Hog River Journal
Preserving Historic Craftsmanship — Spring 2022
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Spring 2022 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Welcome to our latest issue about historic preservation. This is our eighth, nearly bi-annual, issue with this theme. (The first was our second issue: Winter 2003). We return to this rich topic time and again with support from the State Historic Preservation
Don’t Take Our Word For It!
By Elizabeth Normen There is perhaps nothing more powerful than personal testimony, and so, in this issue, we’re featuring Connecticans’ own words. (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2021-2022 I’ve come to appreciate voices from the past, especially those of people who are not well represented in traditional histories. I value the perspective, which often provides
Fall 2021: Victorian Connecticut—”Excess and Empire”
HOG RIVER JOURNAL: Fall 2021 — “Excess and Empire” (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The Fall 2021 issue, which focuses on the fascinatingly complicated and disruptive Victorian era, was put together with the assistance of guest editor Briann Greenfield. It’s one of her favorite topics, and not just because she served
No Place Like Home – Summer 2021
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! This issue’s stories are about the cities, towns, and neighborhoods where we live and the way in which human intervention shapes the built environment and our experience of it. Two stories from New Haven show that human intervention can take very different
Take a Hike!
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! When I was a kid my family visited Yosemite National Park and we all bought the park’s t-shirts emblazoned with sayings such as (complete with punctuation) “Go climb a rock.” and “Go for a hike.” Well, springtime is here, so go for
Our Readers Still Love Print — But Virtual is Good, Too
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2020-2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The Winter 2020-2021 issue looks back at the ways in which we’ve communicated in the past, including two 20th-century developments: radio and community access television. But it also looks at perhaps one of the first ways humans communicated—cave drawings. But the drawings
Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of World War II
By Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! We salute our veterans this Veterans Day, November 11, with the Fall 2020 issue marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. In these pages we bring you personal stories—stories of ordinary Connecticans who did extraordinary things: acts brave, selfless,
Connecticut & the Vote to Ratify the 19th Amendment
By Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In the critical months leading up to state-by-state ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote, Connecticut’s state legislature was not in session. While the general assembly now meets annually (since 1970), alternating a long session
The Congregational Church: Nothing More Connectican
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In what must be one of my earliest memories, I can conjure an image of my childhood church in West Avon, built in 1818, before it was moved across the road in 1969 as part of much-needed renovations. Recent projects I’ve been
What About the Struggle for Black Suffrage in Connecticut?
By Ramin Ganeshram and Elizabeth Normen LINK to Op-Ed as it appeared in The Hartford Courant, February 23, 2020 As we prepare for the 2020 election and celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage it’s time to reexamine the state’s record on voting rights and to appreciate what women suffragists gleaned from the struggle for black suffrage.
Disrupters in Small Packages
by Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2019-2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Disruptions are the inflection points of history. Sometimes disruptors are major historical figures. Sometimes their names are lost to history and come in small packages—such as the child knitters who struck for better wages in our story on page 46. Children more
Venture & Meg Smith–A Connecticut Family
by Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2019 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! “Family” is the theme of this issue, and one Connecticut family in particular has been very much on my mind this last year. Venture and Meg Smith and their family lived in Haddam during the late-colonial and American Revolutionary era. Smith’s autobiography, A
Contested Land–An Issue Full of Surprises
by Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2019 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! When we decided to go with one-word themes for our issues this year (Winter 2018-2019: Create, Spring 2019: Water, Summer 2019: Land, Fall 2019: Family), we didn’t fully anticipate the range of stories that approach would yield. We often don’t get a
Spring 2019: Water–Connecticut’s Big Story
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Spring 2019 SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE Give a Gift/Become a Friend As part of my pursuit of a master’s degree in American Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, I signed up for a summer course at the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport. It
Are You Fanning Your Creative Spark?
By Elizabeth Normen, Publisher (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2018-2019 Long before I discovered a love of history—and particularly Connecticut history—I was a student artist who eventually realized that I was not meant to BE an artist. But in my second job I was “artist-adjacent.” I worked as the membership coordinator at the Wadsworth Atheneum,
Where the Constitution of 1818 Fell Short
By Elizabeth Normen SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE This special issue commemorating the 200th anniversary of the state’s adoption of a constitution includes a two-sided centerfold poster presenting the complete text of the constitution, annotated by members of the Connecticut Supreme Court Historical Society (CSCHS). Pull it out and refer to it as you read the stories
Sports Give Connecticut a National Profile
By Elizabeth J. Normen, Publisher (c) Connecticut Explored, Summer 2018 Sports have a way of putting Connecticut on the map. UConn basketball is Exhibit A. I’m sure I’m not alone in this experience: While I was poking around La Quinta, California on vacation last February, a local shop owner raved about UConn basketball after learning
Connecticut history revealed down a long driveway, under 10 feet of water, and in a barn
(c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2018 SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE I’m a sucker for a property with a long driveway. I love the anticipation as you turn in from the road and drive through a tunnel of forest, ideally following a few twists and turns—the suspense building—until, bam! A clearing bathed in bright sunshine reveals a
A Valentine to You
by Elizabeth Normen Happy Valentine’s Day! What better theme is there as we celebrate our 15th anniversary than one inspired by the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday and our passion for Connecticut history? SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE In this issue you’ll read stories about love, hate, and rivalry in Connecticut’s past. We’re incredibly honored to feature best-selling
CTExplored Featured on WTNH with Ann Nyberg!
WTNH’s Ann Nyberg recently interviewed Betsy Fox about Connecticut-made cocktail shakers, the subject of Betsy’s Summer 2017 story. Nyberg and Fox talk about cocktail shakers, CT Explored’s 15th anniversary, and Betsy’s upcoming Winter 2017-2018 story about Connecticut’s intimate-apparel industry (think CT-made corsets!) Watch the interview HERE Read the story HERE Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Celebrate with
60 issues, 3,800 pages, Hundreds of Stories
by Elizabeth J. Normen, Fall 2017 With this issue, Connecticut Explored celebrates its 15th anniversary! Since our first issue in Fall 2002 we’ve produced 60 issues, more than 3,800 pages, hundreds of stories, a book, a website, a podcast with more than 30 episodes (approximately 900 minutes of Connecticut history), and—launching this fall—a social studies
Connecticut’s First Prohibition Law
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2017 The theme of this issue—food and agriculture—is not only seasonally on point, it’s fertile territory. The last time we dug into Connecticut’s historic foodways was Spring 2006. In that issue we featured stories about émigré Jewish farmers in eastern Connecticut, the state fish (American shad),
Connecticut in World War I, Part II
By Elizabeth J. Normen, Publisher (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2017 This issue is produced in collaboration with the Connecticut State Library and its commemoration of the 100th anniversary of World War I. On April 6, 1917 the United States officially entered the war. Earlier issues of Connecticut Explored, including the Winter 2014-2015 issue, focused
CT Explored Fighting “Fake History” With New Textbook for Third/Fourth Grade
We’re as shocked as anyone that some students in Connecticut are reading a whitewashed history of Connecticut (http://m.ctpost.com/news/article/Fourth-grade-textbook-s-take-on-Connecticut-10779004.php?cmpid=fb-desktop#photo-12002718). Luckily help is on the way. CT Explored will be launching a pilot of Where We Live: Connecticut, a social studies textbook and web site about Connecticut for third/fourth grade, in January 2017 with the intent of a full
The Influence of Connecticut in the American West
By Leah S. Glaser (c) Connecticut Explored, Inc. Winter 2016-2017 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Connecticut Explored invited CCSU history professor Leah S. Glaser to write this issue’s column about this issue’s theme “Connecticans in the American West.” Last summer, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy staged a high-profile filibuster demanding the passage of gun control legislation and moved
True Crime Stories
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2016 Our Puritan forefathers dealt with crime swiftly and harshly. Punishment, not incarceration, was their preferred method of bringing a wayward lamb back into the fold. In 1773 Connecticut’s General Assembly decided to try a different approach, opening what is generally considered America’s first modern prison,
We’ll Get By with a Little Help from Our Friends
By Elizabeth J. Normen As our Fall issue went to press, we receive word that, due to Governor Malloy’s line-item veto of funding for Connecticut Humanities (CTH) in the state budget, we will not receive funding from CTH this year. Many have asked how this will affect CT Explored. The answer is that we’ll need to rely on our Friends
Even with History, Go Local
By Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Summer 2016 Anyone who knows historian Bill Hosley (and many, many do) knows that his passion for Connecticut history is boundless—and infectious. Bill’s particular passion for local history and the museums and historical societies in small towns was the inspiration for this issue. We invited him to put
Our Hard-Won Right to Vote
by Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Spring 2016 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In this presidential election year, we decided to focus our spring issue on stories about voting rights and civic engagement. These stories remind us how hard-won our right to vote is. Often the story of women’s suffrage in this state focuses on the
Launched from a Connecticut Kitchen
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Winter 2015-2016 In the Winter 2015-2016 issue, we tell the stories of some of Connecticut’s iconic brands—and we mean the majors! Connecticut has been home to such nationally and internationally-known brands as Pepperidge Farm, Bigelow Tea, Timex, Stanley (now Stanley Black & Decker) and more. I love
Time, Talent, Treasure
By Elizabeth J. Normen FALL 2015 I was raised in a philanthropic family. That doesn’t mean I was raised with wealth. Like many others, my parents shared their time, talent, and treasure, as they were able, with their church and community. They did it quietly; I understood they were taking part in a long tradition,
Historic Preservation: It’s not just about buildings
By Elizabeth J. Normen Summer 2015 Is historic preservation only about saving old buildings from demolition? Unless you’re deeply involved in the field, you might not know that current thinking looks at the bigger picture and appreciates that individual buildings are components of something larger, such as a neighborhood or a community, that deserves preserving,
The Upside to Our Proximity to New York City
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Spring 2015 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! One upside to Connecticut’s proximity to New York City is that so many of our nation’s most creative people have wandered over the border to find refuge and inspiration among our rolling hills and fertile valleys and along our rocky shoreline. Our state
WWI’s Impact on Connecticut
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored, Winter 2014/2015 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! “Knowledge Wins!” proclaims a World War I-era poster featured in the Winter 2014-2015 issue’s photo essay. That seems an apt theme for the entire issue. Last August marked the centennial of the advent of World War I, and though the U.S. would officially
Can You Trust What You Read?
By Elizabeth J. Normen Fall 2014 It’s starting to feel a bit like the Wild Wild West out there. And I’m not talking about gun control. I’m referring to the apparent relaxing of standards by some publications (in print and on the Web) and writers that suggests a shocking disregard for attribution of sources. Citing
Why Connecticut Didn’t Go Dutch
By Elizabeth J. Normen Summer 2014 2014 marks the 400th anniversary of Adriaen Block’s 1614 voyage up the Connecticut River. Block is credited as being the first European to explore the interior of Connecticut. Unlike the English settlers who arrived 20 years later, Block and his crew weren’t looking for arable land or for a
Is it Best to be First?
By Elizabeth J. Normen Spring 2014 Here’s why I’m wary of claims of being “first” in history. Last fall I was researching online other publications comparable to Connecticut Explored and came across New York Archives, a magazine published by the New York State Archives Partnership Trust. Their Spring 2013 issue included a story that asserted
How Times Have Changed–or Have They?
By Elizabeth J. Normen Winter 2013-2014 How often do you shake your head and think, “How times have changed!” Then again, how often do you surprisingly find yourself thinking, “Some things never change!” And that goes for work, which is the subject of this issue and a year-long project led by Connecticut Humanities called Connecticut
A Swedish Yankee in Connecticut
By Elizabeth J. Normen Fall 2013 In our Fall 2012 10th Anniversary issue we explored Connecticut’s enduring reputation as The Land of Steady Habits—a term that stood for nearly 200 years of political leadership drawn from a handful of founding families. That tradition, as state historian Walt Woodward put it in his column in that
The Diversity of Connecticut
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2013 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In our Fall 2012 10th Anniversary issue we explored Connecticut’s enduring reputation as The Land of Steady Habits—a term that stood for nearly 200 years during which political leadership was drawn from a handful of founding families. That tradition, as State Historian
Why the Sperm Whale is our State Animal
By Elizabeth J. Normen Summer 2013 The sperm whale was designated the Connecticut state animal in 1975. Why do we have a state animal that’s not indigenous to the state or its coastal waters? According to the State of Connecticut Web site, the sperm whale was chosen “because of its specific contribution to the state’s
Discovering Historic Connecticut Landscape–On Your Bike!
By Elizabeth J. Normen Spring 2013 One of my new favorite things to do on vacation is to go on bike tours. I enjoy the deeper sense of being in a place that you get from the seat of a bicycle—something you don’t get whizzing by on a train or in a car. Plus, it’s
The Emancipation Proclamation: Who Celebrated in Connecticut?
By Elizabeth J. Normen Winter 2012-2013 True or False: ____ Connecticut was a slave colony/state for more than 200 years. ____ Slavery in Connecticut was more benign than it was in the South. ____ Connecticut was a stronghold of abolitionism, and our soldiers went off to fight the Civil War to free those held in
Our Own Connecticut Way
By Elizabeth J. Normen FALL 2012 In the Fall 2012 issue we again examine one of Connecticut’s sobriquets. State Historian Walt Woodward first tackled our “Constitution State” moniker in the Spring 2005 issue, and in Winter 2007/2008 issue he took on “Nutmeg State.” In this issue we explore the “Land of Steady Habits,” which has
Why the War of 1812 Was Good for Connecticut
By Elizabeth J. Normen Summer 2012 Anniversaries provide a wonderful impetus for refreshing our understanding of big moments in history. Last year’s kick-off of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the celebration of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 200th birthday, and the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 gave
Nutmegger or Connectican?
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2012 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The spring issue’s publisher’s letter is creating some buzz. Here’s what people are talking about: We’re calling ourselves Connecticans, not Nutmeggers. It seems appropriate that in an issue about documenting and defining our state’s boundaries that I go on record about an
STORIES FROM THE HOG RIVER
An Apple a Day There’s something deliciously macabre about the history of healthcare. Shivers ran up my spine as I read submissions for this issue [Feb/Mar/Apr 2004, Vol 2 No 2] that describe the devastating effects of our ancestors’ diseases and afflictions—and the sometimes more devastating treatments that were inflicted in response. Seriously though, what
An Art School Forged in the Gilded Age: The Hartford Art School
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored, Summer 2003 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The World’s Fair in 1876 celebrating the United States’ centennial drew 10 million people to Philadelphia’s Fairmont Park to tour five mammoth buildings showcasing the best in cultural and industrial innovation from around the world. Reverberations from the exhibition were felt 200 miles
Pastimes and Great Baseball Memories
By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2003 Subscribe/Buy Back Issues! A common thread running through the Spring 2003 issue on Pastimes is the sense of community that leisure-time activities engendered or were designed to foster. In the 18th century, one’s leisure-time choices may have been more limited but the objectives were often
Do We Try too Hard to Preserve the Past?
By Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2003 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Built It/Razed It is the theme of the Winter 2003 issue, in which we look at some of Greater Hartford’s significant historic structures and their surprising sagas. The dust had barely settled after an SUV crashed through the front parlor of Hartford’s 221-year-old
Introducing the Magazine of Connecticut History
(c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2002 NOTE: Connecticut Explored began in fall 2002 as Hog River Journal: Hartford and the region’s magazine of history, culture, and the arts. By fall 2009, we’d changed our name and gone statewide. Here’s the publisher’s column for the first issue. By Elizabeth Normen, Janice Mathews, and Cindy Cormier Welcome
The New London Ghost Ship & the Oval Office
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2022 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! How many know about Connecticut’s connection to the president’s desk in the Oval Office—and the preservation and craftsmanship stories it embodies? The story begins when Captain James Buddington of Groton and a skeleton crew of 11 sailed into New London Harbor on
Two Tales of a City
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2021-2022 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! As Connecticans in the 1800s joined the throngs of pioneers seeking a better life in the American West, they eagerly sought first-hand accounts of potential settlement sites. Such reports often came as letters from friends or relatives. Sometimes they appeared as open
Albert Pope and the Extraordinary Ordinary
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! One of the characteristics that defined the Victorian era was its many advances in invention and technology. One of the most significant of those advances was brought to the United States and produced in Hartford by Colonel Albert Augustus Pope. The Ordinary
The American Factory Village—Made in Connecticut
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In the late 18th and early 19th centuries a perfect storm of problems caused Connecticut to pivot away from its agricultural and mercantile past toward an industrial future. The result, found just about anywhere along the state’s rivers and streams where falling
The Energy of Our Great River
by Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In an issue whose theme is “Environmental History,” no subject is more fitting than New England’s “Great River,” the Connecticut River, and its 7.2-million-acre watershed. Reaching from within 200 yards of the Canadian border in New Hampshire 410 miles to Long Island
Women’s Letters Kept Family Connected
by Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2020-2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! A private collection of family letters exchanged between Mary and Harriet Miller of Middlefield, Connecticut and female relatives and friends who emigrated west between 1820 and 1870 has given me profound appreciation for letters as communications binding women across time and space
Connecticut’s First World War II Hero
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Of the 17 Connecticans among the 2,403 people who died at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, only 12 served on U.S. Navy ships. Five others were connected with military flight operations at the Army’s nearby Wheeler and Hickam airfields. After the
Emmeline Pankhurst: Freedom or Death in the Fight for Suffrage
By Walter Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! When Emmeline Pankhurst arrived in Hartford in late November 1913, she was one of the most famous—and infamous—women in the world. As founder in 1903 of England’s Woman’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), an openly militant suffrage organization, Pankhurst was a flashpoint figure
Hogpen Hill Farms: A Place to See
By Walter W Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! One of Connecticut’s most eye-opening places is not only off the beaten path, it is off limits to most of us most of the time. But for one or two weekends a year, Edward Tufte’s Hogpen Hill Farms in Woodbury is open
In Honor of the “Nonner”
By Walter Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored, Winter 2019-2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The week the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian opened in 2004, construction workers uncovered a large number of 17th-century human remains on Stonington’s Mason’s Island. Police called in State Archeologist Nick Bellantoni, who, realizing this was a previously unknown First Peoples burial
The Beechers: Connecticut’s Most Accomplished Family?
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2019 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Connecticut has long produced families of great ability whose accomplishments span generations. Perhaps no family stands out in this regard more than the Lyman Beecher family of Litchfield. The son of a New Haven blacksmith, Lyman Beecher (1775 – 1863) became one
The Wade-In of 1964
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2019 SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE In 1926 a group of eastern Connecticut investors, seeking to capitalize on the state’s expanding highway system and growth in leisure-time activities, purchased Cheney Hollow, a large spring-fed wetland in Andover, Connecticut. During the next year they cleared trees, cut new roads,
One Governor, Two Rivers, an Irish Fish, and a Movie Star
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored, Inc. Spring 2019 SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE Call this a fish story. It’s about two rivers, one governor, an Irish fish, and a Hollywood legend. It took place a long time ago—back in 1965. That’s when John Dempsey, the only foreign-born Connecticut governor since the colonial era, returned to
Every Single Day . . .
by Walter W. Woodward As state historian, I begin each day excited about building greater awareness for the history of our state. Helping more people better appreciate all the important, curious, fun, unique, profound, strange, and (insert your favorite adjective here) _________ things that happened in our past is what I live and breathe for.
Historic Holiday Recipes
Listen to Grating the Nutmeg Episode 61! State historian Walt Woodward interviews Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzergerald about traditional holiday recipes. Find the recipes here! Savory Connecticut Thanksgiving Chicken Pie Mince Pie Roast Venison Roast Capon Sweet Apple Pie English Plum Pudding Marlborough Pie Pippin Tart Plumb Cake Puff Pastry Pumpkin Pie Short Pastry
The Revolution of 1818
State historian Walter Woodward’s column is expanded to a full story in the Fall 2018 issue. Read it HERE. Listen to his Grating the Nutmeg podcast on this topic, “Trouble in the Land of Steady Habits,” HERE.
Two Controversial Connecticut Statues: Standing … At Least for Now
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2018 With all the recent talk about removing offensive statues from public view, it is instructive to realize this phenomenon is nothing new. More than one Connecticut statue has a long history of provoking heated controversy and demands for its removal. Consider, for example, the statue
From Afar, They Still Loved Connecticut
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2017-2018 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In the fall of 1858, William Ransom was really homesick. Like tens of thousands of Connecticans affected during the first half of the 19th century by such issues as tapped-out farmland, economic downturns, high taxation, climate change, and political repression, he had
Connecticut, America’s First Research Laboratory
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2017 Thanks to John Winthrop Jr., the colony of Connecticut could rightly be called America’s first scientific research laboratory. One of the leading figures in early New England settlement, Winthrop totally confounds the stereotype of the stern, bigoted, anti-enlightenment Puritan. He was outgoing, tolerant, and passionately
Sweet Democracy . . . The History of the Connecticut Election Cake
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2017 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! At last summer’s Democratic national convention, delegates introduced Connecticut as “the home of the pizza and the hamburger.” They might more appropriately have praised us as the home of the Connecticut Election Cake. From the earliest days of the republic until the
The German Invasion of Connecticut
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored, Spring 2017 SUBSCRIBE! On June 4, 1921, a German army of 150,000 troops under General von Kluck invaded Connecticut, quickly establishing a line from Bridgeport to Danbury to the town of Washington. Its target was the state’s vast industrial resources and arms manufactories. New York City had capitulated
When the West was North
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored, Inc. Winter 2016-2017 Many people know that Connecticans became pioneers of manifest destiny through their late-18th-into-early-19th-century emigrations west to Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley and Ohio’s Western Reserve. Fewer are aware that before Connecticans went west, many thousands migrated north, following the Connecticut River to what became the states of
The Hanging of Moses Paul
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored. Fall 2016 On September 2, 1772, thousands gathered in New Haven’s First Congregational Church to watch a rare encounter between two Native Americans. One represented the stereotype many colonists believed most Indians in New England had become—dissolute, drunken, prone to violence; the other symbolized what colonists hoped Indians
