Publication InformationBoston Oct. 2..1857

My Friend Marsh

I am at last enabled to transmit to you, some copies of the Perspective of our anticipated Capitol. I have done my best to have produced a good picture and am pleased to think that my efforts have not been in vain. A deal of attention and anxiety has been expended to produce it, of which no one save myself can be conversant. I hope and even dare to think, you will be pleased with the . I like it quite as well as any we have had. Twenty copies of the drawing I send to Mr. Williams for himself, Judge Porter, and the Governor: the rest, I send to doct Powers. If you have any directions for him please write to him immediately so that he may be informed at the time of the meeting of the session. I order but 400 copies of the picture. More can be and at any time they are needed. Please give me your criticisms of the as soon as convenient, as I wish to make my working drawings. All the old ones, I lay aside.

I am yours very trulyThomas W. Silloway

121 Court St.

References in this letter:

Norman Williams, (1791-1868) was a State Senator in 1854 and 1855 before he was named by Governor Fletcher, to the committee which oversaw the construction of the new State House in Montpelier, to replace the building destroyed by fire in 1857.

John Porter, (1798-1886), of Hartford, Vermont, was State Senator for the years 1842 and 1843, a probate judge for the district of Hartford for the years of 1850-1886, as well as serving as a commission to oversee the reconstruction of the State House in Montpelier.

Governor Ryland Fletcher, (1799-1885), was born in Cavendish, Vermont. He was the first distinctly Republican Governor of the state of Vermont, and was active in the anti-slavery movement. On January 6, 1857, during his administration, the State House in Montpelier was destroyed by fire, and he appointed a committee to oversee the reconstruction.

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.

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.