—  A Southwick Time Machine Original | Revisited   Frederick W. Legate of Southwick, Massachusetts, was a farmer and butcher who specialized in quality cuts of beef and veal at reasonable prices. During the mid-to-late 1870s, he suffered a series of setbacks. At about 10:30 p.m. on August 15, 1876, it was discovered that one of Legate’s tobacco barns was on fire, possibly caused by a spark from a passing train. The barn and its contents were destroyed, at an estimated loss of $2,000. A little over a year later, on September 27, 1877, disaster struck again when two more of his barns burned, taking with them roughly fifteen tons of hay as well as several wagons and sleighs, an additional loss of about $1,000. All three barns were only partially insured. Around this same period, activity at Southwick Ponds (today’s Congamond Lake), already a popular summer destination that attracted thousands of tourists arriving by rail, was growing. By the late summer of 1878, that n...

 📜 UNEARTHED — This story has been assembled from separate events and narrative fragments. — A Southwick Time Machine Original On October 25, 1886, Jason Elbridge Stiles of Southwick, Massachusetts, was riding in a wagon near the train depot with Dr. G. W. Brace when their horse became frightened. Both men were thrown from the wagon and suffered severe bruising.   Southwick Railroad Station   Less than two years later, Jason Stiles found himself at the center of one of the most sensational scandals Southwick had witnessed up to that time. On Friday, June 8, 1888, Stiles—then single and living in Southwick—was arrested on a complaint sworn out by Franklin A. Osborne, a Southwick merchant and the town’s postmaster. Osborne charged Stiles with criminal intimacy with his wife, an offense under Massachusetts law at the time. A warrant was also issued for Mrs. Osborne on a charge of adultery. Franklin Osborne and Frances C. Miner married on April 6, 1881, but by 1888, Osborne ...