Turning Back the Pages

100 years ago — March 1923

The many friends of James Winterbottom of Lime Rock will be saddened to learn of his death which occurred at his home on Sunday, March 11th. The deceased was 69 years of age. The funeral was held on Wednesday. Mrs. Winterbottom is critically ill with pneumonia. A nurse from Pittsfield is in attendance.

Display Adv.: AUNT BETTY’S BREAD — YES, our bakery is perfectly sanitary and that’s the reason that the products of this establishment are pure. Your appetite regains its hundred percent assertiveness if you partake of the bread that we bake or the cake that we make. Diehl & Minor, Inc., Millerton, N.Y.

W.B. Perry purchased a pair of good looking general purpose horses at the horse sale in Canaan on Tuesday.

Louis Crowe is off duty at O’Loughlin’s garage owing to an attack of quinsey.

About every person in this section has had or is having an attack of grippe or as some call it flu. Happily the cases are mild in form.

50 years ago — March 1923

Firemen from four communities battled a Monday morning blaze which gutted the Amenia, N.Y., Center for Girls. The residents, wards of the state, escaped safely though several firemen suffered minor injuries. The structure is rumored to have once been the property of stage and silent movie stars John Barrymore and his mistress Delores Costello. They are thought to have used the “Costello Estate” (as the property was once known) as a secret hideaway.

The Salisbury Bank and Trust Co. moved millions of dollars worth of cash and securities last Saturday from its former building to the new headquarters on Main Street in Lakeville. Customers’ safe deposit boxes were moved in blocks. Employees of the Dunbar Transportation Co. of New Haven started the project at 7 a.m. and the job was completed by 6 p.m.

Charles Paine of Reservoir Road in Lakeville has been appointed by the Selectmen to watch for any oil spills in the Town of Salisbury and to warn local officials. Mr. Paine, who is traffic manager for Community Fuel, was asked to be on guard against leaks and spills into lakes and streams such as have occurred elsewhere in Connecticut, and to report any problems to the Selectmen.

Robert Osborn of Salisbury, artist and cartoonist whose work offers trenchant comments on the contemporary world, has received the 1973 Medal of the Yale Arts Association.

The Sharon Highway Crew was granted a 20 cent per hour pay increase at the selectmen’s meeting Friday, March 9. The crew asked for an immediate increase of 50 cents per hour and also requested that they be paid every other Friday. After considerable discussion, selectmen decided to offer the 20 cent increase with the understanding that there could be no further increase until the end of the next fiscal year.

The March issue of Connecticut magazine features an article on collecting sap to make maple syrup and maple sugar with Falls Villager William Holcomb of Ledgebrook Farm. “Every year I say, never again. But then the season comes around, I’m back at it,” Mr. Holcomb said.

25 years ago — March 1998

Cornwall residents attending a Department of Transportation hearing on the replacement and removal of concrete crib walls along Route 4 took a different view of the project than the selectmen. It’s walls they want, not stone. A handful of citizens came to the hearing Thursday to tell state representatives to go back to the original plans which had been scaled back at the request of local officials.

AT&T floated a balloon in Sharon last week at its primary Herb Road site for a proposed 150-foot telecommunications tower. The company was required to float the balloon Thursday during state Siting Council hearings at Town Hall so residents could judge the potential visual impact of the proposed monopole.

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