Turning Back the Pages

100 years ago — September 1922

Charles Wise of Salisbury has a Rhode Island Red hen which recently laid an egg weighing four ounces. This is nearly as large as the best one recorded, and some idea of the size of the egg may be gained when it is stated that the average egg weighs about 2 1/2 ounces.

Roy Gaines of Kent spent a few days with Morris Dennis at Pine Cone Camp at Ore Hill.

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Edison were recent guests at Mrs. A.M. Waitt’s in Sharon.

Red raspberries were picked from Mrs. T.L. Norton’s garden on September 20th.

Mr. L.A. Bulman of Lime Rock celebrated his 81st birthday last Friday by spending the day in Ashley Falls.

The cement road from Roberts Store to E.L. Peabody’s frontage is now finished and open to traffic. The work of lowering the sidewalk down the hill past Farnam Tavern and Miss Jennie Smith’s property will now be undertaken.

50 years ago — September 1972

Between 10 a.m. and 12:30 last Saturday morning, some 972 broad-winged hawks were counted at Cooper Hill Farm in Ashley Falls, Mass., during the Housatonic Audubon Society’s second annual Hawk Watch.

Small claims sessions of the 18th Circuit Court were scheduled to start this morning in Salisbury, with town officials openly irritated over the failure to notify them formally in advance. Although Chief Circuit Court Judge John J. Daly had disclosed plans for the small claims sessions as long ago as June, not until Tuesday of this week, 48 hours before the session, was there any official contact or request for courtroom facilities. On Tuesday morning Salisbury Town Clerk Lila Nash received a telephone call from Ernest L. Fetzer, clerk of the 18th Circuit Court in Winsted, informing her that the small claims sessions will be held on the third Thursday of every month, alternating between Salisbury and North Canaan.

Local and state officials, in their continuing search for the source of gasoline which has entered the water supply of some establishments on Route 7 near Cornwall Bridge, have found a leak in one of the gas tanks of the Phillips 66 gas station near the Elms Restaurant. Dr. G.S. Gudernatch, Sharon medical examiner, said that the gas tank had been emptied of all gasoline, filled with water and sealed. This may not be the only source of the gas in the water wells in the area, Dr. Gudernatch said, and the investigation is continuing.

Just over a year ago Robert Yoakum’s humor column, “Another Look,” first appeared in the pages of The Lakeville Journal and in newspapers across a 6000-mile span. Beginning next week his column will be put out twice weekly by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, appearing in newspapers with a total circulation of 4,100,000.

A new face and a new shop are attracting visitors in Falls Village’s growing little business section. Grace Kiley of Canaan is the proprietor of Grace’s Apron and Gift Shop located next to the old railroad station. The store, open daily from 11 to 4:30, stocks homemade aprons, knitted wear and other gift items.

The Community Service hardware store in Falls Village will be “closed for the moment, for the winter,” according to Community Service Inc. president Michael Turnure. The one full-time employee at the Falls Village store will be transferred to the company’s Lakeville store. “We just don’t generate enough business during the winter to keep it open,” said Mr. Turnure of the Falls Village store, which has been operating since 1929.

25 years ago — September 1997

A fire in an empty Daisy Hill Road house in Canaan was deliberately set last Friday, according to the local fire marshal. Volunteer firefighters from Norfolk and Canaan responded to the two-alarm blaze, ironically in the same abandoned house used by the fire departments for training purposes.

Salisbury Town Historian Virginia Moskowitz received a present this week. Elizabeth Terhune Rossire gave Mrs. Moskowitz a book with the names of all those who ate or stayed at the Farnam Tavern between 1913 and 1922. She and her former husband, the late Sidney Terhune, owned the former tavern for many years and unearthed this long-ago registry. The Terhunes sold the tavern in 1984 to the present owners, Rita Matthews and Gerard Thompson of Southfield, Mass.

These items were taken from The Lakeville Journal archives at Salisbury’s Scoville Memorial Library, keeping the original wording intact as possible. Go to www.scovillelibrary.org for access to more archives of local news, including The Lakeville Journal.