WEST ROXBURY PARK. 77 



Boston, June ], 1886. 

 Samuel E. Sawyer, Esq., Tremont House, 



Dear Sir \ — This morning I find at my office your 

 paper containing extracts of your communication of 

 April 23d, 1886, to the park commissioners of this city, 

 and relating to the taking of your estates for park pur- 

 poses. I read the paper with much interest and with 

 more indignation, and feel that I can sympathize fully 

 with you in this matter, by reason of my own family 

 being fellow sufferers with yourself. 



Let me say that if ever the true history of the taking 

 of these private estates for the West Koxbur}^ Park 

 (now Franklin) is ever written, it ought to bring the 

 blush of shame to the cheeks of those pei'sons instru- 

 mental in perpetrating on private citizens such a griev- 

 ous wrong and injustice. "West Kobbei-y Park," my 

 father calls it, and well he may, for he have a deep and 

 abiding conviction that he and his family has been 

 robbed of hundreds of thousands of dollai's. He once 

 received and declined an offer of 1100,000 for our old 

 family homestead, now within the park limits. This 

 was in the year 1871 or 1872, 1 think. He subsequently 

 saw the estate included within the proposed park area, 

 its valuation l3y the assessoi's reduced from over $200,- 

 000 to less than |70,000; its subjection for long years 

 to a slow and wearisome, dooming process, and the 

 estate finally wrung at a price vastly below its real 

 value, from a Bank President mortgagee, by the late 

 Board of Park Commissioners. He saw himself thus 

 deprived of a greatly needed surplus; and to cap the 

 climax a betterment tax of nearly $800 laid upon a sin- 



