TTC_03_15_17_Vol.13-No.20.p1-12

March 15 - 21, 2017 www.TheTownCommon.com Page
Faithfully Yours – an Irish Immigrant Story
Continued from page 1
becoming a U.S. citizen.
But that dream was frustrated.
No bank would lend an immigrant
money. So he worked others land,
hoping to save enough one day to
buy his own acreage.
Then the American Civil War
came. As it dragged on for four years
in 1864, the war presented Florence
and Ellen with an opportunity, but
one that was very risky.
When a landowner and town
leader, Julian Day, was notified that
he was to be drafted into President
Abraham Lincoln’s army, he offered
Florence the chance to take his
place. In return, Day gave Florence
$300 and a small portion of his land
that had a house on it. He promised
to build a road to the property.
By serving in the army and
becoming a landowner, Florence
would gain respect and earn his
citizenship.
So at 35, he enlisted, taking the
wealthy landowner’s place and
agreeing to fight a war for a country
where he was not a citizen.
According to his letters, Alden
said, her great grandfather left for
the war confident that his service
would end soon and he would
return to his family and the land.
What he did not know was that
Lincoln had named General U.S.
Grant to head the army and mount
an offensive to end the war.
Burke’s letters home soon asked
what he had gotten himself into.
His last letters showed his growing
desperation.
Ellen and the children stayed to
work the land that turned out to
be barren. Day never built her the
promised road. As a result, her life,
alone raising three children, was
hard.
His life, at first, was routine:
training, cleaning, marching. Then
the Union Army offensive started.
Being an Irish immigrant, he was
pushed to the front lines.
On June 16, 1864, Florence
wrote to his wife. “Last night, we
crossed the James River on a large,
rickety pontoon boat. It seems we’re
marching south, toward Petersburg.
Grant aims to cut off supplies and
starve the Rebs into submission, or
force them to fight in the open. He
still commands us to press forward
trusting that our superior resources
will besiege Lee.”
He closed his last letter, “Dearest
Ellen, all I want you to do is
keep good courage and mind the
children and keep them in school.
That is the wish of an absent father
to his family. My love to you and
the boys, goodnight.”
As he did in every letter, his
salutation was “Yours Faithfully.”
Alden used that phrase as the title
to her historical novel.
In the days after he mailed that
letter, Florence was killed, his body
found in a trench in a field, one
of the 550,052 who died in the
war. The army returned his body
to Springfield at a cost to Ellen of
$100.
“Florence Burke’s gamble did
pay off,” Alden wrote in her novel.
His descendents “stayed in school,”
attending Brown University and
Boston University law school.
Because of the Burkes’ great
sacrifices, future generations of the
family did well in America, Alden
said. One became a judge; another
a dentist and professor, another
worked for the U.S. government
in Washington and her own father
was the head of a school.
They were all “educated,
successful and considered true
Americans,” she wrote.
Alden and her family traveled to
County Cork for her to research
the Irish background of the Burkes’
life. There she met John O’Sullivan,
a local historian, who helped her in
her research of Cork County history
and wrote a forward to her novel.
She also thanked the New
England Irish Cultural Center and
Ancestry.com for their resources in
tracking the Burkes’ life story.
To view the Burkes’ letters, visit
www.ellenalden.com.
New Homes Versus Future Water Supply
Continued from page 1
supply.
The controversy erupted when
Ethel Vitale, the longtime golf
course owner, died at age 90.
Her heirs offered the property
to developer James Goodwin of
Newton, N.H., who has been
described by his attorney and
former mayor Lisa Mead as “very
responsible.”
The proposal would leave 22 acres
of open space for walking trails, and
if built, the nearest home would be
700 feet from the well, almost twice
the state required setback.
But that has not reassured city
officials, concerned about the future
water supply.
“When I’m told that this is the
last available site for a new well in
the city, I have to look at the bigger
picture,” planning director Andrew
Port said in his office last week.
Once houses are built on this site,
the state will not approve it for a
future well, he said.
In a January memo to the
Planning Board, Port wrote:
“Development of the Evergreen site
now could permanently prohibit a
future City well if not coordinated
and addressed adequately at this
time.”
The project is opposed by Mayor
Donna Holaday and every city
council member, who may have to
face the expensive option of buying
all or at least 13 of the home sites
to protect the city’s future water
supply.
“Hopefully there is still time to
protect this vital resource,” wrote
city councilor Robert Cronin last
week to his constituents.
If the city needs to replace well
No. 2, former water treatment
plant supervisor Paul Colby “felt
confident that the City would
be able to replace the existing #2
well entirely on City’s property
– without concern for state setback
requirements,” Port wrote in his
memo.
But Colby and his team argue
that the city should acquire all or
part of the golf course as a site for a
future well, he wrote.
The Planning Board, which has
the authority to grant a special
permit for the project, voted before
the city’s water commission and
board of health gave their final
opinions on its impact on the city’s
water supply. The Conservation
Commission has not granted its
approval.
The planning board, facing a
deadline under state law, could
have been sued by the developer
if it had refused or postponed the
vote to grant a special permit.
In approving the project the
Planning Board wrote: “The
proposed development will not
overload public water, drainage or
sewer systems, proved that certain
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It imposed 13 pages of rules on
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