VOLUME 22/NUMBER 3/SUMMER 2024       (c) Connecticut Explored

Kathy Hermes at the Declaring Freedom Conference, CCSU, March 15, 2024

By Kathy Hermes

We welcome Dr. Matthew Warshauer of Central Connecticut State University as our guest editor for our Summer 2024 issue. He solicited and curated the articles here. As a scholar and public historian of antebellum and Civil War–era Connecticut, Dr. Warshauer approached us about an issue theme of monuments and memory. There was a large interest in this topic at a meeting of our organizational and community partners as our nation debates questions over what monuments to keep, contextualize, and create.

This issue concerns monuments, historical memory, and even, to some degree, reminiscence. Whether created by governments or private entities, monuments are products of their time that can shape the public perception of the past. Historical memory is collective memory—the way in which a group tells the story of its past. Reminiscence, or personal memory, may or may not comport with any other narrative. At Connecticut Explored, we promise you “one good story after another,” but our editorial board, authors, and staff try to ensure those stories are rooted in evidence.

You will find something in this issue we have not done before—a point-counterpoint approach to a historical controversy. The controversy surrounds the monuments to John Mason, an early settler in the Connecticut Colony who, among other things, played an outsize role in the Pequot War and later served as the colony’s deputy governor and then acting governor. Mason’s reputation as a war hero and dedicated servant of the Connecticut Colony contrasts with his role in the slaughter of noncombatant Pequots at Mystic and, perhaps to a lesser extent, his role in the Hartford witchcraft panic in the 1660s while Governor John Winthrop Jr. was in England procuring the Connecticut charter from King Charles II.

In this issue, we also feature others with “legacies” in Connecticut, like Rev. Thomas Gallaudet and P. T. Barnum. Someone’s historical legacy is what they are remembered for, as opposed to the sum total of their lives. A legacy is actually about the present, the way in which a person matters in our contemporary world. Legacies help connect the past to the present, even though they change over time.

Reflection is rarely a bad thing, and as we reflect on a few of our state’s many monuments, legacies, and historical narratives, we’ll come face to face with great accomplishments, dismal failures, and everything in between. Our partner, Connecticut Humanities, is celebrating 50 years of funding numerous historical projects and fostering conversations about our past. We are also preparing to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary as a nation, a republic founded in a tradition of argument. In an August 1651 letter to Major John Endicott, Roger Williams, founder of Providence Plantation in the colony of Rhode Island, rejoiced that he lived in “wonderful, searching, disputing and dissenting times.” We certainly live in disputing times now, and sometimes, that dissension feels like it will tear us apart. But like Williams, I think wonderful things can come out of disputes and dissent as long as we are searching for what is right and true.