A Little Town Begets a Big College
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2016 In early 1735 the village of Lebanon Crank (now Columbia) was looking for a new minister. The previous minister, hired fresh out of Yale a decade earlier, displayed too much fondness for drink and had been forced to resign. His replacement, another fresh Yale graduate,
Darkness and Duty
by Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2016 It had been a terrible winter. Jedediah Strong, clerk of the Connecticut General Assembly, called it “the severest hard winter within the memory of man,” marked by an “abundance of snow and frequent storms,” and “the extreme degrees and long continuance of the cold.” The
Our State Seal: The Most Enduring Brand of All
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored, Inc., Winter 2015-2016 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Connecticut’s most enduring brand is unquestionably our state seal. While nicknames come and sometimes go—the Provision State, Nutmeg State, Constitution State, Land of Steady Habits, and Arsenal of Democracy (all except the last of which I’ve written about in this column)—the state
The Picture Not Taken
By Walter W. Woodward FALL 2015 In our image-saturated world, nothing is missed more than the picture not taken. Who among us has not regretted—on many occasions—that a particular moment, event, or place wasn’t captured in an image, so we could remember it by eye as well as by mind. Historians know pictures are worth
The Chips are Down for the Pequot Museum
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. SUMMER 2015 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Last December, in a move that surprised many members of the state’s museum and history communities, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center closed its doors, laying off 45 of its 55 employees. Fortunately, the hiatus was seasonal, a wintertime shutdown to
Benjamin Collins, Rock Star
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2015 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In the early 1700s cemeteries in Connecticut’s Puritan towns took on a new and vital role in community social and cultural life and gravestone carvers became our earliest “rock stars.” Where once the houses of the first settlers, clustered around village greens,
A Pint-Sized View of War
By Walter Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2014-2015 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! This image, taken at Bradley Airfield in Windsor Locks on September 9, 1943, gives one pause. It shows happy school children signing a 4,000-pound blockbuster bomb—the same kind as was used so effectively against German cities and civilians in World War II—under the
Birth Control and Zones of Privacy
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2014 Volume 12 Number 4 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Rarely is the pen more powerful than when it expresses a majority opinion of the United States Supreme Court. Sometimes eloquent, sometimes tediously legalistic, the decisions of the justices often turn words into history, even as they shape
Henry Green and the Final Underground
By Walter W. Woodward, Summer 2014 Volume 12 Number 3 Almost all Connecticans have at least one significant encounter with the underground. It comes at the end our lives, when the earth itself becomes our final resting place. When Henry Green was buried on June 17, 1911 in Hartford’s Cedar Hill Cemetery, he became the
A Revolutionary Gamble …Again
By Walter W. Woodward, Spring 2014 Volume 12 Number 2 Recent history has not gone easy on Connecticut. The state whose innovation and manufacturing ingenuity made it a leader in the industrial revolution, has, in recent decades, found more to celebrate in historic achievements than future prospects. Since the 1990s, the Land of Steady Habits
A Historian Comes Home
By Walter W. Woodward, Winter 2013 Volume 12 Number 4 This is a story about a house. Not just any house, but a house with long, deep roots—roots that wind through time, cross through space, and wrap themselves around my consciousness. It is a house that affects in the most primary way my sense of
Immigrants All…
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2013 Volume 11 Number 4 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! All Connecticans, from the first indigenous settler to the state’s most recent arrival, are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. The Laurentide ice sheets that covered our state with a mile-high wall of ice 22,000 years ago made
“Sui Generous”: The Story of a Shepherd and His Flag
By Walter Woodward, Spring 2013 Volume 11 Number 2 For the better part of a century, history in Connecticut benefited from the generous mind and spirit of Shepherd M. Holcombe. Scion of several of Hartford’s founding families, a decorated World War II veteran, and founder of the actuarial firm Hooker & Holcombe, Shep managed to crowd
Connecticut’s Small Steps Towards Emancipation
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2012/2013 Volume 11 Number 1 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! As Connecticans reflect on the meaning and importance of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, it might be good to consider our state’s own history regarding emancipation. It presents a record that is both mixed and sobering. After
