From before emancipation and the 13th Amendment, Josephine Sophie White Griffing of Hebron, Connecticut, was an ardent advocate for enslaved and free people.
ReadMeriden’s Bradley & Hubbard Manufacturing Company was an industry-leading American manufacturer of kerosene lamps and metal household items.
ReadDuring WWII, the US military bestowed 175 Connecticut war plants with the Army-Navy “E” Award for outstanding production contributions to the army and navy.
ReadBlending her aviation and journalism careers, Wethersfield’s Mary Goodrich Jenson pushed the boundaries of both fields.
ReadWethersfield’s Sophia Woodhouse Welles made a name for herself as an inventor and a businesswoman in antebellum America with her bonnets.
ReadMany Polish immigrants found work on the tobacco farms in the Connecticut River Valley that specialized in the tobacco used for cigar wrappers.
ReadDuring times of war, in Connecticut, as in many other states, women became an increasingly important resource in food production.
ReadDr. Alice Hamilton was a leading authority on industrial diseases and the first female faculty member at Harvard before she retired to Hadlyme, Connecticut.
ReadFrom Huguenots to French Canadian mill workers to modern immigration, Connecticut has always been a place shaped, in part, by a steady French influence.
ReadGwen Reed was an actress and educational advocate who grew up in Hartford in the early 20th century.
ReadMany Portuguese immigrants came to the US as mariners serving aboard ships, some remained to build new lives and communities in Connecticut.
ReadIn the 1940s, African American war workers eligible for government-funded housing found access restricted to some properties despite vacancies.
ReadIn the late 19th and early 20th centuries, young boys who shined shoes (sometimes 70 hours per week) were the primary breadwinners for many struggling families.
ReadIn the summer of 1944, a young Martin Luther King Jr. worked at the Simsbury tobacco farm of Cullman Brothers, Inc.
ReadEbenezer Tracy was a carpenter from Lisbon, Connecticut, who specialized in making fine, hand-crafted furniture.
ReadA lifelong resident of Ellington, William N. Pinney served his town and his state up until his death at the age of 90.
ReadThe roots of Connecticut’s iron industry lie in East Haven, starting in the 17th century.
ReadCape Verdeans formed parts of whaling and sealing crews leaving Connecticut since the early 19th century, sometimes even rising to positions of authority.
ReadAmerican Thread’s arrival in Willimantic in 1899 demonstrates Connecticut’s role in the Progressive Era’s “rise of big business” and “incorporation of America.”
ReadFrom neighbors rushing to help neighbors and the town’s first fire department, which opened in 1879, to the present day, the volunteer tradition of firefighting continues despite many changes over the decades.
ReadWhen it ceased operations in the mid-1950s after over 120 years, The Stamford Foundry Company was the oldest known stove works in America.
ReadSheffield Island, is home to one of Connecticut’s historic lighthouses—a stone structure with a celebrated past dating back two hundred years.
ReadHartford celebrated the 1908 opening of the Bulkeley Bridge, which connected Hartford and East Hartford, with a three-day extravaganza.
ReadIn the middle of the 1800s, the invention of the typewriter revolutionized the way Americans communicated, including in Connecticut.
ReadA memorial in Byram Park honors Yogi, who became the first police dog of the Greenwich Police Department in 1988.
ReadFor nearly 30 years the Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company operated a nuclear power plant in Haddam Neck, Connecticut.
ReadA long-time resident of Woodbridge, Boone Guyton was one of the most prolific test pilots in US aviation history.
ReadFor the latter half of the 19th century and for much of the 20th century, Connecticut led the nation in pin production.
ReadFor the better part of a century, West Haven produced one of the more unique and innovative textile products in United States’ history.
ReadConnecticut was the first state to require a literacy test of would-be voters and, even as the practice came under fire as a tool of discrimination, the state held steady until 1970.
ReadOriginally from Hartford, Helen James Chisholm’s career took her all the way to the Pacific to teach and run an orphanage.
ReadIn February of 1889, the Connecticut General Assembly passed a bill making the first Monday of each September a legal holiday.
ReadThe Briggs Manufacturing Company was the premier employer in Voluntown, Connecticut, throughout the latter half of the 19th century.
