Walls Reveal Words From The Past

By Nancy K. Crevier

When Matt Anderson started major renovations last year on his 1893 house in Ridgefield, he expected to find a few antique tools left behind, and maybe an autograph or two on the studs when the walls were opened up, but construction workers recently uncovered some bits of history that Mr Anderson felt would be of interest to his neighbors in Newtown: portions of an issue of The Newtown Bee from 1893.

“It doesn’t look like it was stuffed in to stop a draft,” said Mr Anderson, when he stopped by The Bee office on Friday, December 12, to share the discovery. “Maybe it was left as a keepsake.”

The pieces are thin and yellowed, but very crisp, flat, and easy to read. The paper is dated September 8, 1893, just about the time that the house, known as the Goeppler house in Ridgefield, was completed, said Mr Anderson.

The antique home is located in the Sanford Station section of town, and was built by a cider mill owner named Goeppler, according to Mr Anderson. The property was also home to the Goeppler cider mill, and the location, convenient to the railroad, made it easy for the family to ship the finished cider into New York City to sell.

The tattered pieces of newspaper retrieved from the walls of Mr Anderson’s home are distinct enough to tell once again the stories first printed there 115 years ago. “Daniel Canfield, who lives quietly at his home on Washington Green, will have reached the ripe age of 81 years, if he lives till Saturday,” begins one story published that week. Enough of the story remains to divulge that Mr Canfield was the grandson of a Revolutionary War Army soldier, and venerated as a longtime resident of Washington, one of many outlying towns once covered by The Newtown Bee.

The yellowed pages reveal that in Hotchkissville, Charles R. Hurd was considered a “successful farmer,” and Affairs About Town, akin to today’s Top of the Mountain column, makes mention that “The young men of town gave a harvest hop in town hall.” Prof Charles Platt, the one-time organist at Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown, provided music that evening.

The flip side of the bits of newspaper features one large ad for Storey & Roy in Bridgeport, with shirts on sale for 38 and 55 cents. Or have shirts laundered at the bargain price of 98 cents for 25 shirts.

“I thought it would be interesting for The Bee and readers in Newtown to see these,” said Mr Anderson, as he carefully tucked the remnants back between the pages of a large book, where they are kept safe and sound. “You never know what will turn up in the walls.”