Struggles and Triumphs - P. T. Barnum (top 20 books to read txt) 📗

a Connecticut wilderness”; and the “old fogies” added: “Yes, he is trying to start another chestnut-wood fire for the city to blow forever; but the city or town of Bridgeport will not pay out money to lay out or to purchase public parks. If people want to see green grass and trees, they have only to walk or drive half a mile either way from the city limits, and they will come to farms where they can see either or both for nothing; and, if they are anxious to see salt water, and to get a breath of the Sound breeze, they can take boats at the wharves, and sail or row till they are entirely satisfied.”

Thus talked the conservatives and the “old fogies,” who unhappily, even if they are in a minority, are always a force in all communities. I soon saw that it was of no use to expect to get the city to pay for a park. The next thing was to see if the land could not be procured free of charge, or at a nominal cost, provided the city would improve and maintain it as a public park. I approached the farmers who owned the land lying immediately upon the shore, and tried to convince them that, if they would give the city free, a deep slip next to the water, to be used as a public park, it would increase in value the rest of their land so much as to make it a profitable operation for them. But it was like beating against the wind. ‘They were not so stupid as to think that they could become gainers by giving away their property.’ Such trials of patience as I underwent in a twelvemonth, in the endeavor to carry this point, few persons who have not undertaken like almost hopeless labor can comprehend. At last I enlisted the attention of Messrs. Nathaniel Wheeler, James Loomis, Francis Ives, Frederick Wood, and a few more gentlemen, and persuaded them to walk with me over the ground, which to me seemed in every way practicable for a park. These gentlemen, who were men of taste as well as of enterprise and public spirit, very soon coincided in my ideas as to the feasibility of the plan and the advantages of the site; and some of them went with me to talk with the landowners, adding their own pleas to the arguments I had already advanced. At last, after much pressing and persuading, we got the terms upon which the proprietors would give a portion and sell another portion of their land which fronted on the water, provided the land thus disposed of should forever be appropriated to the purposes of a public park. But unfortunately a part of the land it was desirable to include was the small Mallett farm, of some thirty acres, then belonging to an unsettled estate, and neither the administrator nor the heirs could or would give away a rod of it. But the whole farm was for sale⁠—and, to overcome the difficulty in the way of its transfer for the public benefit, I bought it for about $12,000, and then presented the required front to the park. I did not want this land or any portion of it for my own purposes or profit, and I offered a thousand dollars to anyone who would take my place in the transaction; but no one accepted, and I was quite willing to contribute so much of the land as was needed for so noble an object. Indeed, besides this, I gave $1,400 towards purchasing other land and improving the park; and, after months of persistent and personal effort, I succeeded in raising, by private subscription, the sum necessary to secure the land needed. This was duly paid for, deeded to and accepted by the city, and I had the pleasure of naming this new and great public improvement, “Seaside Park.”

Public journals are generally exponents of public opinion; and how the people viewed the new purchase, now their own property, may be judged by the following extracts from the leading local newspapers, when the land for the new enterprise was finally secured:

Our Seaside Park.

[From the Bridgeport Standard, August 21, 1865.]

Bridgeport has taken another broad stride of which she may well be proud. The Seaside Park is a fixed fact. Yesterday Messrs. P. T. Barnum, Captain John Brooks, Mr. George Bailey, Captain Burr Knapp, and Henry Wheeler generously donated to this city sufficient land for the Park, with the exception of seven or eight acres, which have been purchased by private subscriptions. Last night the Common Council appointed excellent Park Commissioners, and work on the seawall and the avenues surrounding the Park will be commenced at once. Besides securing the most lovely location for a park to be found between New York and Boston, which for all time will be a source of pride to our city and State, there is no estimating the pecuniary advantage which this great improvement will eventually prove to our citizens. Plans are on foot and enterprises are agitated in regard to a park hotel, seaside cottages, horse railroad branch, and other features, which, when consummated, will serve to amaze our citizens to think that such a delightful seaside frontage has been permitted to lie so long unimproved. To Mr. P. T. Barnum, we believe, is awarded the credit of originating this beautiful improvement, and certainly to his untiring, constant, and persevering personal efforts are we indebted for its being finally consummated. Hon. James C. Loomis was the first man who heartily joined with Barnum in pressing the plan of a seaside park upon the attention of our citizens, but it is due to our citizens themselves to say that, with an extraordinary unanimity, they have not only voted to appropriate $10,000 from the city treasury to making the avenues around the Park, and otherwise improving it, but they have also generously aided by private contributions in purchasing such