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��MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN HOPKINTON.
��of the poor as were homeless were at first boarded at the expense of the town. The board of paupers was sold at the annual town-meeting to the low- est bidder. This was a custom that was liable to abuses, like any other practice. At best, complaints would naturally arise from such a form of management. It is said that on one occasion, when it was proposed in town-meeting to sell the board of a certain pauper, the unfortunate man asked the privilege to speak. He said he did not wish to be sent to the place at which he had recently lived, for he " did not want to go to a place where they were poorer than he was. " The practice of boarding the homeless poor around from place to place was, at best, objectionable, being excusable only on the ground of the poverty of the incipient township. The conduct of pauper affairs changed in 1833, when, on the 13th of March, it was voted in town-meeting to buy a pauper farm, Stephen Sibley, John Silver, and Daniel Chase being chosen a commit- tee to effect the public purpose. The farm selected was one owned by Dan- iel Chase, and located on Dimond Hill, about two miles below the village, on the main road to Concord. This farm continued to be the home of the town's poor till the year 1872, when the property was sold in fulfillment of the vote of the town. The farm and its appendencies were sold in lots. Moses F. Hoyt purchased the main lo- cation and occupies it to this day. Since the sale of the town farm, the town's poor have been boarded, but by a management exempt from the objec- tional features of the first practice. The poor are no longer sold like worthless trumpery to the lowest bidder.
FINANCIAL.
As a public corporation, this town has enjoyed nearly or quite all the im- munities and privileges implied in the right to buy and sell, borrow and lend, sue and be sued. It has collected its claims and paid its debts. We are not aware that any official of this town has ever been prosecuted for mal-adminis-
��tration or embezzlement. There has been a laxity of financial conduct that is apt to obtain in country towns. Men of no professional financial train- ing are apt to transact business with regard only to present contingencies. As a consequence, the financial records of such managers are seldom what they should be. A citizen of this town, who has often been personally concerned in public affairs, tells us he once knew a time when there was not a scrap of an account to certify the amount of the indebtedness of the town in the pos- session of one of its officers. Its notes were out here and there, but nobody knew the amount in the aggregate. If the town chose to give its note, it was done ; if it wished to cancel any in- debtedness, it was accomplished.
In consequence of the indifferent local management, and the attendant popular inadvertence, the disposal of the town's revenues derived from the sale of public lands is a problem to many of our citizens to this day. We have been to some pains to uncover the facts, but as yet with incomplete success. From the sale of the parson- age lands, a fund of about $1000 was derived ; from the sale of the school right, about as much more ; from the sale of the training field, a considerable sum, be it more or less. The interest of these funds was devoted to special, distinctive uses. The parsonage fund was devoted to religion, the school fund to education, the training field fund to military affairs. We will give detailed information briefly.
With the above funds, bound in ful- fillment of the original purposes to be invested, the officers of the town often experienced difficulties. Investments were not always easy. Reliable men were not always ready to take them. At length the parsonage fund was dis- posed of by a vote to appropriate the principle of the same to the discharge of any public indebtedness, and to raise the equivalent of the interest, annually, for distribution pro rata among the several religious societies. The plan worked only for a short time. It was soon objected that the nature of our
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