The Daily Gazette

FIFTH EDITION.

LETTER FROM SAM'L TOWNSEND

For the Gazette.

Mr. Johnson:—I was pleased to read your remarks on the new Court House project, to borrow on bonds first $100,000 (and probably take another hundred thousand before it would be done.) The published statement of William Herbert, County Treasurer, living in New Castle, showing the state of our finances, and the trouble and delay in collecting the taxes. It probably would not be out of place for me to say a few words on this old Court House question. When I first began to vote, there was great agitation to remove the Courts from New Castle to Wilmington, I know it would cause the people of Appoquinimink hundred 5 or 6 more miles to travel, and pay toll at Wilmington bridge to get to Court. I therefore opposed it, and the people of this hundred stood at my back, or, in other words, sustained me in my opposition. These were furious times, the Wilmington papers opened the vials of wrath against me. I at once saw I had either to throw away any ambition I might have for office to get the support of Wilmington, or throw all feeling for office, if I had any, underfoot and stand by and with my people of this glorious old hundred. I at once decided, let come what would, to stand by my people, and no person that I have ever heard of has called me traitor to my hundred. In the course of time John A. Allderdice introduced a bill into the Legislature to apportion representation according to population. It alarmed some Democrats in Kent. I was written to from Dover to come down. I went, and in a meeting I proposed to make two counties out of New Castle county— Brandywine, Christiana, Mill Creek and Wilmington to make one county, and the six lower hundreds one county, with court house and county buildings same as New Castle county. The Kent Democrats at the conference were well pleased with my suggestion, and it had the effect of tiding over the then present Legislature, and after that the Kent county Democrats went back on my proposition, and some years afterwards there was a county division meeting held at Middletown. At that meeting Mr. George Gray proposed including Mill Creek hundred in the lower county. I did not like it, for it appeared New Castle hundred was afraid of Appoquinimink hundred, after Appoquinimink hundred had stood by New Castle so long. I then made up my mind that I could live in one county, and if the people wanted two counties let them say so. The late Governor, at the close of his term, I believe, proposed county division, but not one move has been made since, except a small meeting in Mill Creek hundred, saying they did not wish to be put in the lower county. We, of this hundred, never wished them to be, and now whilst there is a lull in this matter it is not dead, for county division is deep rooted and gaining every day, but whilst in a lull in these hard times New Castle seeks to take advantage by getting up a bill to compel the Levy Court to issue $100,000 in bonds to put up new county buildings, that would, if such a reckless bill was passed, cost another hundred thousand dollars before finished, when the present county buildings at New Castle would last the lower county one hundred years, with very little repairing of wood-work. Now, after nearly all my political life has been spent in support of New Castle, if she does so mean a thing as to try to prevent the making of two counties out of New Castle county, by asking a bill for a large sum of money from an already tax-ridden people to build new county buildings whilst we have now far better county buildings and offices, than the generality of counties, I am done with New Castle, and say to the Wilmington men if the project of two counties being made out of New Castle County is to be blotted out by the heavy outlay of money from people now too heavily taxed, to build one new extensive court-house and county building for the county you Wilmington men enter into the contest. Ring your bells, blow your horns, and demand the new court-house to be built in your city, and let New Castle take the consequences of the whirlwind she has raised. But the best thing would be to ask the Legislature to nip the New Castle scheme in the bud, and to kill the bill as dead as a door nail.

SAMUEL TOWNSEND.

Townsend, Del., Feb. 24, 1879.