History

Ice Harvest Demonstrated

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Each year, when the weather permits, Dennis Picard holds a public demonstration of ice harvesting at the Noble & Cooley mill pond in Granville, just north of North Granby. This year the weather on February 2 was great, the ice was clear and over a foot thick, and appreciative visitors enjoyed the demonstration and explanations by Picard, a knowledgeable historian and former director of the Storrowton Village Museum at the Big E.

Many onlookers each year accept the invitation to take hold of one of Picard’s ice saws and learn how to cut the long slices of ice which can then be split into chunks, floated off, and lifted out with big iron tongs. This year one of the students was this writer, who brought an old Connecticut ice saw recently donated to the King House Museum by Eric Haffner. The saw was very similar to the ones that Picard brought, and he said that type of saw was manufactured from 1819 to 1919. He dated the one I brought to about 1880 and called it a nice example because it retained the original pin and wedge that secure the blade to the handle.

History

100 Years Ago in Suffield

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Selected from the pages of the Windsor Locks Journal and lightly annotated by Town Historian Lester Smith. December 6

A large touring car ran into an electric light pole at the corner of South Main street and Kent avenue Sunday morning tearing off the right rear wheel, smashing the top and windshield and badly damaging the body of the car.  . . . on their way from Worcester, Mass., to Bridgeport .