and miser living in a Los Angeles slum, died in 1973. As a bulldozer operator razed the shack that had been Piggott's home, the operator happened to notice something shiny. It was a bottle with Piggott's holographic will inside. Despite apparently having no discernible connection with Bridgewater, Piggott left the fund $300,000—money from careful investments over the years. The state of California contested the will and the library hired a lawyer, at considerable cost, to defend the bequest. Eventually, the lawyer won the case and the library got $210,000. By 1980, the Van Wyck Brooks Memorial Wing was dedicated, doubling the size of the library. Burton Bernstein, a longtime town resident, looked into why Piggott would leave money to the library, then wrote an article on the bequest, which appeared in the December 18, 1978, issue of The New Yorker. Piggott, as it turned out, had been a voracious reader on any number of subjects and loved public libraries (which are, after all, free). Bernstein believes that Piggott came across Van Wyck Brooks' The Flowering of New England, which describes the hermit Henry David Thoreau. Piggott may have compared himself to Thoreau, or saw wisdom in some of Thoreau's ideas as presented by Brooks. Perhaps this quote stuck in his mind: "The mass of men led lives of quiet desperation… Did they not know that the wisest had always lived, with respect to comforts and luxuries, a life more simple and meager than the poor?… Poverty had given him all this wealth." Piggott heard of the Van Wyck Brooks Memorial Fund, recognized the name, and, Bernstein believes, decided to contribute. Notable people Woody Allen, film director, writer, actor, and comedian Cathie Black, media executive and New York City Schools Chancellor Dan Briody. author Van Wyck Brooks (1886–1963), long-time town resident, was a literary critic, biographer, and historian Philip Evergood, artist Mia Farrow, actress Louise Fitzhugh, author of children's books including Harriet the Spy Susie Gharib, business news journalist Kathy Godfrey, talk show host Susan Kinsolving, author and poet E.G. Marshall (1914–1998), actor Lanford Monroe (1950–2000), wildlife artist and sculptor Mike Nichols (1931–2014), film and theater director, producer, actor, and comedian Diane Sawyer, television broadcast journalist Charles Seeger, noted musicologist and composer Luman Hamlin Weller, congressman from Iowa Teresa Wright, Academy Award-winning actress References External links Town of Bridgewater official website Burnham Library, the town public library Regional School District 12