This story was authored
by a Goshen resident many years ago and provides a personal
incite to the feelings of some towns people. She simply
signed it "Justitia"
"I read
with interest your article about C. P. Huntington. I
was a resident of Harwinton in 1888 and can add a little
as to why Huntington did not endow the memorial chapel
in Harwinton."
"The chapel
was most ungratefully received. It had a fine kitchen
furnished with silver and utensils and dishes but the
church people, some of them said "a church kitchen
is the devil's parlor", and refused to use the
beautiful and comfortable chapel which was much better
suited to the size of their congregation tean was the
great church."
"Also when
the chapel grounds were graded it closed part of a driveway
around the church, which angered many."
"The church
sheds were individually owned, each having a deed to
the bit of ground covered by the shed, this being a
common custom as to church sheds. Huntington had new
sheds built and offered them as free to all. The shed
owners refused, saying they preferred to own them. Huntington
then offered to deed each a shed in exchange for the
old one. Many still refused, so he had what he could
buy torn down and left the rest propped up on the grounds
he had hoped to beautify."
"A relative
of his told me he had also planned to buy the large
house just southwest of the church, and give it to the
town as a public library and endow both church and library,
but he became so disgusted before the chapel was completed
that he said he would do no more and wished he had merely
put up a monument in the cemetery for his mother."
"I imagine
he was not too tactful in dealing with his townspeople
but they showed little wisdom in biting off their noses
in spite of their faces."
Sadly enough, with
no endowment to maintain the now eighty-eight year old
structure, it was torn down in 1960. A sad ending for
a monument built to honor the memory of a beloved mother
from a son who wanted to remember his roots.
