Sears J. Cook
Sears J. Cook
| Born | 1834-09-29 |
| Died | 1924-10-19 Billerica, MA |
| Town Assessor | |
| In Office | 1895 - 1897 |
| Preceded by | George F. Colson |
| Succeeded by | Josiah Wright |
| Overseer of the Poor | |
| In Office | 1895 - 1913 |
| Preceded by | George F. Colson |
| Succeeded by | Warren Holden |
| Sealer of Weights and Measures | |
| In Office | 1900 - 1901 |
| Preceded by | Sidney A. Bull |
| Succeeded by | Roscoe C. Baker |
| Town Assessor | |
| In Office | 1903 - 1909 |
| Preceded by | George F. Colson |
| Succeeded by | Albert H. Jones |
| Children | Arthur |
Sears James Cook (1834-1924) was the town officer of the 1890s and 1900s, not the Revolutionary era selectman Sears Cook, who was his great-grandfather. He was born on September 29, 1834, the son of Sears Cook (1807-1836) and Fanny T. Butters of Wilmington, who had married in Billerica in 1832, and a grandson of selectman Francis Cook. An older brother, also named Sears James, had died in infancy in 1833, and his sister Fanny Jane married Levi H. Reed in 1853. His father died on December 1, 1836, when he was two. In April 1837 his widowed mother married his father's brother John Cook, who died that November, and she later married Hiram Harrington.
He married Abbie Buck of Wilmington on February 10, 1861. Hazen wrote in 1883 that he lived "in the village, near Fox hill," with sons Arthur Sears, born March 3, 1866, and James Herbert, born August 8, 1869. In 1878 he bought a lot of about two and a quarter acres on Andover Road, where the Sears James Cook House was built about 1880. On October 5, 1887 he sold that house to Leonora Spaulding, widow of Abel Spalding Jr., and her children and bought their homestead on Main Street, north of the Common, the old Pollard tavern (Ensign Jonathan Danforth Jr. House). The Cooks lived there for about sixty years; his son Arthur S. Cook, a butcher, inherited it under his will.
After narrowly losing in 1894, he was elected an assessor and overseer of the poor in 1895. He sat on the Board of Assessors until 1897 and again from 1903 to 1909, served as Sealer of Weights and Measures in 1900 and 1901, and remained an overseer of the poor until 1913. He was also on the town's jury lists, and the town reports of 1914 and 1915 show him supplying wood for a family on poor relief and fuel to the town. He died in Billerica on October 19, 1924, aged 90 years and 20 days.