name of Beacon Falls, a sectional name which had been associated with the area for many years.
    Work was suspended at the mill in 1876, due to economic conditions in the industry.
    The mills stood vacant until 1879, when Wolfe purchased some of the factory and machinery and operated the firm.

WILLIAM C. SHARPE: SEYMOUR PUBLISHER

    William C. Sharpe was born October 3, 1839, and he became noted as the publisher of the Seymour Record. He was born in Southbury, the son of Mary and Lugrand Sharpe. He was a grandson of Thomas Sharpe 3rd, who was a Revolutionary Was soldier who died in Oxford in 1805. Sharpe came to Seymour in 1842 and received his elementary education at Bell School, later going to Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts.
    His training was in the field of education, and he taught in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New
Jersey. At one time he taught at the Quaker Farms School in Oxford. His last teaching position was principal of the Derby Grade School in 1868.
    In 1865 he married Miss Vinie E. Lewis, and the couple had two children, one son and a daughter.
    In 1869, Sharpe opened a printing office in Seymour. His paper was not the first local paper in the area. It was preceded by the Valley Messenger, which was published in Birmingham, beginning in 1855. J.W. Storrs was the editor, but the publication was not well sustained and eventually was discontinued. A competing paper was established in Seymour in 1885, when J.H. Whitney began publication of the Seymour Times. This venture failed, largely because the readers and advertisers of the Sharpe publication remained loyal to the Seymour Record. From that time on, Sharpe had the field of Seymour news almost to himself. Although the Evening Sentinel of Ansonia carried some local news, no paper could offer Seymour residents the depth and width of local reporting which Sharpe provided his readers.
    His paper grew and by 1890 it was an 8 page sheet, wholly printed in the Record office, devoted entirely to local matters. The paper included, Seymour, Oxford, Beacon Falls and Bethany news. It contained many sketches of village