Turning Back the Pages

100 years ago — January 1923

Mr. and Mrs. James Marston of Copake spent last week end at Fred Marston’s in Salisbury.

Walter Loucks Jr. of Lakeville spent Sunday with his grandmother in Lime Rock.

Fishing through the ice is the sport of the local nimrods these days.

Little Florence Crippen had the misfortune to fall on the ice in front of the post office last Friday and fracture her right forearm just below the elbow.

Have you learned to write 1923 yet?

50 years ago — January 1973

Two old friends from Canaan who hiked up Bear Mountain and to the tri-state border as teenagers 57 years ago and have photographs to prove it would like to make the trip again next summer. They are George Laffargue, chairman of the North Canaan Board of Assessors, and John R. Fuller, now of Salem, Mass. Mr. Fuller is the uncle of Oliver Eldridge, president of the Canaan Savings Bank. Messrs. Laffargue and Fuller both recall scaling the monument on top of Bear Mountain and inspecting the brass ball then atop a flagpole. Photographs record their feat.

The Gobillot farm went for a quarter of a million dollars last week to Land Vest, a Boston-based realty partnership. The farm is a large one — 263 acres — located on Route 41 across from the Sharon Water Company, and was formerly owned by Lewis, Leon and Eugene Gobillot.

First Selectman and Mrs. William B. Barnett are leaving today to spend the remaining winter months in Florida. Mr. Barnett plans to “commute” between Florida and Connecticut, returning for a few days each month for selectmen’s meetings and meetings of the board of directors of the National Iron Bank. This will be the Barnetts’ first trip to the home they have had built at Fort Myers Beach, about 25 miles south of Fort Myers. 

Falls Village now has a price tag to ponder on that 70 acre tract bordering the Hollenbeck River and viewed by town fathers as, among other things, a potential landfill site. The price, reached after two negotiating sessions with owner Stewart McMillan, is $125,000. That is about twice the land’s assessed value, but about $40,000 less than the price Mr. McMillan reportedly asked in an earlier proposal. 

Navy Seaman Recruit Candace L. Dakin, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Dakin of West Cornwall, has graduated from recruit training at the Naval Training Center in Orlando.

25 years ago — January 1998

The “ice-in” date on Lake Wononscopomuc came Monday, Dec. 22, earlier than the average date of Jan. 4 for this event by nearly two weeks. Rodney Aller, who keeps track each year of when the lake freezes over, attributes the earlier date “possibly to El Niño.” 

A popular local gathering place reopened its tavern doors and kitchen facilities this week to an eager public following the recent closing of the Falls Village Road House on Railroad Street. The Inn at Falls Village, as the business was known under a previous ownership, returns to town with Mark Wasdo, owner of AJ’s Steak & Pizza in Goshen as the new proprietor. 

These items were taken from The Lakeville Journal archives at Salisbury’s Scoville Memorial Library, keeping the original wording intact as possible. For more, go to www.scovillelibrary.org.