makes vital her glorious and stimulating traditions, this fair city of ours is still deriving inestimable benefits.
In the year 1815, Colonel Roswell Lee, a staunch Episcopalian, assumed command at the United States Armory, usually called "The Public Land" of Springfield. Before his time most of the laborers employed at these shops were gleaned from floating groups of men who were enlisted, rationed, and paid like common soldiers; a condition undesirable alike for the workmen and the community. Colonel Lee took immediate steps to remedy this evil. He encouraged the men to buy land with their spare earnings, to build homes, and to develop other traits of good citizenship. Knowing well that contentment and the physical and social well-being of his charges could be made permanent only by congenial religious ties, we find him writing to the Ordnance Department on July 29, 1816: —"There are two old stores at this place . . . On behalf of myself and others, I request permission too occupy a part of one for the purpose of holding public worship . . . . Let it he recollected that we have no right in the Parish; no persons living on the public land are seated in the church (myself excepted.)"
This wise request and many similar ones received no immediate answer, but the following year, with the consent of the National Government, an upper room was reserved for holding religious services in the newly completed Administration Building. This carried out a suggestion which Colonel Lee voiced in another letter, Sept. 16, 1816: " . . . . The second story is to be devoted to the purposes of a chapel, on which is to be a cupola and bell, the latter to answer the purpose of giving the signal . . . . for worship." This building greatly enlarged and improved, facing Federal Street, is still (1927) standing and this room, known for many years as "The Chapel on Armory Hill," is now one of the offices of the Commandant.
We of today, accustomed as we are to reading column after column of details of local happenings, find it a little difficult to understand the opposite policy of the local papers of the early part of the 19th century. This difference can be shown
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