ReadKenneth Lynch was an accomplished blacksmith who was a longtime resident of Wilton and created memorable pieces of metalwork found in the Northeast.
ReadMoses Wheeler carried passengers across the Housatonic River as the operator of the first ferry from Stratford to Milford—over 350 years ago.
ReadIn the early decades of the 20th century, the town of Guilford had a fire department stationed on Chaffinch Island that consisted of just one man, Francis Ingals.
ReadLouis B. Haas was a Dutch immigrant who opened a retail cigar store, Essman & Haas, on Central Row in Hartford in the late 1840s.
ReadFounded in the late 18th century, the Plainfield Academy went on to become just the third school incorporated in the state of Connecticut.
ReadThe textile mills of the Naugatuck Valley brought tremendous change to towns like Beacon Falls.
ReadIn 1893, Frank Duryea, along with his brother, built one of the first cars in the country to have an internal combustion engine.
ReadJohn Howard Hale came from a family of fruit growers in Glastonbury and developed a new type of peach that flourished in the harsh New England climate.
ReadHundreds of American Indians served as mariners, including on the Stonington schooner ‘Breakwater,’ which survived capture in the Falkland Islands.
ReadOver the five decades Edith Watson traveled around North America, her keen eye and box camera lens captured the otherwise untold stories of women.
ReadThe Pike family of Sterling, Connecticut worked in textile dying for four generations.
ReadReformer Vivien Kellems fought her most famous battle against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as she sought tax reform for businesses and single people.
ReadThe life of Charles Dow, in many respects, follows the storyline of the prototypical self-made man.
ReadMark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and used his “good-natured” and “devoted” servant, George Griffin, as a likely model for one of literature’s most memorable figures—Jim, the runaway enslaved man.
ReadAetna started out as fire insurance company in Hartford in 1819, but spread into life insurance and is now a global leader in the health insurance industry.
ReadUnion organizer Rebecca Weiner was among the few who proposed to address the social and economic conditions that enabled the world’s oldest profession to thrive in the capital city during the 1800s.
ReadA long-time Connecticut resident, Helen F. Boyd Powers was a national advocate for greater public access to nursing and healthcare education.
ReadConnecticut played host to new, vast populations of Italian, Polish, and French Canadian immigrants who helped reinvent the state’s cultural identity.
ReadRemembering Anna Louise James, the first woman pharmacist in the state of Connecticut.
ReadThe voting booth and the shop floor were two important arenas in the fight for women’s equality.
ReadConnecticut pocketknife production began around 1840. Over the next two decades, Connecticut became the earliest state to have a burgeoning craft.
ReadJanet Huntington Brewster Murrow was a Middletown native who grew up to be one of America’s most trusted news correspondents, philanthropists, and the wife of Edward R. Murrow.
ReadNellie McKnight was a teacher, librarian, and historian who served the town of Ellington for most of her life.
ReadMary Townsend Seymour was a leading organizer, civil rights activist, suffragist, and so much more in Hartford during the early 20th century.
ReadHartford native Samuel Colt built a financial empire on his design and automated production of the revolver.
ReadBuilding a business on the back of an insect may seem foolish but for Manchester’s Cheney Brothers silk mill, it became the ticket to global success.
ReadFounded by Gerson Fox in 1848, G. Fox & Co. went on to become the nation’s largest privately owned department store.
ReadIn 1830, a resourceful industrialist opened a button making shop in what today is the Northford section of North Branford.
ReadIn the 1820s, the first two notable carpetmakers emerged in the north central part of Connecticut—the Tariff Manufacturing Company and the Thompsonville Carpet Manufacturing Company.
ReadAshbel Woodward was a physician, historian, and farmer who spent most of his life serving the town of Franklin.
ReadWilliam Hawkins Abbott helped transform the market for affordable energy through his oil refining, pipeline, and distribution networks.
ReadWasp and Hornet engines secure the reputation and success of this 1920s start-up venture.
ReadThe American Brass Company helped make the Naugatuck Valley a center of international brass production until the late 20th century.
