‘Sleepy Backwater Town’
Amherst roads were still made of dirt in this undated photo of the common that must have been taken in the late 1800s or early 1900s. The town history says that by 1881 Amherst was a ‘sleepy backwater town’ whose population continued to shrink and ‘whose newspaper would soon depart to a livelier community,’ meaning Milford. The Farmers Cabinet, now The Cabinet, moved in 1891 from Amherst to Milford.