Farmer II House, 34 Colson Street
8. MACRIS BIL.401, Charles W. Pierce House (history of Colson Heights and the Colson family)