Woodstock May 3. 1858.

Page 1

Dear Sir,

It has been difficult to find a day for going to Montpelier, more on account of the engagements of Judge Porter than myself. Probably we shall fix on Monday or Tuesday of next week. Judge Porter will be here on Wednesday and tho' I shall not see him I shall leave a note requesting him to designate the day and advise you.

Silloway and Powers were both here last week. I learned nothing new from Silloway. He came merely to urge a meeting. Powers says he is equally anxious to meet us--that he does not intend to use the defective stones,--nor the mended columns, unless we advise him to do so, and that he intends to carry out the plan to the letter. Powers was on his return from Boston

Page 2

He asked me if you wished to have Mead execute the figure and said if you did, he was perfectly willing it should be done by him. I told him that might be settled when you and he met at Montpelier.

I suppose all that we are to see and hear can be seen and heard in one day

[no signature]

References in this letter:

Thomas W. Silloway, (1828-1910), was only thirty years old in 1857 when he was chosen architect for the new State House in Montpelier. Silloway was from Massachusetts, and had worked in the office of Ammi B. Young, the architect who designed the previous building. Silloway and Dr. Powers, the superintendent of construction for the 1857 job, had worked together to design and build a new courthouse in Woodstock, Vermont, that burned in 1854.

Thomas W. Silloway, (1828-1910), was only thirty years old in 1857 when he was chosen architect for the new State House in Montpelier. Silloway was from Massachusetts, and had worked in the office of Ammi B. Young, the architect who designed the previous building. Silloway and Dr. Powers, the superintendent of construction for the 1857 job, had worked together to design and build a new courthouse in Woodstock, Vermont, that burned in 1854.

Dr. Thomas E. Powers, (1808-1876), of Woodstock, Vermont, was appointed by Governor Fletcher to be the Superintendent of Construction of the 1858-1860 project, to build a new State House in Montpelier to rebuild the structure burned in 1857. He and the architect, Thomas W. Silloway, were soon at loggerheads over their roles in the project. Powers became State Senator in 1861.

Larkin Goldsmith Mead Jr.(1835-1910) was a sculptor from Brattleboro, Vermont. although he spent most of his life in Florence. He created the statue of Agriculture that crowns the Vermont State House in 1857, and the statue of Ethan Allen in the same building in 1861. He was also responsible for the statue of Allen in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol and for an elaborate memorial to Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois.