Turning Back the Pages - September 17, 2026

125 years ago — September 1901

LIME ROCK — Matthew Patterson recently received a silver medal from the Canadian government as a token of his services during the Fenian raid in ‘71. The medal is suitably inscribed and is considerably heavier than a silver dollar. It depends from a silk tri-color and pin, and altogether makes a very neat souvenir.

Brook Pit Mining Company have closed down for a few days to make repairs.

W.P. Bradley while standing in his yard last Thursday was astonished to see a large bald head eagle fly over in a westerly direction. Mr. Bradley says the bird was the largest he ever saw.

100 years ago — September 1926

Good bye to the straw hat till next summer, but how about those eye shades. Isn’t it time for them also to join the straw lid and the bathing suit on the closet shelf.

Mr. Robert Fowlkes has been putting a new roof on his house.

50 years ago — September 1976

Six daily and 10 weekend bus trips through the Housatonic Valley and Berkshire Mountains by Bonanza Bus Lines began Sunday. Five northbound trips originate in New York City and serve the Northwest Corner towns of Kent, Cornwall Bridge, West Cornwall, Falls Village and Canaan. Continuing through Massachusetts, the line also serves Sheffield and Great Barrington.

SALISBURY — The selectmen appointed James Rutledge Tuesday night to succeed Frank Markey as manager of the Town Grove. Mr. Markey is retiring on Oct. 15 and Mr. Rutledge will begin his duties Oct. 8.

A new roof is being installed on the Farnum Apartments in Lakeville. Formerly the Farnum Tavern, originally erected in 1795, it is owned by Sidney Terhune.

Archbishop John F. Whealon will be in Sharon on Saturday, Sept. 25, to honor Mrs. Maurice McCann with an Archdiocesan Medal for Outstanding Service. The archbishop, who will celebrate Mass at St. Bernard’s at 5:30 p.m., usually bestows this medal at his office but wishes to present it in person to Mrs. McCann. The Archdiocesan Medal expressed gratitude to Mrs. McCann for her outstanding service to the Archdiocese of Hartford. Mrs. McCann, who is well-known in the community for her many years of work as coordinator for special education in Regional District No. 1, has been playing the organ and contributing to the musical life of the parish for 40 years.

Kimberly Fincke returned to her home in Lakeville Tuesday afternoon after spending several days in Sharon Hospital following an accident on the Salisbury Central School playground. Kim, a third-grader, suffered a fractured skull Friday when she fell from a slide. She was taken to the hospital by the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance and was treated in the intensive care unit, then in the pediatric unit before being released. Her mother said Tuesday she “is doing just fine,” but will not be able to return to school immediately.

Undefeated East Canaan Package trounced Brazzale’s Bulldozers 12-5 last Wednesday in an exciting finale to the area’s slow-pitch softball tourney. Some 400 people looked on as a five-run outburst in the seventh inning clinched the victory for East Canaan.

Sheffield selectmen skirted an international incident Monday night when they received a letter from Paris protesting the proposed establishment of a pig farm on Boardman Street in Sheffield. “Paris, France?” said one selectman, looking at the letter in amazement. The French Connection is Madame Bonnie H. Durrance, who owns 67 acres of land on Boardman Street near the land where Sheffielder Bernard Fryc plans to establish a pig farm. Announcement of Fryc’s intentions started a donnybrook in Sheffield a month ago when approximately 15 Boardman Street residents descended on a Board of Selectmen’s meeting, and later on a Planning Board meeting, to cry foul. They were armed with a protest petition signed by some 20 other residents. Madame Durrance wrote that she plans to retire to her Sheffield property someday and beseeched the selectmen to block “all efforts to establish a pig farm or anything similarly disagreeable on or near Boardman Street.” “Bernie’s pigs again?” said selectman Dana Bartholomew. “She is beating a dead horse!” Richard Kirchner, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, said the board will tell Madame Durrance what they told the other Boardman Street protestors: they can do nothing to prevent the pig farm unless a health violation develops. “That has been agricultural land,” said Kirchner, “and that’s the way Fryc plans to keep it, as far as we know.”

CORNWALL — Acting on a request from the Dark Entry Forest Association, the Planning and Zoning Commission Monday night recommended that the town abandon its right-of-way on a section of Dudleytown Road in Dark Entry Forest. The section in question begins at the end of the improved part of Dudleytown Road, coming in from its junction with Route 45. The portion is about 1 ½ miles long and runs through Dark Entry Forest, ending at the Lay property.

25 years ago — September 2001

People all around the Northwest Corner and the world Tuesday were stunned to learn that two commercial airplanes loaded with passengers had crashed, 20 minutes apart, into the twin towers complex at the southern end of New York City. While still reeling from that blow, they learned that another airliner had crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and a fourth plane, supposedly aimed for the nation’s capital or Camp David, had crashed in a field in southwestern Pennsylvania.

SHARON — The Robert Frueh Memorial Woods was dedicated Saturday in a ceremony on Tichnor Road and attended by generations of the Frueh family, members of the Sharon Land Trust and those who dwell near the 17 acres presented to the land trust by the family.

Adventurous Rollie Holst-Grubbe, 2, set off alone Monday to explore a creek near his mom’s office at Laidlaw Transportation on Farnum Road. Darlene Holst-Grubbe called local emergency medical services workers to help track him down but a neighbor recognized the traveling tyke and brought him back where he belonged.

CANAAN — The smell of smoke sent Yvonne Clarke investigating her Sodom Road home Friday afternoon. As soon as she spied the smoke coming from the louvered dressing room doors off her bedroom, she called 911. Two hours later, volunteer firefighters from Canaan and Norfolk had doused the second-floor blaze, preventing the fire from spreading beyond the bedroom. Mrs. Clarke lost all her clothes and many of the dolls she had stored upstairs, part of the inventory in her home-based business, “The Country Doll House.”

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