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A Tale of Shad, the State Fish
The aquatic inhabitant, shad, has a long history of influencing foodways, income, and culture in the region.
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Bradley International Airport Transforms Windsor Locks into Regional Gateway
Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks is Connecticut’s largest airport and the second largest in New England.
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Vera Buch Weisbord’s “Radical” Life
Vera Wilhelmine Buch Weisbord was a labor activist who helped organize trade unions and strikes that shaped the labor movement of the 1920s and 1930s.
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Quinnipiac: The People of the Long Water Land
The Quinnipiac still live in Connecticut and across the country, but the community is not presently one of Connecticut’s recognized tribes, nor is it federally acknowledged.
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From Bombs to Bras: World War I Conservation Measures Transform the Lives of Women
A shortage of metal during World War I encouraged women’s clothing manufacturers (such as Bridgeport’s Warner Brothers Corset Company) to switch from producing corsets to brassieres.
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The Litchfield Law School: Connecticut’s First Law School
The Litchfield Law School, founded in 1784 by Tapping Reeve, became the first professional law school in Connecticut.
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Steamboat Accident – Today in History: March 29
On March 29, 1876, the steamboat City of Hartford hit the Air Line Railroad Bridge on the Connecticut River at Middletown.
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Connecticut and the Comstock Law
Connecticut passed its own state law in 1879 that carried the anti-contraception movement further than any other state in the country.
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Much Good Might be Accomplished: Catharine Esther Beecher and the Pursuit of Domestic Economy
Thanks to this 19th-century educator and reformer, home economics is standard fare in schools today.
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I-95 Reaches New London
The arrival of I-95 to New London brought tremendous change to the city’s infrastructure, as well as to its businesses and neighborhoods.
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Anna Elizabeth Dickinson at Touro Hall – Today in History: March 24
On March 24, 1863, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson, a 20-year-old Quaker and abolitionist from Pennsylvania, spoke at Hartford’s Touro Hall.
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Joseph Taborsky and the “Mad Dog Killings”
Joseph “Mad Dog” Taborsky earned his nickname for the brutal methods he employed robbing and murdering his victims.
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An Artist and Her Books: Amelia Watson, 1856–1934
Connecticut artist Amelia Watson’s works adorn some of the most elaborately designed and treasured volumes of the 19th and 20th century.
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J. Frederick Kelly: Constructing Connecticut’s Architectural History
J. Frederick Kelly was both a well-known architect, preservationist, and architectural historian, whose works chronicled many of Connecticut’s historical properties.
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Chamberlin Mill: A Woodstock Survivor
West Woodstock’s Chamberlin Mill is a rare example of a water-powered circular saw mill converted to gasoline power.
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The 29th Leaves for War – Today in History: March 19
On March 19, 1864, the 29th (Colored) Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry were preparing for deployment to the South to fight in the Civil War.
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Paleontologist Othniel Marsh dies – Today in History: March 18
On March 18, 1899, America’s first professor of paleontology, Othniel Charles Marsh, died at his home in New Haven.
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Fighting Sons of Erin: Connecticut’s Irish Regiment in the Civil War
Men with names like O’Brien, Kennedy, Mahoney, Murphy, Donnelly, Fitzpatrick, and Sullivan flocked to enlist in what a recruiting poster confidently described as a “destined to be gallant Regiment.”
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The Wearing of the Green: 19th-century Prints of Irish Subjects by Hartford’s Kellogg Brothers
Irish immigrants arrived in Connecticut in great numbers during the 1800s and, while anti-Irish sentiment was widespread, Hartford’s Kellogg brothers viewed these new Americans as potential customers.
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Connecticut Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home
In 1866, the Connecticut Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home opened in Mansfield to house and educate boys and girls left parentless by the Civil War.
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Celia Burleigh, Connecticut’s First Female Minister
In 1871, Celia Burleigh, a life-long activist and reformer, became minister of the Unitarian congregation in Brooklyn, Connecticut.
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The Smith Sisters, Their Cows, and Women’s Rights in Glastonbury
By refusing to pay unfair taxes, these siblings became national symbols of discrimination suffered by women and of the struggle of the individual against government.
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The Blizzard of 1888 – Today in History: March 11
On Sunday, March 11, 1888, a blizzard came unexpectedly to the northeastern United States.
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Hilda Crosby Standish, Early Proponent of Women’s Reproductive Health
A pioneer of sex education and family planning, this physician directed the state’s first birth control clinic in 1935.
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Charles Goodyear’s Machine for Making Rubber Fabrics
Credited with discovering the vulcanization process that fortified rubber against extreme temperature changes, Charles Goodyear received several patents over his lifetime.
