Harry D. Brown

Harry Dunlap Brown was a Billerica farmer who represented the town in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1929 to 1934 and served on town boards for four decades. He was a graduate of the Massachusetts Agricultural College in the class of 1914, and in 1938 and 1939 the alumni bulletin of the college, by then Massachusetts State College, listed "Harry Dunlap Brown '14 of Billerica" as president of its Associate Alumni. The town's jury lists of the 1920s and 1930s give his occupation as farmer. On October 22, 1919 he married Blanche Libby Meserve of Roxbury, and the town birth records name Harry Dunlap Brown Jr., born December 31, 1921, and Elizabeth Libbie Brown, born November 2, 1924, as children of Harry and Blanche.

In the 1920s and 1930s the family lived on Wyman Road in the Joseph Blanchard house, built in 1759, which the state historic inventory describes as the home of "the Honorable Harry Dunlap Brown" and a farmstead with "famous orchards." About 1950 the farm was sold to a developer, and in 1951 town meeting was asked to rezone land on Wyman Road owned by Harry Dunlap Brown and Blanche L. Brown for business use. He was active in the farm and youth work of the Middlesex County Extension Service, signing its Billerica report as Town Director in 1934 and serving on the town's 4-H committee in the late 1930s.

Town meeting first elected him a Bowers Fund Commissioner in 1921, for a term of five years, and re-elected him to that commission term after term, including in 1926, 1931, 1951 and 1956. He was a member of the Board of Public Welfare from 1928 to 1930, and in 1930 he was chairman of the local committee on unemployment that Governor Allen asked the towns to form, which registered ninety-two unemployed residents and found temporary work for seventeen of them.

In November 1928 he was elected Representative to the General Court for the Seventeenth Middlesex District, made up of Billerica, Tewksbury, Burlington, Dracut and Wilmington, receiving 4,616 votes with no opponent on the ballot. A Republican, he was re-elected in 1930 and 1932 and served until 1934. That year he sought the Republican nomination for sheriff of Middlesex County; Billerica gave him 585 votes, but the nomination went to Joseph M. McElroy.

From 1936 he was a Cemetery Commissioner, serving for many years with Frederick G. Farquhar and Evelen A. Spaulding, and he was often appointed a teller at town meetings. He resigned from the cemetery commission in 1958, and Frank T. Dignon was elected in his place.

References

1. Marriages, 1919
2. Annual Town Meeting, 1921 (Bowers Fund)
3. Representative District Return, 1928
4. Committee on Unemployment Report, 1930
5. State Primary, 1934 (Sheriff)
6. Cemetery Commissioners Report, 1958 (resignation)
7. MACRIS BIL.201, Joseph Blanchard House, 49 Wyman Road
8. Massachusetts State College Alumni Bulletin, 1938-1939 (president of the Associate Alumni)