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The
East Granby
Historical
Society |
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- - - - - General
Archives - - - - -
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Notable Town Citizens |
First Town Fire Truck 1930 |
Indian Trails & Villages |
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Higley Copper Coins |
Wilcox General Store |
A Newgate Prison Poem |
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Railroad Images |
Collecting Milk |
East
Granby Railroad Station |
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John Griffin: (1605 -1681) First
settler and first military officer in this area.
Samual Higley: (1687 - 1737) Doctor and artist, who minted
the
first copper coins in America and pioneered in the manufacture of
steel.
Captain John Viets: (1712 - 1777) First keeper of NewGate
Prison.
Whitfield Cowels: (1764 - 1849) Entrepreneur, minister, and
farmer, who founded one of the first companies to silverplate
spoons (1843).
Eunice Griswold Penney: (1770 - 1849) Well-known artist who
worked watercolors.
Walter Forward:
(1783 - 1852) Lawyer and Secretary of the
Treasury for President Tyler.
Lemuel Cicero Holcomb: (1795 - 1876) Conducted a boys
school
specializing in Greek and Latin.
Albert Carlos Bates: (1865 - 1954) Farmer, librarian,
author, and
historian.
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In the early eighteenth
century, population boomed
due to the discovery of large copper deposits. In
1737 and 1739, a local blacksmith named Higley issued copper coins which
are so valuable today that the coins are preserved by museums and
private collectors. |
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The
East Granby
Railroad Station
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Railroad Bridge
over
Salmon Brook
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Granby Railroad
Station
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First East Granby
Fire Truck
Acquired in 1930
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Indian Trails
And
Villages
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Warren A. Wilcox
General Store
It is now a restaurant in the
center of town.
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Lester Kniffin collecting
milk for Ernest T. Giddings
about 1912
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Verces Made Upon Newgate Prison
The
court in fact have passed an act in 1790
Old Newgate to repair.
And those that break the peace must make
Their grim appearance there.
Bound in a chain they must remain.
And this must be their fate:
With hammer and tongs make good the wrong
Those wretches do the state.
Down in this den those guilty men
Will groan in sad despair
And curse the day that ever they
Was doomed to enter there.
Being void of light, eternal night
In those dire regions rein,
While
rocks and stones will wrack their bones
And torment them with pain.
Unwholesome damp their limbs will cramp,
Their faces pale as ashes;
Their inward part will also smart
When guilty conscience lashes.
Hunger and thirst they suffer most,
And when the lice previel,
Then they with skill will learn to kill
And crack them with their nails.
God grant that I may strive and try
In wisdom to excel.
And shun with horror that place of sorrow,
That true emblem of hell.
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A
grim
picture of
the prisoners' lot in Newgate was graphically described
by this old poem of unknown origin, which appeared
in the Windsor Locks Journal of
June 29, 1900. Whitney D. Viets,
proprietor of
the prison at the time, had sent a copy to the Journal hoping to
publicize the prison further as a tourist attraction. |
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