Jonathan Bowers

Jonathan Bowers was born in Billerica on May 13, 1751, a son of Capt. William Bowers and his second wife, Martha Winship of Lexington. His grandfather, Capt. Jonathan Bowers, had come from Chelmsford and was the ancestor of the family in town. His older brother was the physician Dr. William Bowers, whose daughters Mary and Fanny later left about $11,000 to the town, the income to be used "for the benefit of the worthy poor." On May 15, 1783, Jonathan married Dorcas Abbot, daughter of Oliver Abbot, and a son, Alexander, is recorded in the town births the same year.

He was one of the leading men of the town in the years after the Revolution. Billerica chose him a selectman for seven years running, from 1789 through 1795, and sent him as its representative to the General Court in 1795, 1796, 1798 and 1802, following Edward Farmer, who had held the seat through most of the 1780s and early 1790s. When the town built its new meeting house in 1797 and sold the pews on December 8 of that year, "Jonathan Bowers, Esq." paid $181.50 for pew number 8 on the lower floor.

The first post office in Billerica was established on October 7, 1797, and Bowers was appointed its first postmaster. He kept the office for more than a quarter of a century: the next appointment, of William Richardson, was not made until May 26, 1824.

The date of his death is uncertain. Hazen's genealogy gives February 21, 1804, a date the town's vital records attach to a Jonathan Bowers without an age, but the same records also list a Jonathan Bowers who died in April 1829 "a. 78," taken from a gravestone in the Old South Cemetery. That age matches his birth in May 1751 and his service as postmaster until 1824.

References

1. Vital Records of Billerica, births: Jonathan, son of William and Martha Bowers, May 13, 1751; Alexander, son of Jonathan and Dorcas, 1783
2. Vital Records of Billerica, marriages: Jonathan Bowers Jr. and Dorcas Abbot, May 15, 1783
3. Vital Records of Billerica, deaths: Jonathan Bowers, Feb. 21, 1804, and Jonathan Bowers, Apr. 1829, aged 78 (Old South Cemetery gravestone)
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 14: Bowers family, Capt. Jonathan and Capt. William
5. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 15: Jonathan Bowers (no. 5), b. 1751, and Dr. William Bowers and the Bowers bequest
6. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 304: representatives list, Jonathan Bowers 1795-96, 1798, 1802
7. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 306: selectmen list, Jonathan Bowers 1789-95
8. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 307: first post office established 1797 Oct. 7, Jonathan Bowers postmaster; William Richardson appointed 1824 May 26
9. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 263: sale of pews in the 1797 meeting house, Jonathan Bowers, Esq., pew 8
10. Farmer, Historical Memoir of Billerica (1816): Jonathan Bowers, Esq., among the representatives succeeding Edward Farmer