The Unsteady Meaning of “The Land of Steady Habits”
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2012 Volume 10 Number 4 Why has “The Land of Steady Habits” endured as a moniker for Connecticut for more than two centuries? One reason is that its meaning has proven to be remarkably elastic, capable of changing with the times, the issues, and the attitudes of
War of 1812–The War Connecticut Hated
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2012 Volume 10 Number 3 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! For most Connecticans, the War of 1812 was as much a war mounted by the federal government against New England as it was a conflict with Great Britain. More precisely, they saw it as a politically based and
The Map That Wasn’t a Map
By Walter W. Woodward, Spring 2012 Volume 10 Number 2 The key document mapping out Connecticut’s original boundaries wasn’t in fact a map. It was, instead, a royal charter. The Charter of 1662—arguably the most important document in Connecticut’s history—contains among its other provisions a written description of the colony’s boundaries that served the same
Discovering the Explorer Hiram Bingham
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2011/2012 Volume 10 Number 1 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Of all the Connecticans who have left their mark in distant places, perhaps none made a more lasting—or more controversial—impression than Hiram Bingham III. Born in 1875, this scion of two generations of New England missionaries to Hawaii
The Final Journey of Nathaniel Lyon
By Walter W. Woodward, Spring 2011 Volume 9 Number 2 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Except for an occasional descendant in search of lost roots, visitors to the old Phoenixville Cemetery in Eastford these days are few, and very far between. But 150 years ago, on September 5, 1861, thousands of men, women, and children ringed the
Where Were You…
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2011 Volume 9 Number 4 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Everyone who reads this has lived through some of them. Some of us have lived through many of them. They are events of such profound impact that they are seared into our memories the instant we hear about
“Must Read Book” is 160 Years Old
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2011 Volume 9 Number 3 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! As a professional historian—not to mention the state historian of Connecticut—one might expect that I would have read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. After all, this is one of the few books that actually changed history. Stowe’s panoramic
Celebrating Connecticut’s Founding
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2010 Vol 8 # 4 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! On a cold afternoon last February, Governor M. Jodi Rell stepped out of the State Capitol accompanied by the Governor’s Foot Guard, legislative leaders Don Williams, Chris Donovan, and Denise Merrill, some 50 school children, invited state officials,
Bruce Fraser. The End of a Life. The End of an Era.
By Walter Woodward, State Historian For the last 30 years, virtually every history program of substance produced in Connecticut could have carried the credit line, “Brought to you in part by Bruce Fraser.” His June 13 death after a hard-fought battle with cancer leaves an unfillable void in the history community. It also marks the
Nutmeg Adds Spice. But is it Nice?
By Walter W. Woodward, Winter 2007 Volume 6 Number 1 ©Connecticut Explored State historian Walt Woodward tells us the story behind the state’s association with nutmeg and sheds some light on an unusual object in the collection of the Museum of Connecticut History: a wooden nutmeg carved from a piece of the famous Charter Oak. Of all
Re: Collections: The “Genius of Connecticut”
By Walter Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. WINTER 2006/07 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! A once-fallen angel will again soar above the skies of Hartford, providing an object of inspiration to gridlocked citizens on Interstate 84 and to our governmental leaders. The “Genius of Connecticut,” the Randolph Rogers sculpture that stood atop the summit of the state
Are We the Constitution State?
By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Spring 2005 Volume 3 Number 2 Subscribe/Buy the Issue In 1973, in a fit of pre-Bicentennial fervor, the state legislature mandated that Connecticut ‘s license plates should display the state slogan the assembly had adopted 14 years earlier. Since the blue tags with white lettering declaring Connecticut
What’s a Puritan, and Why Didn’t They Stay in Massachusetts?
By Walter Woodward, Summer 2005 Volume 3 Number 3 How do we in the 21st century come to honest understanding of the Puritans, those influential culture shapers from the 1600s? Answering two questions helps us not only get at the heart of Puritan beliefs but also understand why Puritanism in Connecticut differed in at least