100 Years Ago March 1919
In and About The Haddams
Selected from the pages of The Evening Press and lightly annotated by Sally Haase
Higganum, Mar. 1, 1919: At the Grange, last night, the third and fourth degrees were conferred on nine candidates. There was a short birthday program on the lives of McKinley, Edison, Lincoln and Washington and a piano duet by Misses Hazel and Isabel Anderson.
Mr. and Mrs. Elbert Burr joined the Grange. A harvest supper was served.
Moodus, Mar. 4, 1919: The third lecture of the series given to men only by Rev. L.J. Radcliffe, at the Methodist church, will be on Wednesday evening. The subject will be “Capital and Labor.”
Haddam Neck, Mar. 5, 1919: Mrs. Bailey, Miss Venter, Gilbert Crocker, Arthur Durr, Chauncey Brooks, Erastus Brainerd, Leonard Selden visited Higganum Grange and witnessed the initiation of a class of nine candidates.
Mrs. S. C. Gillette and Chauncey Brooks were the prize winners at the last meeting of the Whist club.
Washington, Mar. 6, 1919: More than $300,000,000 that had been hoarded during the war has been returned to banks since the signing of the armistice, according to the Federal Reserve
Killingworth, Mar. 6, 1919: The Center school which has seven scholars had six that were in perfect attendance during the month of February. They were Julius, George, and Charles Schetzel, Lena Bumb, Tilly Laur, and Lillian Marquard.
Moodus, Mar. 11, 1919: T.J. Higgins, our tonsorial artist as indisposed Sunday, and unable to attend to his duties.
Several received cards from Aven Frickson, Monday, from somewhere in France. He reports good health, eating and sleeping, and the scenery is beautiful.
Haddam, Mar. 13, 1919: Phillip Arnold ha set up his saw mill near the railroad station, and is cutting up what few chestnut trees there are left about town.
Hartford, Mar. 13, 1919: The members of the education committee have been invited to meet this evening as Chairman E.W. Hazen’s dinner guests at the Hartford club when the Morrison [education] bill will be discussed. This is considered doubtless by the chairman, from Haddam, to be a better place than the Board of Education committee rooms, and more conducive to secrecy. His exclusion of newspaper reporters from the hearing attended by over fifty persons from all parts of the state last Wednesday when the proposed bill was heard, has stirred up a hornet’s nest among teachers and the public. Now, all the reporters at the capitol want to know why such an important bill as the Morrison bill should be discussed behind closed doors at a social dinner.
Boston, Mar. 15, 1919: Seventy different automobiles and some 400 different models together with thousands of automobile accessory devises were placed on exhibition at the 17th annual Boston automobile show today.
East Haddam, Mar. 17, 1919: The fee charged the shad fisherman does not seem to dampen the spirit, as a number of new nets will be in this reach this season.
Higganum, Mar. 18, 1919: Joseph Novotney, who has been in the service and overseas, has returned to the United States and is home at Ponsett on a month’s furlough.
Middletown, Mar. 20, 1919: Three attendants at the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane were sent to the Haddam jail for 60 days this morning on a charge of assaulting a patient at the hospital. The state introduced evidence to the effect that all three men had been drinking.
Hartford, Mar. 20, 1919: The committee on unemployment reports that between 28,000 and 30,000 men and women are out of employment in Connecticut. This is caused by the discharge of labor made necessary by the termination of the war contracts. The menace of the situation is the mental attitude due to the experiences of the past year and the influences of the International Workers of the World and Bolshevik propaganda. The committee earnestly advises that married women whose husbands earn an adequate living wage be asked to give up their employment. It is also believed that employers will help materially by replacing women with men.
Moodus, Mar. 20, 1919: Fire destroyed the large building on Main street used as a resident and bakery of the estate of Louis Klapper. Myra, aged four, and Julius Klapper, aged six, children of Mrs. Louis Klapper, were burned to death when the house in which they lived in Moodus center, was destroyed by fire this morning. The father, Louis Klapper died from influenza about two months ago and left eight small children. The fire burned so rapidly that Mrs. Klapper was unable to get up the stairway to rescue her two young children. The ring of the red mill and the Methodist church bells helped to sound the alarm but the soon gathered bucket brigade could only turn their attention to nearby buildings.
Haddam, Mar. 22, 1919: Abraham Deimstein has sold his place on Turkey Hill and has moved to New Haven. The rains of the first of the week washed the back roads so badly that they were obliged to draw their household goods by team to the auto truck at the center.
Higganum, Mar. 22, 1919: The piano recital given by the pupils of Miss Irene Hubbard was one that merited much credit to Miss Hubbard as an instructor. A success in every way, the students rendering their parts well were : Bertha Jane Caldwell, Helen Olson, Harvey Swanson, Angie Baroni, Emma Modehn, May Doyle, Helen Stanton, Elsa Carlson, Irene Johnson, George Stevens, Gladys Rich, Sybil May, Clementine Carlson, Edith Priest, Ellen Johnson, Emma Viten, and Elmer Swanson.
Haddam, Mar. 25, 1919: Sparks from the engine of the 5:07 train last evening, set the grass and leaves on fire just below the cemetery. The men and boys of the neighborhood had quite a lively time to subdue it.
Ponsett, Mar. 27, 1919: About one hundred acres were burned over when the forest fire swept over land owned by Andrew Parnanen, Carl Werner, Charles Wilcox, and others Tuesday.
East Haddam, Mar. 29, 1919: Owing to wedges being out of commission on the end of the draw on the local East Haddam bridge, it is necessary to chain it in order to hold it in place during the severe gales, as it is not deemed safe to trust entirely on the brake. This necessitates a lot of extra work for the tender when obliged to open the draw.
100 years ago, much has changed and, then again, nothing has changed.
