CRARY MILLS – Well-known Canton-area auctioneer, antiques dealer and dairy farmer Roger Huntley died Wednesday at the age of 82.

Huntley and his wife Ann, both lifelong Crary Mills residents, made their life in the North Country.

To view his complete obituary, click here.

In a 2004 interview, Huntley said, “I’m never leaving the North Country. I was born here in Crary Mills. I grew up here, went to Crary Mills Country School, high school in Canton, married here. I’ve been here all my life.”

Huntley was probably best known as an auctioneer, an occupation he got into by chance in 1961.

“I started because the church here in Crary Mills was having an auction,” Roger recalled in the interview. “The day of the auction, there was a great crowd and beautiful weather, but the auctioneer never showed up. I told them I thought I could do it. That was my first taste of auctioneering.”

That also marked the start of the business as antiques dealers, and they established and ran the Crary Mills Mighty Mall, a store full of antiques, gifts, knickknacks and curios.

The Huntley’s son Danny, one of six children, is the sixth generation of the family to run the dairy farm. The family kept to the maple sugaring tradition, tapping as many as 1,200 trees each spring.

In the interview, Roger mourned the loss of many of the farms that used to dot the area around Crary Mills.

“Wouldn’t I like to bring a lot of them back. I’d like to see all the small farms come back without all the state regulations. There used to be 14 farms on our road,” he said.

Roger and Ann Huntley had been man and wife for nearly 60 years.

Funeral arrangements, incomplete at this time, are with the Lawrence Funeral Home.