Turning Back the Pages
100 years ago — September 1922
The entries of Grassland Farms cattle at the Eastern States Exposition at Springfield last week came away with many first and second prizes.
The E.W. Spurr Co. received two carloads of coal this week which they have been distributing to their customers in half ton lots.
LIME ROCK — James VanDyke got quite badly burned on his leg one day last week while working in the Foundry.
LIME ROCK — The many friends of Miss Clara Barnum will be glad to hear that she is now able to take a few steps, having been unable to put her foot on the floor for over three months.
Miss Lila Senior is enjoying a week’s vacation after which she will enter the Canaan office of the Connecticut Power Co. Her many friends here congratulate her upon her promotion.
50 years ago — September 1972
Sunday night’s blaze at the Pfizer Company lime plant in Canaan was a spectacular one which drew hundreds of firemen and spectators from surrounding towns. Police and fire inspectors have termed the blaze’s origins “suspicious.” Several freight cars were rolled to safety before flames could reach them.
Title to the decrepit old dam that retains Long Pond near Lakeville rests with a local resident and property owner, Louis Oshman, attorney Frank M. Dooley said Friday. Under the law Mr. Oshman technically could go to the state and obtain permission gradually to remove the dam and eliminate the lake if he wished to do so and property owners around the lake would have no recourse, Mr. Dooley said. No such course is contemplated.
Dr. Peter H. Gott, Town of Salisbury director of health since November of 1968, was notified by the selectmen this week that he will not be reappointed because of “incompatibility.” In his place the selectmen said they intend to appoint Dr. Henry E. Gallup as town health director on Oct. 2 on a temporary basis until a younger man can be found. Dr. Gallup, a former senior physician at the Boston Children’s Hospital, moved to Lakeville after his retirement in 1968.
The excellence of Lake Wononscopomuc as a checkpoint for pilots flying by visual navigation is the main reason for the repeated appearances of those low-flying gray airplanes which startled Lakeville residents again last Saturday. Col. Stanley Hemstreet, base commander for the Air National Guard at Schenectady, N.Y., told The Lakeville Journal Tuesday that Lakeville had been “arbitrarily picked” as a checkpoint because the center of the lake makes a good northeastward turning point for planes headed from Schenectady to Fort Devens, Mass. The four C-130 planes, and others like them, have been on training flights requiring them to fly at 500 feet above ground level. They are simulating flights into hostile territory for cargo drops by parachute, he said, and must fly below radar-detection level.
The Lakeville fire siren failed to respond when State Police attempted to set it off Saturday morning, but it has now been repaired and will be tested regularly. An alarm was called in from the Robert Estabrook home on Reservoir Road because of smoking electrical wires in a heater. The difficulty was halted when the master switch was pulled, and no fire resulted. Fire Chief Robert Smith said later that lightning had apparently struck the fire siren circuit and burned out a carbon fuse.
25 years ago — September 1997
The Nature Conservancy’s Connecticut chapter announced this week it had signed an option to purchase 575 acres comprising five parcels at Robbins Swamp and on Canaan Mountain. The $675,000 purchase would be the largest acquisition in the chapter’s history. The option expires in six months and between now and then, the chapter must raise $1 million to cover the purchase plus the completion of the acquisition of the Hollenbeck Preserve. The chapter had previously acquired 30 acres on Canaan Mountain in 1991 and 145 acres at Robbins Swamp.
These items were taken from The Lakeville Journal archives at Salisbury’s Scoville Memorial Library, keeping the original wording intact as possible.
