Turning Back the Pages

100 years ago — January 1923

SALISBURY — Miss Lila Senior was home from Canaan over Sunday.

Owing to the storm no session of the public school was held on Monday.

The large creamery at Cornwall was destroyed by fire on Tuesday night of last week.

Arthur McNeil of Town Hill was the victim of a painful accident last week when a horse stepped on his left foot, the caulk penetrating the foot to considerable depth.

50 years ago — January 1973

Northwest Connecticut school attendance was cut sharply this week as the result of a lingering flu visitation. Monday was the worst day, with 302 out of 686 students, 16 teachers, 3 custodians and an aide absent from Housatonic Valley Regional High School and 332 out of 2,062 elementary school students absent, mostly due to the flu.

Lakeville’s official “ice man,” George P. Milmine, proclaimed “ice in” Monday, Jan. 8 after the lake froze all the way across when temperatures dipped below zero and skaters ventured out.

The Rev. F. Newton Howden, rector of Trinity Church in Lime Rock, has been slowed down for the past week by a broken bone in his left ankle, suffered when he tripped and fell at the door to his office in the parish house. Father Howden is not burdened with the usual cast, but wears a pair of high laced army combat boots whenever he gets out of bed.

Apparently assured of clear title to the former “horse sheds” property, the Village Improvement Society continues to move toward its proposed construction of an off-street shopping center in Salisbury village.

Firemen from Sharon and Amenia battled for more than 12 hours in near-zero cold Monday to save the barn at the Milton Crosby farm on the Amenia Union Road. Cows belonging to Lawrence Duncan were led out but some 4000 bales of hay were destroyed. The roof of the barn was heavily damaged but the structure itself remained sound.

Births hit a record low in Salisbury last year. Town Clerk Lila Nash, reporting the town’s vital statistics for the calendar year 1972, said that only 14 babies were born to Salisbury residents, as contrasted with 32 the previous year.

The heavy rains of 1972 ruined crops, dismayed ski resort operators and caused all sorts of havoc in Northwestern Connecticut, but they brought a near-record year for the Hartford Electric Light hydro plant at Falls Village. HELCO’s generating plant turned out more than 55 million kilowatts last year, according to statistics compiled by plant supervisor Dave Goddard. That makes 1972 the best year for hydro production since 1951, and the fourth best year since the plant was built back in 1914.

Ed and Pegeen FitzGerald, who have brightened American households for 35 years with their weekday broadcasts of homey chatter, gave their last show on Friday. The show has been terminated due to Ed FitzGerald’s deteriorating health.

25 years ago — January 1998

Zeina El-Hanbaly, the first baby of the new year, was born at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 1 to parents Asmaa Aly and Hany El-Hanbaly. The Egyptian couple’s first child was early -- two weeks earlier than expected. “All of the people at work told me to try and have her on New Year’s Day,” Mrs. Aly said. “I didn’t know why they were telling me this.” The new mother found out quickly, when the local newspapers began calling and stopping by for photographs, though she still did not know what the fuss was all about.

It was a less than auspicious beginning to the new year for one Canaan family. As the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, they watched volunteer firefighters work to save a building on their farm. A repair garage at Sunset Hill Farm was heavily damaged by the blaze, discovered about 11:30 p.m. Thursday by the Giulian family, owners of the dairy farm on Boinay Hill and Sand Road. A wood stove used to heat the building was blamed for the fire.

The New Jersey-based Journal Register Co. increased its Connecticut holdings to more than 70 publications this week including its purchase of two Northwest Corner weekly newspapers as part of a larger $3.8 million deal. The Lakeville Journal Co. had sought to expand its weekly newspaper publications to five holdings with the planned purchase of the Kent Good Times Dispatch and the Litchfield Enquirer before the Journal Register Co. blocked the pending sale in a last-minute deal to buy HVM, a New Milford- based limited liability company. The firm includes the Housatonic Valley Publishing Co. which serves Litchfield and Fairfield counties as well as Putnam County, N.Y.

The Litchfield County Women’s network announced that the recipient of its first scholarship is Candise M. Stiewing of Falls Village. Ms. Stiewing will be awarded a $500 scholarship at the Jan. 21 luncheon of the Women’s Network at Marino’s Restaurant in Torrington.

These items were taken from The Lakeville Journal archives at Salisbury’s Scoville Memorial Library, keeping the original wording intact as possible.