William Blanchard

Born	1806-10-05
Died	1889-01-25 Billerica, MA
Select Board
In Office	1852 - 1854
Central Postmaster
In Office	1857 - 1859
Preceded by	William H. Blanchard
Succeeded by	Benjamin L. Judkins
Tax Collector
In Office	1863 - 1864
Preceded by	William S. Gleason
Succeeded by	Charles H. Parker
Father	Francis Blanchard
Mother	Sarah Stickney
Spouses	Lydia Poor (m. 1830-06-24 )

William Blanchard (1806 to 1889) was a merchant at Billerica Centre who served as the town's postmaster in the 1850s, as a selectman in 1852 and 1853, and as collector of taxes during the Civil War. Hazen's register gives his birth as October 5, 1806, the son of Francis Blanchard and Sarah (Stickney) Blanchard, and describes him as "merchant and postmaster for some years." On June 24, 1830, he married Lydia Ann Poor of Andover. Of their seven children, Ann, Catherine Amelia, Emma Ann, Harriet Ellen and John Edwin all died young; William Henry, born in 1833, married Ann J. Burt in 1853 and died on October 16, 1861; and Mary Frances was born in 1844.

In 1841, describing himself as a yeoman, he bought about five acres on the main road north of the Centre from the deputy sheriff Thomas Sumner, whose wife Rebecca was a Blanchard cousin. This was the old John Baldwin House, and Stearns family tradition credits Blanchard with remodeling it, taking out the central chimney and moving the front door to the gable end facing the street. He enlarged the lot with an acre from Ichabod Everett in 1844, bounded at "said Blanchard's garden lot in front of his house," and with three more acres from Marshall Preston in 1859, when the deed called him a trader. His son William H. Blanchard was appointed postmaster on June 11, 1855, and William himself on April 4, 1857, serving until Benjamin L. Judkins succeeded him in April 1859.

He was elected a selectman in 1852 and 1853, serving with William H. Odiorne. During the Civil War he was the town's Collector of Taxes for 1863; the accounts printed in 1865 show $1,544.11 received from him on that year's taxes, $146.32 paid him for collecting them, and $152.54 in abatements allowed on his list. The same accounts show him supplying alcohol to the almshouse and caring for "poor strangers," and in 1866 he was paid for wood delivered to a widow on the town's charity.

In November 1869 he and his wife sold the nine and a half acre homestead with its buildings to Albert Stearns for $3,500, taking back a mortgage of $2,400, and moved nearer the village. In 1882 he bought a house on Cummings Street from Charles H. Porter, and in 1886, the year the town paid men for "watching fire on premises owned by Wm. Blanchard," he deeded it to his daughter Fannie M. Blanchard. He died at Billerica on January 25, 1889, aged 83 by the town's record.

William Blanchard

William Blanchard

References