Colin

The UConn Huskies men play at the Civic Center.

Jane

Hartford has some of the oldest things in the country. The Hartford Courant is also old. My Dad works there in the sports department. He tells people what to do strictly! The first American dictionary also came from Hartford.

Kelsey

Hartford was the home of Mark Twain. Mark Twain was the author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn .

We asked for your help and we received an answer in response to our question about conflicting facts sent in. Some said that the Bushnell Park in Hartford was the oldest public park. Others claimed that the Boston Commons was the oldest pubic park!

Thanks to Scott Powers for doing the research on this topic and writing it up for the kids' page. Here goes!

Both Boston and Hartford claim to have the oldest park in the country. Is one city telling a fib? Not really. They both have the oldest park, in a different way.

The old park in Boston, Massachusetts is called Boston Common. The old park in Hartford, Connecticut is called Bushnell Park.

Boston Common was first, but there is a difference. In 1634, just a few years after the Pilgrims came over from England, land was set aside in Boston for soldiers to train and kids to play. Cows ate the grass in the park. That was about one hundred years before even George Washington was born, and 140 years before the United States became a country.

Nobody paid for this land in Boston. It was just set aside for people to use, and folks still use it today in 1999. The city grew around the park.

About 220 years after Boston Common was formed, the city of Hartford wanted a park similar to the one called Central Park in New York City. But Central Park in New York City had been built with private money. That means rich people gave money to build the park.

None of the rich people in Hartford wanted to build the park with their own money.

A minister in Hartford named Reverend Horace Bushnell had an idea that had not been suggested in any other American city -- the creation of a public park, paid for by public funds. That means, everybody in the city of Hartford, rich and poor, would use part of the money they made from their jobs to pay for the park. For instance, if you made $100, you might pay $10. If you made $50, you might pay $5. If you made $10, you would pay $1. That's called a tax. If it's done right, everybody pays the same fraction of their pay. So rich people pay more, because a fraction of their pay is bigger than a fraction of an average person's pay.

Just a few years before Abraham Lincoln became president, on Jan. 5, 1854, the people of Hartford voted 1,687-683 to use their tax money for a park. So Bushnell Park became the first municipal park in the country to be thought of, built and paid for by people through a vote.

Since then, many parks have been formed the way Bushnell Park was formed. But Bushnell was the first park created that way.

If you go to Boston Common, ride the swan boats. You can feed the ducks. If you go to Bushnell Park, ride the beautiful carousel. All the horses are hand-carved.

Both rides are very old, but more fun than you will ever have in most other parks.

Both parks are right next to the state capital building where the governor of that state works. If the governor of Massachusetts and the governor of Connecticut get bored working, they can go play in the park.

It's a good thing our great great great great grandparents made parks that we can still enjoy today.

Thank you to the boys and girls and moms and dads who sent in very interesting facts about Hartford. Now onto New York City.

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