Granby Drummer (https://granbydrummer.com/category/history/)
“I think we fussed more about Christmas in those days (c.1895). On Christmas Eve, Dad would hitch two horses to the bob sled and we would ride to church, the Copper Hill Methodist Church in East Granby. There was always a church entertainment; the children would recite appropriate pieces.”
Had kids been selling newspapers in Granby in 1906, as they did in the major cities such as New York or Boston, that February they would have been yelling “Read all about it! White Cappers drag Willis Griffin out of town!”
A day set aside for giving thanks has been a part of New England tradition since 1621, when the Plymouth Colony survivors celebrated their first harvest.
When I was in the sixth grade at Kelly Lane, I had Mrs. Cowper for English. However, months later, her husband accepted a job transfer to Baltimore and they moved away.
In 1900, Emma Reed Huggins of West Granby wrote her sister a letter describing the Granby Fair. “We are all well and for a wonder I went to the Granby fair yesterday.”
In the June edition of the Granby Drummer, I wrote about Eva Dewey, the curator and archivist for the Salmon Brook Historical Society from 1959 to 1986, who saved much of Granby’s history. In her final nine years she had an invaluable assistant in the archives—Carol Laun, who would go on to transform the Salmon Brook Historical Society into what it is today.
For any agricultural town, the harvest is the culmination of the year. Along with the harvest comes the annual Agricultural Fair, a time of excitement and exhilaration for the hardworking farm families.
In the 1971 June/July issue, Carol Laun interviewed Tudor Holcomb in one of her early contributions to the Drummer:
We all remember participating in fire drills in elementary school. Interrupting the lesson, the alarm would blare, and teachers lined up all the students, leading them out to the parking lot or field. While this was an important drill in case of emergency, I always remember the relief from students and frustration from teachers as a lesson was missed.
The Windsor Historical Society is celebrating the reopening of the historic Chaffee House and museum with a new focus. Closed for the past year, the reopening exhibit concept illuminates the Black experience in Windsor and the surrounding area.