October 14 Sunday – In Hartford Sam wrote a long letter of complaint to the Hartford City Government, again about electric lights and health concerns over “open sewers.” On Oct. 16, Sam wrote on the letter,

The official health refused to back up the hearsay statistics. Therefore this project was abandoned. SLC.[MTP].

Sam’s notebook entry for Oct. 15 related his actions for this day:

I found, yesterday, that Brer Franklin Chamberlin (who has two skunk-friends on the Street-Board,) had at last succeeded in getting the light moved from the Gillette street corner to the mouth of Forest street, thus leaving our gates smothered in Egyptian darkness. The City government has done me many a mean trick in 16 years, & I stood the strain & kept the peace; but, to frightfully inconvenience me in order to accommodate a rectum like Franklin Chamberlain, was a little too much. So I went down last night [Oct. 14] & contracted for electric light at my own cost, & police protection at my own cost, & took measures to transfer my citizenship to some other town. So, after next June I shall have the satisfaction of paying a (possibly) very large tax every year to some town in which I do not live, & paying not a cent in Hartford any more forever, except on the house & grounds [MTNJ 3: 428].

Note: Franklin Chamberlin (1821-1896) was a Hartford Lawyer, Sam’s neighbor who sold Sam the lot for their Farmington St. house; strained relations existed between Sam and Chamberlin (sometimes wrongly reported as “Chamberlain”).