Work Party Opportunities

 

 

More than a year of effort on the part of the Land Trust and key partners has paid off with the purchase of Kruger Farm in Haddam Neck — a former dairy farm encompassing woodlands, a hayfield, wetlands and a feeder creek to Pine Brook. The years-long project — a collaboration  between the Land Trust, the Haddam Neck Spirit, the town of Haddam and the DEP — has created a 50-acre preserve near the confluence of the Salmon River and the Connecticut River. It is contiguous with the 289-acre Johnson Preserve, which fronts on both Pine Brook and the Salmon River and is held by the town of Haddam and The Nature Conservancy; this preserve is contiguous with the Haddam Land Trust’s 22-acre preserve on Pine Brook. It lies within one of two areas in Connecticut identified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for additions to its Silvio O. Conte Refuge, which protects migratory fish and birds in the Connecticut River Watershed. The preserve was dedicated April 25.

 

What do silver mining in Nevada, the laying of the Airline Railroad in Connecticut and The Middlesex Land Trust have in common? This question is answered in “Letters to Harry 1872-1874,” edited by the late Portland residents, Prudence Taylor Palmer and TJ Palmer. The Middlesex Land Trust is forever indebted to the Palmers for their incredible generosity and vision in donating their precious and beautiful property to the Land Trust for present and future generations to enjoy.

 

The book introduces the Taylor family history and connections — from Horace Greeley to Harvard luminaries, the rise and fall of silver mining in Nevada and the laying of the Airline Railroad in Connecticut, with glimpses of social life in Manhattan and in the frontier town of Austin, Nevada. In 1872, at age 15, Henry Osborn Taylor persuaded his father, the founder of the Manhattan Silver Mining Co. of Nevada, to allow him to leave New York and Connecticut and take up management of the Nevada mines with his older brother.

  

Prudence Palmer, Harry’s grand-niece and inheritor of the Taylor property, discovered in the attic of Harry’s summer house a chest containing 200 letters written by family and friends to Harry in Austin. She and her husband transcribed them for this publication. Together they retraced Harry’s footsteps, traveling to the Nevada mines and researching 1870s Austin newspapers to provide commentary. Their lively narrative includes an account of Uncle Harry’s return to the East to attend Harvard and his future as a foremost authority on the history of the Middle Ages, with photographs of life “on the hill” on Middle Haddam Road in Portland.

 

“Letters To Harry”: A Tale Well-Told