ReadDaniel Curtiss spent most of his life in Woodbury, thriving in business, pioneering the sale and distribution of commercial goods, and serving his town by holding political office.
ReadThe Wethersfield Volunteer Fire Department is the oldest continually operated fire department in Connecticut.
ReadIn an era of dispossession and diminishing autonomy on land, Native American mariners learned to use Anglo-American structures and institutions to establish a degree of power and personal freedom for themselves.
ReadSamuel Foot was a West India trader from Cheshire, Connecticut, who went on to a successful career in politics in the US Congress.
ReadDenied the right to free assembly in public spaces, Connecticut workers joined in a larger national movement of civil disobedience.
ReadBruce Rogers was a book designer who settled in New Fairfield. Considered one of the great typographers of his time, his masterpiece was the 1936 Oxford Lectern Bible.
ReadImmigration to Connecticut in the second half of the 19th century proceeded much as it had in earlier decades.
ReadFor the deck hands, stevedores, and firemen who made the steamboats of the Hartford Line run, 18-hour days, dangerous conditions, and lousy food were the norm.
Read“Industry,” also known as “The Craftsman,” by Evelyn Longman, resides in Hartford and is a celebration of the working class and their contribution to society.
ReadJohn Henry Von der Wall, a life-long resident of Bolton, took part in Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s famed expeditions to the South Polar regions.
ReadThe Watertown firm of Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing produced one of the most successful products of the late 19th century.
ReadThe Naugatuck school system today consists of 11 public schools that provide a thorough contemporary education to over 4,000 students—but this was not always the case.
ReadThe earliest labor union for African American workers in Hartford appeared in 1902 with the birth of the Colored Waiters and Cooks Local 359.
ReadReferences to the hat making industry abound in Danbury and continue to shape much of the city’s identity today.
ReadBetween 1934 and 1943, the federal government placed murals in twenty-three Connecticut post offices.
ReadThis article is part of the digital exhibit “Brass City/Grass Roots: The Persistence of Farming in Waterbury, Connecticut”
ReadThis article is part of the digital exhibit “Brass City/Grass Roots: The Persistence of Farming in Waterbury, Connecticut”
ReadThis article is part of the digital exhibit “Brass City/Grass Roots: The Persistence of Farming in Waterbury, Connecticut”
ReadThis article is part of the digital exhibit “Brass City/Grass Roots: The Persistence of Farming in Waterbury, Connecticut”
ReadThis article is part of the digital exhibit “Brass City/Grass Roots: The Persistence of Farming in Waterbury, Connecticut”
ReadThis article is part of the digital exhibit “Brass City/Grass Roots: The Persistence of Farming in Waterbury, Connecticut”
ReadThis article is part of the digital exhibit “Brass City/Grass Roots: The Persistence of Farming in Waterbury, Connecticut”
ReadThis article is part of the digital exhibit “Brass City/Grass Roots: The Persistence of Farming in Waterbury, Connecticut”
ReadThis article is part of the digital exhibit “Brass City/Grass Roots: The Persistence of Farming in Waterbury, Connecticut”
ReadHorses, motorcycles, and boats are just a few of the modes of transportation that town emergency personnel have used over the years to get to where they’re needed.
ReadLippincott, Inc., in North Haven, was one of the most highly respected fine-arts metal fabricators in the country in the second half of the 20th century.
ReadIn the 1820s Lambert Hitchcock adapted mass production concepts pioneered in the clock-making field to chair manufacture.
ReadAmos Bronson Alcott was an educator and reformer born in Wolcott, Connecticut and father to best-selling author, Louisa May Alcott.
ReadOn April 23, 1987, twenty-eight workers lost their lives during a collapse at the L’Ambiance Plaza construction site in Bridgeport.
ReadWhile Connecticut proved to be one of the more progressive states when it came to child labor laws, it still took federal legislation to protect children in the workplace.
ReadIsaac Glasko was a blacksmith of mixed African American and Native American descent who challenged 19th-century voting rights in Connecticut.
ReadDr. Emily Dunning Barringer was the first female ambulance surgeon in New York City and the first female physician to work as an intern in a New York City hospital.
