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abandoned it."
Although Townsend writes that "Gapland is exactly what I intended, a cool, healthful private place", he refuses to rent his house in Washington as "I would have had to transfer to sell everything and be unable to sell it and have no abiding place. Bought nearly sixteen years ago, I do not want to give it away."
Two years later, in perhaps the last letter written from Gapland (he left in 1911), Townsend is rather upbeat, noting that he still has a good cook, is expecting some female guests, and has entertained a contingent of 60 cavalrymen. But now diabetes has overtaken him, and he lives "on diabetes diet strictly except milk", this exception because he has "a fresh cow and good milk."
Having moved to New York, where his daughter could take care of him, Townsend writes to Edmond C. Bonaventure, who has taken on some of the roles which his father Edmond F. played. Specifically, Townsend pleads, in a letter, dated May 1912, that he might grant a power of attorney so that his properties in Washington and Gapland can be disposed of. This is the first indication we have that Townsend, not family members, engineered the sale of his real estate.
Then in two letters, written just over three months before his death, he tells Edmond C. that he has applied to an "old news home" (a retirement facility for aged journalists not identified) for admission, but that his "newspaper salary is an obstacle." His eagerness to be with his own kind puts the lie to the assertion by some sources that Townsend was impoverished in his last years. Alert and articulate to the end, he was buried in the family plot in Philadelphia, not in the mausoleum he constructed at Gapland to house his remains. There the inscription reads, "Good Night Gath". Today these newly discovered letters awaken us to a new and exciting discovery of the latter years of George Alfred Townsend.
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