Thursday, February 23, 2012

Ancient Secrets Revealed

Town Records dating back to 1759 stored in a locked vault in the basement of Town Hall

Who would have thought Amherst had to appropriate town money to outfit men serving in the cataclysmic war between the states?

Soon enough anyone will be able to access Annual Town Reports back to 1861 and Town Meeting records to 1759--the founding of our fair town.  Our Information Technology Department has scanned all the old records stored in a walk in Mosler Safe in the basement of Town Hall and will soon upload them to the town website.

Now that ought to increase traffic.


"Military:  Under the vote of May 1, 1861 we have borrowed and expended for the outfit of the soldiers in the Army from this town $535.17 and for soldiers' families to March 1st $1158.29.  Total $1698.46 of which amount $1116.71 is due from the state.  Between 80-90  persons have enlisted in the army from this town, 25 of whom have families, dependent upon them for support, requiring about $200 per month to satisfy their claims."

1861-1863 Annual Town Reports (just to whet your appetite)

5 comments:

  1. Love the way they wrote back then. Comma, instead of decimal point?

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  2. You forgot the next paragraph:

    "Larry Kelley thought that the expenditure was an outrage, because the Union continues to lose money every year"

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  3. Actually I would never have been that stupid, petty and obnoxious to equate the tremendous loss of human life in the war to preserve the precious Union with economic losses for the game of golf.

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  4. 911 truth in there?

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  5. I think Larry would agree with me, both conflicts were not provoked directly but rather through societal differences (Fort Sumter, 9-11). There was and is no economic incentive for the economic preservation of the union. If the tremendous amounts of money spent on Iraq and Afghanistan aren't disproving enough that there was no economic incentive than I don't know what would be.

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