Turning Back The Pages

100 years ago — January 1922

SALISBURY — Lester Hoysradt has sold his Franklin roadster to Charles Benjamin.

One of Salisbury’s oldest residents, Mr. Alexander Suydam, died early Friday morning at his home of infirmities due to his advanced years. Mr. Suydam was born in the town of Canaan Nov. 16, 1834, and was the son of the late Saluman and Sophronia Suydam, who during his childhood moved to the Weataug district to the farm near the present power house of the Conn. Power Co.

LIME ROCK — Everyone is having their ice house filled this week.

On January 1st the Eggleston Brothers assumed the management of the garage business formerly conducted by Miss Jennie Smith.

Members of the Salisbury League of Women Voters will hold a food sale on Friday afternoon, Jan. 20th. The Connecticut Power Co. have kindly offered a window in their office for the sale.

50 years ago — January 1972

Connecticut State Fish and Game authorities hope to stock alewives in Lake Wononscopomuc in Lakeville next spring and will consider building a new screen to prevent trout from escaping.

North Canaan’s role as industrial and commercial center for the Northwest Corner has not spared the town special problems of financial hardship. Among these are low income and some unemployment among the town’s relatively large number of unskilled or semi-skilled workers; the lack of a resident physician, and the growing need for housing for the elderly — housing now contemplated by the North Canaan Housing Authority.

A bad break in a water main on Indian Mountain Road late Sunday afternoon caused a failure in water pressure there, from the intersection with Millerton Road all the way up to Indian Mountain School. It also lowered the pressure somewhat over most of Lakeville, before it was repaired about 9 p.m.

Quiet reigns now at the U.S. Gypsum Company plant on Sand Road in Falls Village. The lime quarry and crushing plant closed down Dec. 31. The property and equipment are for sale. The closing meant the loss of 20 jobs to the local economy. U.S Gypsum shut down the plant rather than invest the cost of new pollution control devices required by the state. The firm placed the cost of these devices at $39,000.

Boy Scouts of Troop 33 went on a hike and camp out on Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 8 and 9, to Meeker Town on Canaan Mountain. About 15 boys went along with Scoutmaster Richard Byrne and his assistants Duncan Denny, Bob Cook and Dale Merrill. This has been the largest turnout for a camp out that the scouts have had.

Jack Phelps, 15, of East Canaan, took second place Saturday in the Junior A class of the Torger Tokle ski jump tournament at Bear Mountain, N.Y. He represented the Salisbury Winter Sports Association.

25 years ago — January 1997

CORNWALL — Harriet Lydia Clark, teacher, legislator and lifelong member of the Cornwall community, died Jan. 7 at the Sharon Health Care Center. She was 102 years old.

LAKEVILLE — Local physician Dr. Peter Gott, a nationally syndicated columnist featured in The Lakeville Journal, was the subject of an acrostic puzzle in The New York Times Sunday magazine last weekend. The acrostic by Thomas H. Middleton in the Jan. 5 edition of the widely-circulated magazine challenged readers to solve a word puzzle that made reference to Dr. Gott and his 1986 book “No House Calls.” The gist of the puzzle was that physicians’ waiting rooms are aptly named because patients wait at their own expense. “I’m honored to be the subject of a New York Times acrostic again,” Dr. Gott said Tuesday. “I always thought of myself as a puzzle anyway.” The Lakeville physician was previously featured in a New York Times acrostic in 1988. His book is now out of print.

In an area where businesses tend to come and go, Community Lumber and Hardware has been around a long, long time. This week, it lost its president with the death of Michael Turnure, who had been at the helm for the past 25 years.

SHARON — For the last 13 years, the Sharon Volunteer Fire Department has been raising money for needy families with Fred Amerighi’s famous spaghetti suppers. Mr. Amerighi passed away last year, but the tradition continues as the volunteers prepare for another fund-raising dinner Jan. 18 at the Sharon Center School. And as firefighter George Holst-Grubbe said this week, “Fred’s spirit will be in the sauce.”

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