The Harger Farm The Umansky family lived at the old Nelson Harger place near the crossroads of the Otis and Tolland roads in West Granville, Massachusetts. When Minnie Umansky returned home from Tolland (Massachusetts) around three o'clock on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 27, 1911, she found it odd that all the doors were locked, one barricaded with a beer keg. She heard her baby crying inside the home and called out for her mother-in-law, Rosa "Rose" Umansky, but there was no response. After finally gaining entry, Minnie found the kitchen smoky; her mother-in-law's bedroom ransacked. She quickly grabbed her baby and ran to her nearest neighbor's house, Charlie Sheets, which was less than 3/4 miles away. Charles' son Albert accompanied Minnie home. While searching the house for Rose, they found a pillow smoking in the oven in the kitchen. When their search of the house turned up nothing, they checked the barn and walked around the property. Again, ther...

Alton E. Holcomb of Granville, Massachusetts, married Pauline B. Lathrop of Hartland, Connecticut, on June 8, 1875. The couple welcomed two daughters, Clara, born on March 9, 1877, and Maud on July 15, 1880. (Pauline's mother died shortly after giving birth to her, and she was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in Hartland.) When Pauline fell ill sometime around 1882, she traveled to Bridgeport, Connecticut, for medical care, leaving her husband to raise their girls and attend to the household alone in her absence. After a few months, Alton sought help. In May, he induced Pauline's friend, Miss Mary Giddings of Hartland, to move in with him and the girls, and in doing so, it did not take long for neighbors to become suspicious of the pair's rapidly developing relationship, one of intimacy.  Mary returned to Connecticut in October, first visiting relatives in Hartland. Alton showed up there on or about November 28, and he and Mary then headed to Torrington, where th...

Elliott Phillips Jr. A man wearing a motorcycle helmet and sunglasses enters the Grist Mill Plaza branch of Woronoco Savings Bank in Southwick, Massachusetts, at 10:15 a.m. on Thursday, July 13, 1989. Seeing the two female bank employees assisting customers, he takes his place in the queue, standing directly behind Paul Jensen and an elderly female customer waiting for the next available teller. (The man's attire raises no suspicions, as it was common practice for motorcyclists and dirtbike riders to keep their riding gear on when briefly entering stores or businesses, especially in Southwick, thanks partly to its famed motocross track.) As Paul and the woman approach the counter, the man pulls out a handgun and demands cash from the tellers. He holds the gun close to Paul's face, so close that Paul can read its serial number. The man stuffs the money in his jacket as quickly as the tellers can hand it over. With a total of $2,700, he says, "I've got enough money for t...

At about 3:15 p.m., on January 29, 1988, a teller at the Bank of New England - West branch in the Village Green Shopping Center on College Highway in Southwick, Massachusetts, tripped the bank's silent alarm. Moments earlier, a light-colored Pontiac Bonneville pulled up to the back of the bank. Two Caucasian men got out and walked along the side of the building to the front. With their faces covered, they entered the bank through the front door, surveillance cameras capturing their every move. One of the men is carrying a sawed-off shotgun, the other a revolver. The men order the five or so bank employees to freeze. The man with the handgun leaps over the counter. Waving his gun around, he orders the frightened tellers to empty their drawers into his bag; forgoing the vault, the bandits exit as quickly as they came. The armed robbers flee northbound on Route 202 into neighboring Westfield, Massachusetts, with an undisclosed amount of money - later determined to be $31,732. When the...

 Matthew Laflin, Successful Businessman and Philanthropist Matthew Laflin Matthew Laflin was born in Southwick, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1803. He worked with his brothers on his family's farm and attended school whenever possible. The Laflin family had deep roots in gunpowder; Matthew's grandfather manufactured saltpeter (sodium/potassium nitrate) for the Massachusetts militia during the Revolutionary War, and he built a gunpowder mill in Southwick. Matthew's father also owned a gunpowder mill. When his father purchased a woolen textile mill, Matthew learned that business, too. (Following his grandfather's death in 1810, the Laflin Powder Company was greatly expanded, eventually becoming the Laflin & Rand Powder Company, later acquired by DuPont.) Matthew took a strong interest in the family's gunpowder business, becoming a traveling salesman and earning a good amount of money, despite his first year in business ending with $800 in debt after his cargo exp...

Charles Raymond Goddard was born in Southwick, Massachusetts, on March 25, 1888. In 1909, at age 21, he was attending Yale. To pay for law school, he sold women's hosiery door-to-door. When he knocked on the Widow Treat's door in Hartford, Connecticut, the seventy-year-old did not buy any of his products. Instead, she presented him with a surprising proposition he could not easily refuse. Charles obtained a marriage license on August 24, and he and the Widow Treat wed on September 1, with the bride wearing a thick veil. Edwin A. Treat, the widow's son, was old enough to be Charles' father. Having read about the marriage in his local newspaper, he went to court on September 9 in an attempt to have a conservator appointed to his mother's vast estate, claiming that Charles was after his mother's money. Charles and his new bride received a summons to appear in court regarding the conservatorship. Meanwhile, a prosecutor who wanted Charles to answer perjury charges h...

Arthur Dean was born in Southwick, Massachusetts, in 1878. He attended Harvard, and two years after graduating, he took his degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Yale, eventually joining the faculty. Dr. Arthur Dean When Dr. Dean transferred to the then College of Hawaii as its second president in 1914, it was a small, struggling college with only 21 students. Before resigning in 1927, he transformed the college into the University of Hawai'i® with 874 students. (He left his position to give his full attention as the director of the Hawaii Pineapple Canners' Experiment Station, the Pineapple Producers Cooperative Association.) The school held its twentieth annual commencement on June 2, 1931, honoring Dr. Dean by renaming its biological building Arthur Lyman Dean Hall and installing a plaque for its former president. Recently, Dr. Dean's work came under fire from Black Lives Matter, who says that he took credit for African-American chemist Alice Augusta Ball's discovery sur...