Town Clerk's Office,

North Providence, R.I. Feby 26^th 1884

 

Edward A. Wild Esq

            Brooklyn N.Y.

 

            Dear Sir.

                        As I am only Clerk of the Probate Court I do not say what the Court will do in the matter but having consulted with some of them I think your account will be dismissed if there is no one here to attend to it. The will directs the Executors to pay all just debts of the deceased and I as Collector of Taxes think that taxes are just debts.

 

Your Resply

Thomas H Angell

 

 

[verso]

 

392. Grand Avenue Brooklyn N.Y.

Thursday Morn Wednesday. Feb. 27

 

This is just received and I pass it along. Please notify me early as possible, (at this house) whether I must be there Monday morning or earlier, or later, or not at all.

 

As for Angell^s point about "the just debts" It was not for me to decide, as Executor, what were just debts, when the claims for such debts were disputed and were in litigation. I could not assume powers of adjudication, over Courts and Towns, nor can I today. So I simply let the dispute stand just as it was, and pass it along down to the next owner in succession, i.e. Mary H. C.

 

As for the point in your letter about the Town^s inheriting the Douglas Pike, I can distinctly remember Grandfather^s felling trees across the Pike and blockading the road—until the Town were so compelled to take action and lay out a highway. I was there at the time and as near as I can remember, roughly, I should say 1837

 

And I should suppose that the Town in laying it out as a highway, laid it out, just as it stood—not just as it might have stood if the Turnpike Co. had at some future time widened it. But the Town Records ought to mention that action, and probably to define it.—

EAW

 

But they threaten "to dismiss my account".

 

what a dreadful thing that would be!!

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