Pandemic Projects: The Avon Library time travels with The Lure of the Litchfield Hills
Today we are excited to bring you the fifth post from Tina Panik, Reference & Adult Services Manager at the Avon Free Public Library in Avon, CT. Under Tina’s guidance, Avon is a very active member of the CTDA Community and we are happy to highlight their work!
Nostalgia beckons at unexpected times, and for the Farmington Valley the Lure of the Litchfield Hills showcases these feelings brilliantly. From the generous white space layout to the multiple-month coverage of a story, there’s a measured pacing to the pieces, all written by residents whose names beckon to be bylines: Alfred Dilliston, Mary MacNeil-Duder, Gertrude C. Whitney, Clarence Evans, and of course Lewis S. Mills, who served as editor, secretary, and treasurer at the inception of our scanning of the magazine, 1940. If you’re wondering how The Lure started, the 1929 origin story is available here.
The articles range from historic profiles (Center School in Canton, A Century of Safety Fuse in Avon, Sanford & Hawley in Unionville) to biographical showcases (Kanzo Uchimura, A.D. Shattuck, an artist in Granby), to musings on books, as well as numerous philosophical “recollections of”, “history of” , or comparisons between “then and now”. There are legends, folklore, and fabulous examples of local advertising between the covers. Time travel has never been this effortless; all the things one wonders about while driving through the Farmington Valley are captured between these pages.
The Avon Library has holdings of The Lure Of the Litchfield Hills from 1940–1974 (please contact us if you own earlier issues we can scan). Three absent issues from our holdings include: December 1942, June 1943, and June 1944. Whenever we found missing or damaged pages, we reached out to our neighbors at the Canton Library, who graciously loaned us their issues to scan. Together we created an epic spreadsheet detailing issue numbers, condition, ownership, and contents. This fantastically thorough creation, a pride among spreadsheet nerds everywhere, was lost to a computer glitch. It is still mourned by librarians at both institutions…
So in the spirit of The Lure, we rebuilt the spreadsheet with renewed curiosity. We re-scanned. We re-created the work we had lost, and rediscovered stories of our own history. There are pieces on the Avon Library (June 1956), Pahke’s Cave, the home of Orrin Wright, and Tapping Reeve Law School. The cover images feature nature scenes, drawings, photos of bridges and iconic storefronts throughout the Farmington Valley. Published twice a year, subscriptions started at 50 cents per year, increasing to $2.00 per year by 1972.
We created an index of nearly 900 articles, sorting it by article title, author, and issue date to make searching easier. Curiously absent from this list of articles are current events: World War II rarely appears in a story, and the Flood of 1955 doesn’t appear until December, 1971, where it is cataloged as part of “The Year of the Floods”.
This project has been a long, but pleasant one. The historical content within these pages inspires frequent comparison to today. For those eager to understand their neighborhoods, and be able to exclaim, “So that’s why!” and “Oh that’s how!”, the pages of The Litchfield Hills are the best place to start.
Connecticut Digital Archive Connect is the publication of the Connecticut Digital Archive, a program of the UConn Library. Visit https://ctdigitalarchive.org to learn more.
