1886 bequest is being doled out to recipients

The money is now being distributed in $500 chunks to the needy, honoring the memory of a quiet homebody whose death mask, black frilly bonnet, and crayon portrait can be found at the Historical Society.

“She was about as shy and retiring as they get,’’ said Dedham’s unofficial historian, Bob Hanson, now of Pepperell. “A tiny little thing.’’

The Shuttleworth Fund burst into the public eye recently as town officials and Town Meeting voters wrangled over the necessary legalities in order to distribute it. Although small amounts of money have flowed out of the fund at times, most of the balance has languished in a bank account - doubling, tripling, and quadrupling - because no one knew what to do with it.

Before bequeathing the cash to the town, Shuttleworth left $10,000 for a new library and another $10,000 for the current Historical Society building - formidable structures that would cost millions today, officials say.

Town fathers and mothers dedicated the 1888 “Early Record of the Town’’ to the memory of this quiet philanthropist. “Her munificent bequests . . . will make her name a household word. Generations to come will speak her praise,’’ they said.

That, alas, has not been the case. Shuttleworth’s name is not a household word.

But here’s to second chances, now that lawmakers have fine-tuned the process to distribute her money.

Residents can now apply for $500 grants to help with high fuel bills, pricey prescriptions, and other types of “worthy’’ needs, said Michael Winbourne, a lawyer who heads up the town’s Commissioners of Trust Funds panel and a member of the Shuttleworth Committee.

“We’re especially looking for those who have fallen between the cracks of other service agencies,’’ Winbourne said.

“Like people facing shut-off’’ by utilities, added town treasurer Robin Reyes. “We’ve had a couple of those.’’

Dedham has a series of trusts established by citizens’ wills over the years. But unlike Shuttleworth’s, most are for scholarships or nursing services. And when Winbourne went to probate court recently to read the wills, he discovered a surprise: Although the Shuttleworth Committee was formed last winter to distribute the money, Hannah Shuttleworth’s will specified that funds be approved only by official “overseers of the poor.’’

Dedham does not have an overseer of the poor, he said.

Like most cities and towns, Dedham once had a specific governmental body that kept track of the indigent who often worked, lived, and died at a community’s poor farm. But Dedham abolished its version of the oversight panel in 1976 to cut down on “superfluous committees,’’ Winbourne explained.

To make things legal, voters at the May Town Meeting revised bylaws to designate selectmen as Dedham’s overseers of the poor. They, in turn, officially appointed the Shuttleworth Committee to hand out the cash. Members include Winbourne, Reyes, assistant town administrator Nancy Baker, and health director Catherine Cardinale.

As of early June, Dedham had seven applications for funds from the Shuttleworth Fund, Reyes said.

One grant was distributed through the town’s Youth Commission for a student who needed help buying sports equipment. Another boost was given to a family facing homelessness. Reyes is encouraging more people who have legitimate needs to reach out.

Requests can be sent to Robin Reyes, Town Treasurer, at Dedham Town Hall, 26 Bryant St., Dedham, MA 02026.

The Shuttleworth Committee will spend no more than 10 percent of its expendable balance each year; the will also states that the original $32,000 investment must be left intact.

Hannah Shuttleworth gave almost everything she had to the town, yet little is known about her. Born in 1800, at 16 she was taken in by her uncle, Dr. Nathaniel Ames.

Later, she inherited the doctor’s money and put the entire sum in the bank.

“Women in previous centuries were not considered that important,’’ explained Dedham Historical Society executive director Ron Frazier. “The earliest settlers in Dedham traced men’s lines, not women’s.’’

Shuttleworth didn’t go out, said Hanson, the unofficial historian, “but people came to visit her.’’ After sorting through her uncle’s diaries and other relics from his years at Harvard, “she became a font of knowledge about the old days in Dedham.’’

After she died, in 1886, Shuttleworth was already buried when friends and others realized that no image existed of her. So, they had her exhumed.

“It had been three or four days when they brought someone in from Boston to make a plaster death mask,’’ Hanson said. That, according to town history, was “Gariboldi,’’ a statuary maker.

Shuttleworth’s friends described her features to Dedham resident Annie R. Slafter, who drew the crayon portrait now on display at the Historical Society. So is the death mask, which spent several generations in a box on a shelf, Hanson said. And the black frilly bonnet she had on at death.

In the 1888 Dedham history book, editors Don Gleason Hill and Carlos Slafter said Shuttleworth deserved a permanent memorial to her memory.

“But the most suitable memorial, as well as the most enduring, will be the gratitude in the hearts and the praise upon the lips of our people, who, from generation to generation, shall receive entertainment and instruction from our literary institutions - to the increased facilities of which she so liberally contributed - or shall be the recipients of the fund which her bounty has provided.’’

Michele Morgan Bolton can be reached at mmbolton1@verizon.net.