ReadVera Wilhelmine Buch Weisbord was a labor activist who helped organize trade unions and strikes that shaped the labor movement of the 1920s and 1930s.
ReadEnfield’s Martha Parsons broke new ground in her pursuit of employment opportunities for women. Her family home now belongs to the Enfield Historical Society.
ReadDuring the Great Migration of the early 1900s, African Americans from the rural South relocated to Hartford and other Northern cities in search of better prospects.
ReadThousands of Black Southern students, including a young Martin Luther King Jr., came north to work in Connecticut’s tobacco fields.
ReadHazard Powder Company employees sat on one-legged stools to keep them from falling asleep while working with dangerous materials.
ReadNero Hawley, born into slavery in Connecticut in the 18th century, fought in the Revolutionary War.
ReadThe Kewpies originally appeared as a comic strip in the Christmas issue of the 1909 Ladies Home Journal.
ReadDespite the known dangers of prolonged exposure to mercury, the hat-making industry was slow to safeguard workers against its toxic effects.
ReadHome to 30 different bell manufacturers, the town of East Hampton is informally known as “Belltown, USA.”
ReadIn 1796, Amelia Simmons authored American Cookery—believed to be the first cookbook authored by an American published in the United States.
ReadSeth Thomas was a Connecticut native who became a pioneer in the mass production of high-quality wooden clocks.
ReadBorn in Lyme, Roger Griswold was a lawyer, judge, and politician who spent the better part of his life in service to Connecticut.
ReadThe Westport Country Playhouse is meant to provide artists, students, and entertainers with a place to create and produce live theater experiences away from traditional big city theater districts.
ReadBenjamin Wright helped build transportation and canal systems in the United States and served as the chief engineer on the construction of the Erie Canal.
ReadA great primary resource for digging into a community’s everyday life is a city directory.
ReadFather and son George and Tracy Lewis not only founded a business together, they also had a hand in more than doubling the population of Beacon Falls.
ReadThomas R. Pickering, an engineer, ran a factory power plant in the mid-1800s and made improvements.
ReadIn the late 1800s, Wallingford was home to a small branch of the Oneida Community.
ReadNicholas Grillo was a self-made floriculturist who earned international acclaim for developing the world’s first thornless hybrid tea rose.
ReadToiling in dangerous conditions beneath the Connecticut River’s surface for only $2.50 a day, African American workers dug the foundation for the Bulkeley Bridge.
ReadRecognized for its superior quality, the polished rock that came out of Branford traveled by schooner or rail to points as far as Chicago and New Orleans.
ReadWestport’s fertile soil and ease of access by boat and rail once made it home to a thriving onion farming industry.
ReadEast Haven’s Amos Morris helped supply Americans with salt (essential for preserving food) during critical shortages brought on by the American Revolution.
ReadCornelius Scranton Bushnell was a 19th-century Connecticut businessman and shipbuilder whose successfully lobbied on behalf of a local railroad enterprise.
ReadAt the height of the Great Depression, unemployed men living around Hartford, became a cheap source of labor to help build Brainard airport.
ReadWriter and suffragist Mary Hall studied law under John Hooker and became Connecticut’s first female attorney.
ReadDespite organizing in 1909 to fight pay cuts, ultimately, vending machines and changing business models brought an end to the era of the Hartford newsie.
ReadTrained at Yale, William Welch was a native of Norfolk, Connecticut, and one of the most celebrated physicians of his time.
ReadFounded in 1906 by Alfred C. Fuller, the Fuller Brush Company was one of Connecticut’s most notable corporations.
ReadThe Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame pays tribute to long-time New Canaan resident, Dr. Emily Barringer, the first female ambulance surgeon and first female physician in the nation to secure a surgical residency.
ReadWhile the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City is one of the most famous tragedies behind the organized labor movement, Connecticut had its share of equally dangerous work environments in the early 20th century.
ReadIn the early 20th century, girls working at the Waterbury Clock Company faced death and disease from exposure to radium in the workplace.
ReadNumerous factors contributed to the growth of Connecticut in the decades following American independence.
ReadThis writer and photographer founded the Connecticut Audubon Society and created Fairfield’s Birdcraft Sanctuary.
