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Hartford Courant, Maarch 9, 1898

 

THE ZOAR BRIDGE CHURCH MEMBER'S LETTER    

 

To the Editor of the Courant:

 

I notice an editorial in “The Courant” this morning from which the inference might easily be drawn that a couple of little resolutions that passed the General Assembly of 1897 were “quietly and unobtrusively) got through in the interests of a syndicate.

 

As a matter of fact the church is an ancient affair that the people who own it are in doubt as to where  the money to shingle it if it stays where it is, and they would be awfully glad if some syndicate would build them a new one. Both the church and the cemetery mentioned have been in years past isolated for weeks at a time by ice thrown up by the Housatonic River.  While we are none of us down in that section looking for a chance to die, we do not want to put off the important ceremony, when our time comes, to wait for ten or fifteen feet of ice to thaw away from the surroundings of our cemetery.

 

Under such circumstances we were unanimous in welcoming any prospect of a change. We did not tell the hawks that watch the work of the General Assembly for two reasons:  First we did not see that it was any of their business.  In the second place, we had not the money to pay them for withdrawing such factious opposition as they would probably have contrived had they known that we were liable to be pecuniarily benefited.

 

It is quite true that some property along the Housatonic River has changed hands of late, but there has been no compulsion and the prices paid have been from two to four times what the property would have sold for five years ago.  The writer has more to lose from the building of the proposed dam than any one else and he and his wife will probably shed all the tears that are shed if a dam is built.

 

In the meantime, if the value of the state, and particularly of the locality named, is increased one or two million dollars, he will take great pride in the part he took in getting through those two little resolutions before the hawks caught on.

 

II.

Hartford, March 7.

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