Simsbury researchers say ‘lost village’ Pilfisher was rural farming area, not a ghost town

Summary

At a packed Simsbury Historical Society program, local researcher Tom Yannick presented archival evidence that Pilfisher (also shown as Pilforshire in some sources) was a small cluster of farm properties annexed to Simsbury in 1873 and later declined for economic and agricultural reasons, not because of violence or mass abandonment.

Tom Yannick, a local researcher, told a full house at the Simsbury Public Library that Pilfisher — sometimes spelled Pilforshire in historical sources — was never a formal town and that the image of a haunted, abandoned village overstates the historical record.

Yannick said documentary maps and petitions show Pilfisher was a triangular sliver of farm properties annexed to Simsbury in 1873 after 15 Canton residents petitioned the Connecticut General Assembly; 131 Canton residents later remonstrated against the change. He said that of 18 original houses in the area, only five remain standing today.

Yannick emphasized the practical reasons families left the area. “Pilfisher is simply an area of 15 farm properties that were originally part of the greater community of North Canton,” he said. He told the audience the combination of rocky, thin soil, small,…

Simsbury researchers say ‘lost village’ Pilfisher was rural farming area, not a ghost town

Summary

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