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1859–1978 · THE DEEDS GATHERED AS A TURN
This ground's philanthropy turn is not a foundation era — it is a sequence of deeds by which private money became public institutions, and the deeds can be dated. 1859: J. H. Service gives $500 to start the Methodist college — private money founding the building the town would buy for its school (the schools addendum carries the purchase). 1879: George H. Service insures the water-works bond sale at par — Chapman, at the page: when the $7,000 issue hung on the expense objection, "Mr. George H. Service offered to insure the sale of bonds at par," the bonds were negotiated at par at seven per cent with a Vermont savings bank, "and now the village has a perfect system of water-works" — a fortune underwriting a public utility, the turn in its purest small-town form. 1917: the Carnegie grant, $9,000, dated 14 September 1917 — outside money this time, a national pool become a local institution, the library of 1921. 1966: the Bendix gift of 175 acres — corporate philanthropy, the proving-ground woods become a county park (the recreation file carries the ground). 1978: the Audubon purchase and gift — the conservation turn, land passing to preservation. Measured, the turn is this: the town's pools were never family foundations — no Service foundation, no Reynolds trust stands in the record — because at this size wealth became institutions directly, by deed and subscription, a generation before the foundation form existed to receive it. The three-foundation pattern of the checklist has no instance here, and the measurement of the turn is the sequence itself.
Sources:
- Chapman (1880), pp. 768 and 769–770 — the $500 college gift (Service sketch and Schools passage); the water-works guarantee and the $7,000 bonds verbatim; read at the page for this section.
- Libraries — the Carnegie grant, $9,000, 14 September 1917.
- this history and this history — the Bendix gift of 175 acres (1966); the Audubon purchase/gift (1978).