I greatly appreciated Carol Sommer's article referencing Lorenzo and Ulysses Dow ("The Dows and a street name puzzle," March 16), brothers who lived and worked in New London during the early 1800s. It shed a light on a way of life we now take for granted, i.e. religious pluralism.

Sommer's stated, "a religious brouhaha occurred when Ulysses sold land to Universalists to build a church." She shared the degree of disdain directed at the Universalists but neglected to say why. So I feel the story was incomplete.

Although there was common political agreement among local churches around abolition and temperance, the local churches were threatened by the Universalists' embrace of a loving God extending universal salvation.