The Press., 1892-08-04
Correspondence Hartford Times.) BACK TO THE OLD SPRING.
Mansfield, July 25, 189

O ginning, in the influences which some- times work to the revival of growth and prosperity in rural New England con- munity, is now to be made in the Holland county town of Mansfield. This pleasant old town, fixed on the hill ranges and wales along the east side of the Willi- mantle river, is largely an agricultural community it also has a good deal of manufacturing but mostly in limited and moderate shape. The river, one of the prettiest, even in New England, and which has a rather rapid descent, di- vides the townships of Mansfield and Coventry; Mansfield lying on the east side, for just about the same length north and south ,,as the township of Coventry covers on the west side of the stream.
 Here, but a few miles north of Willi- mantle ,are the Storrs Agricultural School, and the Eagleville mills, and good many other active little centers of one form of industry or another. Here, in the north west part of the township, are the homes of George and Edwin Reynolds. They were Mansfield boys by birth, and they have won handsome competence in New York and elsewhere, as machinists and engineers who knew their business. They have had the good sense after accumulat- ing each a fortune to come back to the old ancestral home on these Connecticut hillsides, to improve and beautify the region, and to build up here pleasant and happy homes amidst surroundings which for genuine natural charm, heightened by the tasteful (and sometimes expensive) work of human taste and human hands, are not to be surpassed in any section, from Connecticut to California. How much these two brothers have done for the neighborhood in which they have To- cated, can be learned only by personal visit to the scene. They have built new houses and barns, of spacious and attract i've styles they have purchased the old stony hill slopes and meadows, grubbed out all the stones, made these into wide, solid, evenly laid and handsome stone | walls, putting the surplus ''rocks' into great stone cones, or mounds, on either side of every gateway to their now at 1 tractive domain. They have turned the hills and hillsides, formerly lined with ill- | made and ruinous old stone walls, into fine farms and garden fields.' They have transformed bushy and boggy swales, through judicious drainage and alteration of brook-courses, into the handsomest, smoothest, most 1uxuriant meadows. They have made the highway along their do- main delight for driving parties-having already planted and two years under l growth 8 mile-long row of elms, to set of the even, solid and really handsome lines of new stone wall. Wherever these lines go, north or south, along the road oI east and west, through the cleared-up and now attractive fields and groves, they are in every case accurately and we'll made. The Messrs. Reynolds probably own COG acres-it may be much more, or less, it is @ rough guess; but all of it, whether it was rough old woods or boulder-strewn hillsides affording scanty pasturage, is now wholly transformed. The stones are no longer seen in the fields. They look better, arranged as they are now-if ii did take time and money to effect the change. Family parties and other people drive over here from all the region round
 just to see the pleasant transformation
 Other wealthy city people, attracted by the scene now, think of purchasing prop
 erty and coming here for their summer
 home. In few yeals, the indications
 are, a still greater change will be wrought
 Nature richly endowed this region witt
 all tho elements of natural beauty, in higl
 and fine hill ranges (once grandly wooded) clear. tumbling streams, and charming
 done about as much to deform and dis figure as to improve the situation as h'
 found it. At last the people here, as il
 many other parts of the country, seem tx
 be waking up little to the truth that
 little attention to beautifying and improv
 ing, instead of skinning and deforming
 the region in which they live, will in tn end pay as well as, if not better than work of improvement, in New Jersey, part , of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ne,
 York and other states, is the sorely need
 ed work of making good, solid, sneoot
 roGds.
 This latter great need is not, as yet, S
 largely met in Connecticut as it has bee
 in some of the other states. But it ha been begun in some parts of the state, an "grow." The bicyclers, now great an
 important part of the community, are dc
 ing good deal to awaken the backwar
 communities to the real need and mutus
 utility of better roads. In this field c
 sociology "an educational campaign" sorely needed in Connecticut, which behind some of it's sister states in thi
 matter.
 Probably George Reynolds alone ha . spent $1OO, ,000 in the improvement of hi
 part of the domain, which is under such A complete process of transformation. H
 is absent most of the time at his bushes : in the larger cities, where he has an in I portant interest in an approved elevator n It is said that he is the leading enginee n in great plan, now under consideratio x at Chicago, for bringing all the railroad :. entering that leading railroad city int V the town by the elevated plan, and lea n them all into one station. The schem o adopted, will cost no less than $50, ,000 l. 900. But Chicago has dealt with eve 1t more stupendous undertakings.
 r, MT. Edwin Reynolds, who takes 2 h active personal interest in the work Il improvement here, is the owner of u r old Austin Dunham hOmestead-a fiji