BRATTLEBORO — New Hampshire Representative Steven Lindsey appeared before the Selectboard seeking the town's support for naming the two bridges spanning the Connecticut between the town and Hinsdale, N.H.
Lindsey, a sponsor of two pending bills in the New Hampshire House of Representatives that name the bridge, told the board that the smaller, eastern Parker truss bridge on Route 119 from the island to Hinsdale would be named the Charles Anderson Dana Bridge.
Charles Anderson Dana, born 1819 in Hinsdale, worked as a journalist, author, and assistant secretary of war during the Civil War. He served as editor and co-owner of the New York Sun.
Plans had been in the works to name the larger of the two spans from Brattleboro to the island, for Rudyard Kipling, the British author who had lived from 1892 to 1896 in Dummerston, where he wrote his classic Jungle Book.
Lindsay said that upon further discussion, however, legislators have reconsidered naming the 1920 western Pennsylvania truss bridge after former Hinsdale resident and Brattleboro Retreat founder Anna Hunt Marsh.
According the Brattleboro Retreat's Web site, Marsh bequeathed $10,000 to found the first facility for the mentally ill in Vermont. If New Hampshire approves the name, it will be the second bridge that Lindsey knows of in New Hampshire or Vermont named after a woman.
Explaining that the chair of his legislative Public Works and Highways committee assigned him to solicit support from those affected by the name change, Lindsey appeared at the Feb. 2 meeting requesting a letter of endorsement.
The Selectboard voted to authorize Chair Jesse Corum to send a letter endorsing naming the bridges for Dana and Marsh. The New Hampshire House is scheduled to vote March 3 on the two bills.