The three prizes (silver cups) were awarded as follows: Henry D. Hine, New Milford, first; A. N. Trott, Waterbury, Conn., second; Mrs. Isaac B. Bristol, New Milford, third. Robert Dunlap was given a special honorable mention.
The decoration of Mr. Henry Hine’s car was very dainty and elaborate. It was done in white, pink, and purple. In front of the chauffeur was a Cupid, driving three white doves with white and purple ribbons. Before the machine were banners inscribed with the figures 1707-1907. The tonneau was banked with evergreens and wild flowers. The rear tire on the tonneau was covered with a wreath of evergreens, in the center of which was suspended a Cupid with bow and arrow. The chauffeur and the lady passengers wore white and pink.
Mr. Trott’s car bore a canopy of salmon pink, olive green, and white crêpe paper flowers, and carried as passengers Dr. and Mrs. Bragaw in Colonial attire. The wheels and the back of the tonneau were similarly decorated with crêpe paper.
Mrs. Bristol’s car was decorated with laurel, ferns, and white daisies, supplemented by yellow and white bunting, and carried several passengers in white, with daisies in their hair.
Mr. Dunlap’s car was literally covered with grass-green and white draperies and bore an arch of these colors. Its lady passengers wore white gowns and white picture hats trimmed with green.
Mr. Peterson’s car, with a colossal figure of Uncle Sam, and Mr. Randall’s with festoons of lemons, gave rise to much merriment. The other cars were decorated with flags and bunting; Colonial blue and yellow bunting; white and pale-green bunting; daisies and flags; peonies and daisies. The party-colored cars presented a brilliant and beautiful picture, as they coursed rapidly round and round “The Green,” and evoked many outbursts of hearty applause.
THE HISTORICAL MEETING
The Historical Meeting of Monday afternoon, the next important event in the Bi-Centennial Celebration, was presided over by Frederic M. Williams. Mr. Williams, after a few genial words of greeting, introduced, as the first speaker, Dr. Samuel Hart, President of the Connecticut Historical Society, explaining, as he did so, that New Milford welcomes her guests, not only with the best that she has, but with the best that there is.
Dr. Hart spoke as follows:
“The recurring anniversaries of the towns of our ancient State are bringing before us, as in a series of living pictures, the history of the whole commonwealth and of all its parts. Beginning, within the easy memory of many now living, with the quarter-millennials of the first settled towns, Hartford and its sister towns on the Great River, Saybrook at its mouth, New Haven on its fair harbor at the mouth of the Quinnipiac, and then its allied towns, Guilford to the east and Milford, your mother-city, to the west, we are passing now to the bi-centennials of those, the history of which begins in the opening years of the eighteenth century. Our origins have been brought before us, and we have studied again the men and the times, the founders of our first colonies and the foundations which they laid, the early history of two differently ordered federations or groups of organized communities, and their union into one government under a charter from the English king which made them almost independent of his authority. We are passing on now to another period, when, under varied influences and in changed circumstances, many of our most beautiful and prosperous towns were founded. Two years ago Newtown, which once had part of its boundary-line in common with you, observed its bi-centennial; and the two-hundredth anniversaries of Derby and Woodbury and Waterbury and Danbury—to mention only those in this neighborhood—were earlier than that.