ReadBecause so many men enlisted in the military during WWII, women were recruited to take their places in the all-important factory jobs that kept the forces abroad supplied.
ReadAfter studying to become a lawyer, Eli Whitney actually helped further American industrial production methods through his numerous clever inventions.
ReadThe site of earlier mills, Jewett City seemed well-suited to the Tibbets’ textile enterprise: the Jewett City Cotton Manufacturing Company.
ReadCalled the “greatest mobilization of police in the city’s history,” the event that brought law enforcement out in force to Keney Park was not a riot, not a strike, but a concert by this singer-actor and activist.
ReadClarence Dickinson was a long-time Haddam resident and pioneer in offset lithography—a process using printing plates on chemically treated flat surfaces.
ReadBy the mid-19th century, the “Tobacco Valley,” Springfield, Massachusetts to Hartford, Connecticut had become a center for cash-crop production.
ReadThe National Museum of American History explains how a revolver, sewing machine, bicycle, and early-model electric automobile are connected.
ReadBrewery strike in 1902 leads some to drink ginger ale, rather than beer, as a sign of solidarity.
ReadThe Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame pays tribute to Augusta Lewis Troup, a pioneering labor leader, journalist, educator, and suffragist.
ReadThe Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame pays tribute to Hartford native Barbara McClintock, a famed geneticist and Nobel Prize winner.
ReadTwo monuments in Housatonic Meadows State Park mark this area’s reputation as one of the finest fly fishing locales in the Northeast.
ReadThe Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame pays tribute to Enfield native Martha Parsons, the first female business executive in Connecticut to earn her position based on merit.
ReadOn October 29, 1764, New Haven printer Thomas Green began publishing The Hartford Courant (then known as The Connecticut Courant) in Hartford, Connecticut.
ReadThomas Darling was an 18th-century merchant, farmer, and politician and a member of the colonial elite.
ReadEarly attempts to enact industrial accident protections for workers were ruled unconstitutional by US courts, but a New York tragedy paved the way to successful legislation in Connecticut and elsewhere.
ReadIn 1939, 150 years after the original passage, Connecticut finally ratified the US Bill of Rights, guaranteeing workers the right to free speech.
ReadWhile the Windsor chair’s style and manufacture emerged in England in the early 1700s, it became extremely popular in North America during the 18th and 19th centuries.
ReadFrom Connecticut, Charles Morgan was a shipping and railroad magnate who became one of the most esteemed New York millionaires of the 19th century.
ReadThe operation of BL&P began strictly as a family affair with a focus on providing exemplary service to the local community.
ReadOriginally a teacher, William Edgar Simonds’ service during the Civil War launched Simonds into a life of politics and international acclaim.
ReadIn 1843, Frederick Stanley founded a small shop in New Britain to manufacture bolts, hinges, and other hardware products for sale to local residents.
ReadAndrew Mamedoff was a daredevil, pilot, and war hero who became one of the first Americans to join England’s Royal Air Force.
ReadThe story of the dairy industry in Watertown mirrors that of many industries in Connecticut.
ReadElias Perkins’s career in public service lasted nearly half a century and made him a popular figure both locally and nationally.
ReadFor the better part of a century, the Bozrah mills utilized by the Palmer Brothers company served the Fitchville section of town and the surrounding community.
ReadThe success of the clock- and watch-making industries in Connecticut came about in an era when the state was just beginning to realize its industrial potential.
ReadColt Firearms has been one of the most prominent industries in Hartford for over 150 years.
ReadZebulon Brockway was one of the more successful and controversial figures in prison reform during the 1800s.
ReadWhen the United States Coast Survey set out to compile detailed charts of New Haven Harbor in the 1870s, they hired recent graduates of Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School as assistants.
ReadArmstrong tires, one of the most popular brands of automobile and farm equipment tires in the 20th century, has its roots in West Haven, Connecticut.
ReadThe P&F Corbin Company manufactured builders’ hardware, including hooks, sash fasteners, picture nails, locks, and knobs, and coffin trimmings.
ReadBefore Colt and others ushered in the age of mass production, individual makers, such Harmon Deming, handcrafted firearms.
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