Turning Back the Pages

125 years ago — April 1900

SALISBURY — The Morse-Keefer Cycle Co. have closed a portion of their works for an indefinite period.

William Conklin has moved his market to the Plummer building. W.F. Juppenlatz will enlarge his store by removing the partition between the barber shop and the room formerly occupied by Mr. Conklin.

Norfolk is to have a woman superintendent of the town farm, Mrs. Thomas Carroll who will take charge of the farm the coming year.

The old Blazing Star Lodge, No. 74, F. & A.M. of Cornwall Bridge is to be resuscitated, and the Grand Lodge officers will reinstitute it April 9th. The old lodge charter was granted in 1825, and was revoked in 1838. Since that time there has been no Masonic organization in the town.

We are pleased to note that Mrs. Lockwood’s condition is so much improved as to enable her to sit up for a few hours each day.

One of our property owners has blood in his eye. Instead of walking on the sidewalk he says people are determined to walk on his lawn, thus killing the grass. The man is kicking; he has a right to kick and kick hard. The sidewalks are made to use and should be made so that people CAN walk on them. However this man has provided a good dry walk and he thinks that ought to be sufficient.

LAKEVILLE — Capt. William Bartle is having a severe tussle with the grip.

The other night an amusing circumstance occurred at the depot. It seems one of our local Polanders expected a friend from the old country, so he went to the station to meet the last train. The train came and with it the man. Being unable to speak or understand English, he did not start to get out of the train quickly enough and it started up. The man on the platform was frantic, and in his excitement he rushed after the train, yelling “like sixty”; his legs flew; his coat tails stood out straight; his arms waved like a windmill, but the train didn’t pay the least attention and the last seen of him he was chasing around the curve and may be running yet for all we know.

100 years ago — April 1925

Robert Flint of Yale visited his grandfather, W.P. Everts, over Sunday.

SALISBURY — Benedict Carley, 11 years old, son of the late Harry Carley of this place, was drowned in the Blackberry river at East Canaan on Sunday afternoon. The boy was apparently riding his bicycle near the river and was thrown into the water when the bicycle struck some obstruction. He leaves his mother, Catherine Carley, and a brother, George, 14 years old.

State police, assisted by deputy sheriffs and constables, scoured the woods in Kent Tuesday morning seeking William Smith of Hartford, and Alfred Beebe of Great Barrington, who late Saturday afternoon again escaped from the county jail at Litchfield. The pair are supposed to have broken into the New Haven railroad’s freight-house at Cornwall Bridge during the night, where cases of eatables were broken open and a quantity of goods stolen. Smith has escaped from the Litchfield jail twice and Beebe three times, all in a short period. The two men were captured shortly before noon, while they were sleeping in the woods about a mile south of North Kent.

TACONIC — Frederick Hunt broke his collar bone last week while playing at school.

LIME ROCK — Mrs. Peck is entertaining an out of town friend this week.

Grandma Lorch returned to Lime Rock from Cornwall, where she has been for several weeks.

TACONIC — Joseph Pickert Jr. had the misfortune to cut his foot with an axe on Friday afternoon, severing the tendon of the great toe. Dr. Peterson repaired the damage with four stitches and Joseph is now about on crutches.

One of our local Boy Scouts, Rexford Baldwin, rode from Hartford Sunday on his bicycle. He left Hartford at 10 a.m. and arrived in Lakeville at 5 p.m.

Mr. H.P. Sharp, formerly of the Pine Plains Register, has assumed the ownership of the Harlem Valley Times of Amenia. He is retaining Editor J.D. O’Brien and the Times force. The Journal extends fraternal good wishes to Mr. Sharp and his able assistants.

Messrs. F.E. Bartholomew, A.E. Bauman and Chester Thurston, representing Lakeville Hose Co., were in New Jersey on Tuesday and Wednesday to witness demonstrations of different chemical trucks possible for use of the local company.

M.G. Fenn and Elester Patchen were down among the clams at New Haven last Sunday and some of the clams were down among Fenn and Patchen before the day was over.

Again there is too much speed being used by auto drivers through our Main Street. Why not give the kiddies and elderly people a little chance even if it takes about two minutes longer to pass through. Mr. State Policeman it is time to be on the job and nip this practice in the bud.

50 years ago — April 1975

Five years after its inception, the dream of Fred Gevalt III of Lakeville, to build and fly his own airplane, has come true. Mr. Gevalt piloted his single-engine seaplane, a Volmer Sportsman amphibian, on its maiden flight on March 16. To date the young pilot has more than 13 hours in flight time in his seaplane.

Lakeville and Falls Village firemen fought a stubborn brush fire late Saturday afternoon that burned over several hundred acres of forest land on the southern slope of Prospect Mountain in Salisbury before the fire was extinguished. Firemen had to bushwhack their way into the site from Sugar Hill Road in Amesville carrying 70-pound water tanks on their backs. The flames, which started in the valley, burned all the way to the ridgeline at the top of the 1461-foot mountain and destroyed mainly leaves, needles and underbrush.

Three Canaan men were arrested last Wednesday for the theft of emergency radio equipment from the Canaan Fire Department on March 16. The radio equipment was returned two days after the theft, left on the hood of Canaan Fire Chief Allyn Gatti’s auto. The men were each charged with third-degree burglary and second-degree larceny.

Ginny Lloyd of Salisbury has purchased The Polka Dot dress shop in Sheffield. Miss Lloyd, who formerly owned Pandora’s Box gift shop in Lakeville, has sold that establishment and is moving its stock to the Sheffield location. After three years of selling gifts, she wanted to expand her operations to include ladies’ apparel, but had no room for such items in her Lakeville location.

25 years ago — April 2000

Just when we thought we’d seen the last of Old Man Winter, he delivered a snow storm and anywhere from 4 to 12 inches of white fluff in the region. What on seasonably warm Saturday had been blooming daffodils were unseasonably buried blooms Sunday.

Tibetan monks from the Gaden Jangtse Monastery in Mundgod in south-central India spent a week of activities at the Salisbury School, including creating a Green Tara Sand mandala by dropping grains of colored sand to form patterns. Near the end of the week the mandala was dismantled and the monks led a procession of students, teachers and townspeople to Lake Washinee where the grains of sand were ceremoniously scattered.

SALISBURY — Rita Delgado won’t be getting breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day. More likely, she’ll be eating cold danish and drinking coffee from a styrofoam cup in a charter bus headed for Washington D.C. Mrs. Delgado will be on her way to join the Million Mom March on the nation’s capital, hopefully in the company of 45 or more others from the Northwest Corner who want tighter gun control laws. “The [Second Amendment] right to bear arms didn’t mean going to school with a semiautomatic or a Saturday night special,” she said.

SHARON — As of Tuesday, West Woods #1 joined Modley, Herb, Bowne, Butter and Cole roads as a scenic town road. After weighing the comments from about a dozen and a half residents at a public hearing April 7, the Board of Selectmen voted Tuesday to designate the unpaved the 3.4-mile long portion of West Woods Road #1 as scenic.

Brian O’Hara has brought honor and recognition to Kent. The 13-year-old eighth-grader at Kent Center School came in second in the state Geography Bee April 7, at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.