Granby Drummer (https://granbydrummer.com/category/history/page/9/)
One of the most interesting things about living in Granby is that there’s a good chance you or your neighbor lives in a home important to Granby’s history. This month, I’ll be discussing my neighbor’s historic home and its importance to our town.
Medical care in the small towns of Connecticut during the late 17th to early 19th centuries was chancy. Few physicians attended a medical school, and those who did were severely limited by the appalling lack of accurate medical knowledge.
Thanks to Judy Guay Narkon, George Guay’s daughter, now 83 and living on Cape Cod, we have the following corrections for December’s article, The store that George Guay built.
The coronavirus pandemic is affecting us all, our small town and across the entire nation. This was also true of the Spanish influenza from 1918 to 1919 when 675,000 Americans lost their lives. At that time, Granby was a small agricultural community but not immune to its effects as well. Six citizens lost their lives.
For many years, the only building on the main intersection in Granby was the Meeting House built in 1736 on the northwest corner hill, which once was much closer to the corner. The cemetery was established around the Meeting House.
If you missed the Salmon Brook Historical Society’s Stroll Through Granby History on Salmon Brook Street in the fall, or you did not make it to all the sites, you can see the same information on the society’s website.
“Remember the Maine, the Hell with Spain” was the cry from U.S. citizens after a United States Court of Inquiry determined that in the Spanish-held Havana Harbor on Feb. 15, 1898, an underwater mine had blown up the U.S. battleship, the Maine. After the court’s decision, President McKinley asked for 125,000 men to volunteer for two years to help fight Spain in support of Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain.
The Granby Land Trust acquired the Wilcox property on Simsbury Road, owned by the late Steve Wilcox Hastings, in 2019. Since it does not have houses on its property, the Trust generously offered the late 18th century home to the Salmon Brook Historical Society if we agreed to preserve and maintain it.
Each time I drive by the house at 28 Copper Hill Road, I think of George Guay. Guay lived in that house while running his grocery store for nearly half a century.
