Expenditures. 43 



2. Public Buildings. 



During the first period no separate account of expenditures on 

 public buildings was kept, but expenses incurred for this purpose 

 were either entered under the account of "Contingent Ex- 

 H^^se Ps^ses" or recorded by making a special entry for each parti- 

 cular project. The building which absorbed nearly all the 

 money spent by the state in the construction of buildings was the 

 state house at Hartford. The history of the building of this state 

 house is exceptionally interesting. Toward the erection of a state 

 house in Hartford, fifteen hundred pounds (equivalent to five thou- 

 sand dollars) was voted at the May, 1792, session of the legislature, 

 on condition that the citizens of the city, town, and county of Hart- 

 ford would contribute an equal sum, and for its construction a build- 

 ing committee was appointed by the general assembly. More than 

 thirty-six hundred dollars was subscribed by citizens, the city gave 

 thirty-five hundred dollars and the county fifteen hundred dollars; 

 but the building committee, seeing that more funds were needed 

 to complete the building, applied to the assembly of May, 1793, 

 for the right to hold a lottery to raise more money. The request 

 was granted and the committee organized the lottery, known as the 

 " Hartford State House Lottery," under the following plan. Twenty- 

 six thousand six hundred sixty-seven tickets at five dollars each 

 were to be issued. The total selling value of these tickets was thus 

 one hundred thirty-three thousand three hundred thirty-five dollars. 

 Seven-eighths of this amount was to be awarded in eight thousand 

 eight hundred ninety prizes varying in value from ten dollars to 

 eight thousand dollars. The drawing was not to begin until three- 

 quarters of the tickets had been sold and not until March 1795, 

 did it finally begin. The lottery was not conspicuously successful. 

 The money already raised for the erection of the state house had 

 been exhausted. The building was at a standstill.^ To determine 

 what should be done was a difficult proposition. 



To understand how the problem was settled, reference must be 

 made again to the western lands claimed by the state on the basis 

 of the charter granted by King Charles II in 1662. ^ A part of the 

 land included in the limits of the colony by this charter was a strip 

 of land west of the Delaware river, south of the imaginary line 

 formed by the extension of the southern boundary of Massachusetts, 



^ The Connecticut Gore Land Company by Albert C. Bates in Annual 

 Report American Historical Association, 1898, pp. 141, 142. 

 2 Cf. p. 35. 



