Big news in 1897: President McKinley visited Vermont - "Bullets Fly In Prison," was the headline to a Boston story in the first issue of The Lakeville Journal

When Col Card of Millerton published the first issue of The Lakeville Journal on Saturday, Aug. 14, 1897, he described the new enterprise as “A Local Paper Devoted to the Interests of Lakeville and the Towns of Salisbury and Sharon.� It was the twilight of the iron industry, and both towns had started to lose population from their peaks in 1880.

A century later the mines are long since closed, the furnaces that lit the night sky are gone, the mountainsides that had been stripped bare for charcoal have reverted to forests, and there are many more part-time residents in the population, which is again growing. (See the population comparison on this page.)

Yet the legacy of the iron era is indelibly imprinted on the culture of the three-state corner. The devotion of the newspaper remains strong, and over the years has broadened to include six towns: Canaan (Falls Village), Cornwall, Kent and North Canaan in addition to the two original towns.

Two other papers were also added, The Millerton News (1972) and The Winsted Journal (1996).

A small, slow press

A casual reader viewing the front page of The Journal’s first issue might well have concluded that this was a national paper despite its local label. Top stories concerned the assassination of the prime minister of Spain and the “Perils of the Klondike.�

The reason for this external emphasis was that the first and last pages of the four-page issue were ready-print, a sort of boiler-plate supplied by a syndicate along with national advertising of patent medicines. Only the two inside pages contained local news.

In 1897 there was no such thing as computerized typesetting or desktop publishing. The Linotype, which cast lead into a line of type, at the time was in use by some city papers but was far beyond the resources of a rural weekly.

For The Journal it was necessary for the printer to select every individual character from a typecase by hand in order to compose a column and eventually a page of type. Thus it was a massive task to put together two local pages and then to print them slowly on a flatbed press, one or two pages at a time, at the paper’s office on Main Street opposite the Holley-Williams House.

A paper of their own

The owner, Col (for Colvin) Card, was the editor and publisher of The Millerton Telegram, who concluded that the towns of Salisbury and Sharon, with populations of about 3,500 and 2,000, respectively, needed a paper of their own. The Connecticut Western News had been started in Salisbury in 1871, the same year the Connecticut Western Railroad reached town, but the office of publication had been moved to North Canaan three years later.

Although Card financed and published The Lakeville Journal, he did not take the title of editor. The person first designated for that position was Irving J. Keyes. An article in the opening issue noted that “considerably over� 1,000 copies had been printed and said that “all the editorial and mechanical work involved has been practically done in three days by a force of one man and a boy.�

Within a few months Benjamin D. Jones succeeded Keyes as editor. B.D. Jones, as he signed himself, was to remain for nearly 40 years. He bought out Col Card’s interest in 1905 and as editor and publisher charted the course of the paper until his death in 1937.

Card, a native of Boston Corners, N.Y., had been a school teacher before venturing into journalism. At the time of his death in 1908 at the age of 47, a Journal article said of him that “probably no man within 100 miles was better known and more generally liked than Col Card.�

Ben Jones chronicled the life and times of Northwest Corner communities into the emergence of electric lights and the automobile, a world war, the demise of the iron industry and finally of the Central New England Railway, and the Great Depression. He plugged away for civic improvements, especially sidewalks, and his editorials and news coverage helped lay the groundwork for the formation of the first regional school district in New England in 1939.

Jones did not live to see it, but the new district amalgamated the formerly separate high schools of six towns: Salisbury, Sharon, Canaan, North Canaan, Cornwall and Kent. The new Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village superseded them. Gradually, Jones also had installed more modern equipment, including a Linotype that vastly simplified the composition of the paper and made larger issues possible. The Journal also operated a printshop, which helped pay the salaries of additional employes.

Upon Jones’ death Dorothy Belcher (Mrs. George Belcher of Salisbury), who had learned to operate the Linotype during the Jones era, kept the paper alive until it was purchased in 1940 by Stewart and Ann Hoskins for less than $10,000. They nurtured, expanded and gave their energies and love to The Journal over more than 30 years.

Ann was at heart a poet, and a very good one. As a housewife with two small daughters, she had no newspaper experience when she and Stewart assumed responsibility for a struggling weekly that turned out to have only about 325 paid subscribers (now the company prints 5,500 copies of The Lakeville Journal and 2,000 copies of the Millerton News on Wednesday evenings; and 1,800 copies of The Winsted Journal on Thursday). Stewart had done some newspaper and magazine work in the New York area, but neither knew life in a small town.

They learned fast, and with their hard work the paper grew. Pearl Harbor and American entry into World War II soon followed. Stewart’s work in defense industries in North Canaan and Torrington suddenly cast Ann into the new role of editor. After a day on his defense job, Stewart ran the flatbed press, often until early morning hours, to print the Thursday issues.

Embracing the entire region

What provided the impetus for the growth of the paper after the war was the cooperation of the six Northwest Connecticut towns in the new regional high school. Soon, in addition to Salisbury and Sharon, The Journal had correspondents in North Canaan, Canaan (Falls Village), Cornwall and Kent.

Ann Hoskins was skilled at persuading many of the artists and writers who had been thrilled to find a hideaway in the northwest hills to offer their talents to the paper. Some wrote regular columns.

Covers for supplements and special sections often featured original drawings or literary contributions such as poems by Cornwall’s Mark Van Doren.

In the larger community, The Journal sponsored Opinions Unlimited, an area forum. It also gave strong support to the creation of the Housatonic Mental Health Center and the Sharon Creative Arts Foundation, which in turn brought summer theater to Sharon (now in the form of the popular productions at TriArts at the Sharon Playhouse).

Onward to

Pocketknife Square

By 1958 The Journal had badly outgrown its Main Street quarters. When Frederic Leubuscher rehabilitated the three-story brick building constructed in 1866 that had housed Holley Manufacturing Co., this became the paper’s new home. Ann Hoskins persuaded town authorities to rename the complex Pocketknife Square. The Journal remained there for 25 years. Advertising increased and paid circulation reached 4,000 copies per week.