- A Southwick Time Machine original. In late 1873, Lyman Cooley of Southwick, Massachusetts, received a letter that would change everything.  Lyman Cooley received a letter that would change everything  Lyman was born in Granby, Connecticut, around 1850. His family relocated to Russell, Massachusetts, before settling on a farm in Southwick sometime before 1865. He worked as a farmhand through his youth. Around 1869, when he was eighteen or nineteen, he began courting a local Southwick beauty. Their courtship would span several years, but the relationship did not progress as Lyman had dreamed. By the early 1870s, he had taken up the butcher’s trade in Springfield. My Dearest Lyman... To Lyman’s surprise, the girl had written him, inviting him to visit her at her Southwick home. He traveled from Springfield to Southwick on Thursday, December 4, 1873. He stayed at the girl’s house until the early morning hours, around 2:00 a.m. Whatever transpired during that long night left Lym...

- A Southwick Time Machine archival discovery. On November 10, 1915, 25-year-old William H. Semke of Southwick, Massachusetts, was operating a 14-inch circular saw at the Southwick Road home of his employer, Harry A. Hescock, in neighboring Westfield. Without warning, the blade broke loose from the machinery and struck Semke on the left side of his head. It shattered his skull, laid bare his brain, cut across the scalp at the left temple, and severed part of his nose. He was taken to nearby Noble Hospital, but despite doctors' best efforts, he died there roughly twelve hours later. An inquest into Semke’s death concluded that gross carelessness on his part was the cause. Thirty-seven years later, on Tuesday morning, November 4, 1952, the man who had employed him met a sudden end of his own. Harry A. Hescock entered his polling station in Westfield to cast his vote. He was handed his ballot but collapsed almost immediately afterward, never marking it. He was pronounced dead on arriv...

- A Southwick Time Machine archival reconstruction   On the evening of January 20, 1917, Joseph Nowak of Chicopee—accompanied by an unidentified man—paid a social visit to the small farm of Mr. and Mrs. Julian Banalewska in Southwick, Massachusetts. The couple, recent immigrants who soon shortened their surname to Banel, were at home with their infant daughter, Jennie. Julian was commonly known as “Julius,” and his wife as “Mary.” Nowak and his companion arrived with liquor to celebrate—though for what, surviving records do not say. What happened next nearly cost Jennie her life. According to the statements later presented in court, Nowak poured alcohol into a glass, set it ablaze, and threw the flaming liquor directly into the crib where baby Jennie was sleeping. The burning liquid spread rapidly, igniting the bedding and the infant’s clothing. Witnesses said it required considerable effort to put out the fire, and that had the Banels not acted quickly, the child would have been c...

On Thanksgiving Day, 1959, Francis Slasinski of 2 Union Avenue in Westfield, Massachusetts, set out for a deer hunting trip in nearby Granville, Massachusetts. Carrying his bow, he followed a quiet country road when he spotted what looked like a deer standing further down the road. Slasinski drew his bow and prepared to shoot—but just as he was about to release the arrow, the sudden blast of a car horn startled him. The driver pulled alongside and called out that the deer wasn’t wild at all—it was his pet. To prove it, the man opened his car door, and the deer jumped right in. Before driving away, the unidentified owner offered a good-natured remark to the surprised hunter: “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had shot him.” The strange encounter became one of those memorable local stories that seem almost too unlikely to be true, but it was. Francis "Fran" Richard Slasinski was well known around Westfield. A sportsman from a young age, he was active in the Boy Scouts, sang in ...

A Southwick Time Machine exclusive: original research you won’t find anywhere else —  On Thursday, July 21, 1938, a large, faded blue-and-black Pontiac sedan pulled up outside the First National Bank of Suffield. Its engine was left running as three men stepped out. The bank, established in 1864, primarily served the tobacco and dairy farmers of this well-to-do northern Connecticut town. Suffield sat at the heart of the Connecticut River Valley's thriving tobacco industry. The bank typically held large amounts of cash on Thursdays to cover the sizeable tobacco payroll, but recent rains had disrupted the routine, leaving considerably less money on hand than usual. At 11:45 a.m., a dark-complexioned man, about five feet five inches tall and dressed in a dark gray raincoat and soft felt hat, walked up to one of the two teller windows and casually asked to exchange a five-dollar bill for two dollars in nickels and three one-dollar bills. When he entered, the bank president got up from ...