39 Court St BostonJany. 5" 1859

Hon. Geo. P. Marsh

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Dear Sir,

Remembering with grateful feelings your former kindness in looking over our manuscript, and seeing that you are a member of the Committee on the Mon & Statue of Ethan Allen, I wish another small favor. -- I have kept in part posted as to the progress of the work, and understand it thus.--that the State originally appropriated $2.000 for the erection of the column, of Tuscan order, which has been completed--that the State a colossal Statue of the hero to be placed upon the top--but gave nothing

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towards it--that the Committee had rec last Autumn about $500 from private contributions towards the Statue - but not enough.

What I should like to know is--what the cost--whether the State made any addition to the $2,000, if the cost exceeded that sum, or whether it was done by private hands. --

2 Is the column 42 or 44 f. high?

3 Is there any doubt that Allen's bones remain there? I understand that no reasonable doubt exists of the fact.

4 Height of Statue to be ?

Please look over articles of Burlington sent--& note any error. I am revising plates. Are there any other towns you could look over. Your reply within three days will much oblige.

Very resp YoursA. J. Coolidge

References in this letter:

In 1855 the Vermont legislature appointed a committee to be in charge of a monument over the grave of Ethan Allen in the Green Mount Cemetery in Burlington. John Norton Pomeroy was appointed chair and Marsh served with him. Larkin Goldsmith Mead was chosen to create a figure of Allen for the monument. Unable to raise the necessary funds, the project was not completed until 1873. Mead's statue was instead placed on the portico of the State House and another figure, by Boston sculptor Peter Stephenson, surmounted the granite base erected in Burlington.

A. J. (Austin Jacobs) Coolidge was a publisher as well as the author of several books including History and Description of New England: Vermont with J. B. Mansfield. Boston: A. J. Coolidge, 1860.