The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1871–1880 · CHAPMAN FIRST-HAND
New Carlisle built its water-works in 1879, and Chapman tells the financing whole. "The citizens here built their water-works in 1879, when everything was cheap. If they had waited until next year, this public improvement would have cost twice as much as it did." The project had first been proposed in 1871 and met "considerable opposition"; carrying it required a two-thirds vote of the property holders. George H. Service — the merchant-banker of the businesses and banks files — "offered to insure the sale of bonds at par, and thus the people were encouraged to vote for the issue of $7,000 bonds, which were negotiated at par, at seven per cent., with a savings bank in Vermont, to run 15 years; and now the village has a perfect system of water-works." The founding is municipal from the first day: no private water company stands anywhere in the town's record, and the system the voters bought in 1879 is the ancestor, by unbroken town ownership, of the system below.
Sources:
- Chapman (1880), Olive Township chapter, "Water-Works," pp. 769–770; and the George H. Service sketch ("recently very active in establishing the water-works of New Carlisle"). Read first-hand.