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The Telescoping Fishing Rod – Today in History: March 8
On March 8, 1887, Everett Horton, a Bristol mechanic, patented a fishing rod of telescoping steel tubes.
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Gideon Welles, US Secretary of the Navy and Lincoln’s “Neptune”
Gideon Welles was the Secretary of the United States Navy from 1861 to 1869 and a cabinet member during the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.
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Elihu Burritt Dies – Today in History: March 6
On March 6, 1879, Elihu Burritt “the learned blacksmith” died in New Britain.
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Looking Back: Tempest Tossed, the Story of Isabella Beecher Hooker
Isabella Beecher was a suffragist and spiritualist who shunned traditional female roles while alienating large parts of her family during her brother’s adultery scandal.
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Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Rally – Today in History: March 5
On March 5, 1860, Abraham Lincoln addressed the Republicans of Hartford at City Hall.
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Sarah Kemble Knight’s Journey through Colonial Connecticut
In 1704, when long distance travel was rare and roads crude, a Boston woman journeyed by horseback to New York City and recorded her views of Connecticut along the way.
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A Pioneering Woman in Business: Martha Parsons of Enfield
Enfield’s Martha Parsons broke new ground in her pursuit of employment opportunities for women. Her family home now belongs to the Enfield Historical Society.
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Israel Putnam: A Youthful Trailblazer Turned Colonial Militiaman
Israel Putnam served with distinction in the Seven Years’ War and in the Revolutionary War, particularly at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
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Holmes at Home: The Life of William Gillette
William Gillette was an American actor, playwright, and stage director most famous for his stage portrayal of Sherlock Holmes and for the stone castle he built in East Haddam.
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Connecticut’s Black Governors
For approximately one hundred years, Connecticut’s “Black Governors” were used by white authorities to help maintain order among the black population.
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The Gildersleeve Shipbuilding Legacy in Portland
Perhaps the most recognizable name in the history of Portland, Connecticut shipbuilding is Sylvester Gildersleeve.
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Jackson v. Bulloch and the End of Slavery in Connecticut
Nancy Jackson sued for her freedom in 1837. Her victory helped further the abolitionist cause in a state slowly moving toward outlawing slavery.
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Remembering Fredi Washington: Actress, Activist, and Journalist
This actress earned acclaim for her portrayal of an African American woman who chooses to pass as white in order to escape racial discrimination but, in real life, she embraced her heritage and worked to end inequality.
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Malcolm X in Hartford: “Our Mission is Not Violence but Freedom”
In addition to helping found Nation of Islam Temple No. 14 in Hartford, Malcolm X spent considerable time in Connecticut rallying supporters to his cause.
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Hartford’s Great Migration through Charles S. Johnson’s Eyes
During 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.
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Site Lines: Fortresses of Faith, Agents of Change
Black churches, including the earliest ones in Connecticut, have long been at the forefront in the battle for social progress and equality.
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The Fugitive and the Hero
A runaway slave, evading the legal realities of the Fugitive Slave Law while working aboard the steamship Hero, jumped ship in East Haddam, narrowly avoiding the slave catchers that awaited him in Hartford.
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The Vonsiatsky Conspiracy Case
In 1942, Anastase Vonsiatsky of Thompson, Connecticut, was convicted of conspiring to betray state secrets to Nazi Germany.
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Mystic-built USS Galena Part of Plan to Strengthen Union Navy
This 950-ton, steam-propelled gunboat took fire from critics and Confederates during the Civil War.
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The Language of the Unheard: Racial Unrest in 20th-Century Hartford
Race riots in Hartford during the 1960s came about thanks to a century of frustration and political inaction surrounding disparate standards of living among different races and ethnicities,
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Augustus Washington (1820 – 1875): African American Daguerreotypist
Though his work depicts people of different classes and cultures, ironically, no portraits of African Americans survive from his years in Hartford.
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Rockwell Hardness Tester – Today in History: February 11
In 1919, Hugh Rockwell and Stanley Rockwell received a patent for the Rockwell hardness tester, one of the 20th century’s metallurgical innovations.
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Charles Stratton and Lavinia Warren Wed – Today in History: February 10
He was rich, handsome and famous, she was considered a great beauty and their wedding was front page news around the nation.
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Laboring in the Shade
Thousands of Black Southern students, including a young Martin Luther King Jr., came north to work in Connecticut’s tobacco fields.
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The Successes and Struggles of New Haven Entrepreneur William Lanson
The life of this savvy businessman illustrates the possibilities—and limits—urban Connecticut presented to African Americans in the early 1800s.
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