George W. Hannon
George W. Hannon
| Born | 1889-09-18 Billerica |
| Died | 1921-03-30 |
George W. Hannon (1889-1921) was a North Billerica man who served as a second lieutenant in the Chemical Warfare Service in the First World War and died in 1921, at the age of thirty-one. George W. Hannon Square, at the meeting of Elm Street, Lowell Street and Talbot Avenue by the North Billerica post office, is named for him.
He was born in Billerica on September 18, 1889, the son of Elias D. and Catherine F. Hannon. His father was a wool sorter and later an elevator man at the Talbot Mills, living at 36 Elm Street in North Billerica, and served the town as an election officer; he died in 1933. During the war the town's honor roll listed George W. Hannon as a second lieutenant of the Chemical War Service at the American University Experiment Station in Washington, D.C., the army's center for research on gas warfare. He died on March 30, 1921.
That year the town meeting appointed a committee to consider "the naming and dedicating of squares at the intersection of public streets in memory of its residents who died in the service of their country during the World War." The committee reported in 1922 and no action was taken then, but by 1931 the directory listed the George W. Hannon Square at Elm, Lowell and Talbot Avenues. In 1937 the town paved Lowell Street from Holt Street "to George Hannon Square," and in 1938 rebuilt Talbot Avenue from the square to the Talbot Mills Oval. The square's markers, taken up when the sidewalk was built, were repaired and replaced in 1938 and 1939, and in 1961 the town accepted a park bench for Hannon Square from the Nineteen Hundred Club.