100 Years Ago in Suffield

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Selected from the pages of the Windsor Locks Journal and
lightly annotated by Wendy Taylor of Kent Memorial Library.

September 4
It is stated upon good authority that a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan was held in Mapleton hall last Friday evening. About forty attended the meeting and were addressed by a speaker who explained the organization as far as possible to those present. It is said that several of those in attendance signed up at the close of the meeting. So far as known this is the first meeting of the clan held in this town.

September 11
The body of Charles BaThieen [gravestone: Charles BaThein], a native of Burma, India, who died several weeks ago in a sanitarium in Pennsylvania, was brought to Suffield… The boy’s parents desired the body be sent here for burial, as he has wished it when a student at the Suffield School under the guardianship of Rev. Jesse Smith, a former missionary in India…The burial was at the Old cemetery.

The cloth covering of a shade tobacco field in the western part of the town, belonging to the American Sumatra Tobacco Company, was burned… causing a loss of several hundred dollars. The tobacco had been harvested so that the only loss was the cloth.

The registrars finished compiling the voting lists Tuesday and the names of 1404 electors have been placed on it…There are 77 persons who will have a chance to become voters on September 19, when the selectmen, town clerk and registrars will have examinations in the town clerk’s office.

This staid old New England village has been in a turmoil this week and conventions and traditions have been shaken from their very foundations…The trouble started some time ago over some differences of opinion between members of the Village.

Improvement Society and members of the Wide Awake Club. This developed bitterness…reached its culmination in the arrest of J. O. Burke…on the charge of entering a public building unlawfully.

A special meeting was conducted Tuesday night on the call of the clerk of the village, and at that meeting new by-laws were accepted. Some members asserted that the meeting was illegal because it had not been called by the committee.

After the acceptance of the by-laws a motion was made to depose the committee elected last spring, and an entirely new committee was elected…

The legality of the proceedings was openly questioned and Wednesday a complaint by the supposedly deposed committee…resulted in the warrant being issued for the arrest of Burke… It is alleged Mr. Burke opened the doors for Tuesday night’s meeting which, the deposed committee says, was an action done without authority.

September 18
The annual public finance board meeting of the town was held…at the Town hall, with a small attendance of voters.

September 25
[J.O.] Burke was found guilty after a lengthy hearing. Owing to the attendance, which numbered several hundred, the case had to be heard at the Town hall.

Harold Haskins…suffered a painful injury to his left hand at his home…while occupied in changing an automobile tire. The tire suddenly slipped off the rim where he was holding it and badly lacerated his hand. Dr. Joseph A. Gibbs found that one finger was so badly torn that it was necessary to amputate it.

A special meeting of the Village of Suffield will be held…to see what action the village will take in regard to selling one-half of its interest in the hose house, the new Red fire pumper, the Knox chemical and fire truck and all other fire fighting property of the district.

Miss Ruth Anderson left…for Ithica, N. Y., where she will take up a course in physical culture [older term for physical fitness].

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