Litchfield enquirer., 1867-09-05
A Curious Document

We are indepted to w. l.. Ransom Esq for copy of the following curious docu- ment from old files of the County Cor1rt:-
 'To the Honorable adjourned County Court to be holden at Litchfeld in and for lIltchfield County upon the second Tues day January instant t-Thc Memorial of the inhabitants of the Town of Litchfield ln said county, by their Agent. Reynold Marvin of said Litchfeld, humbly shew- eth:
 ''That your honours Memorialists at D legal town meeting, holden at said Litch- field on the 31st day of December last, did, | by a very unanimous vote, agree to build a new Meeting house for publick worship on or adjoining to the public Green in said Town, whereon the present Meeting house now stands. And to make application to your honours to affix the particular place whereon said Meeting house shall be built. 1 'Whereupon your honours memorialists in pursuance of said votes humbly pray your Honours to affix the particular spot where said Meeting shall be built. And your Honours Memorialists as in duty bound shall eyer pray Sc. Dated at said Litchfeld the 18th day of January A. D. l 1761. REYNoLD MARVIN, Agent. Upon which Memorial is endorsed the following order ''affixing the Spot '':-
 -s'On this Memorial The Court appoint and affix the Place for the Memorialists to Build new meeting House upon, on the Green Northward of their old meeting house, the Northwest Corner of said New Meeting house to be about 1G feet South ward of a Shed or Horse House and about three feet moro Eastward than the West end of said Shed, where is Some Stones laid together, beng about F foot more Eastward than the west end of said old meeting House"
 | e3-The grounds where stood the fosmcr residence of J. Fennlmoro Cooper, at Coopcrstown are i'll a l sad state of neglect, oycrgroWn with weeds and riOtous bushes. Tine housc was used as boarding hoHs2 after the novelists death, but was de 5troycd by fire before it had long served iii that capacity. Throc daughters of the dead authOr rc- side at Coopcrstowll still.
 We arc not, now, a great admircr of Cooper but when a boy, we read and ro-read his novels with intense delight, and it is not pleasant to sec the old place to which he was so much attach ed, and which figured in so many of his novels, disgracefully neglected.
 The Otsego Lake and it's surroundings arc first brought before the reader in the Deerslaycr, the first of the Leatherstocking Tales, at g time in the earlier French wars, long before any settlement had been at tempted. Though not one of Coopcr's best novels, this lake and the scenery about it are most beautifully depicted, showing plainly how much the authors heart was in that portion of his work. In the Pio- neers, the fourth of the Leatherstocking Tales, we have sketches of Cooperstowu just after it's settlement, of the Cooper mansion, and of it's proprietor, Judge Cooper, the authors father, and the chief man of that country. This we have always considered Cooper's best work, and most admirable description of now settlement in Middle New York, seventy years since, under the same patriarchal authority of it's "patroon" The scene of "Home as Found," is laid in the same place, but the book is far inferior, and the picture an un- pleasant one, although probably not alto gether untrue. The "patroon" was an in stitution incompatible with America in the 18th century, and the first to find it out were Yankee immigrants who defed and annoyed the patriarch and his aristocratic son and successor, after their own ingen- ious fashion. Cooper hated the Now Eng, lander with the concentrated hatred of all the Knicl1crbockers, and we are not sur- prised for there is probably no race on earth that know so we'll how to mako them selves intensely disagreeablc to aristoeratic neighbors.
 We wonder some of tho people who erect "palatial'' country seats, have not the taste to buy and build up, worthily, an old place so rich in those pleasant associ- ations with which 'shoddy" is not often privileged to connect itself.