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The Industrial United States 1870-1900
Ivory Cutting: The Rise and Decline of a Connecticut Industry
Ivoryton and Deep River boomed in the 1800s, along with the demand for piano parts made of ivory.
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Julian Alden Weir: The “Heart” of American Impressionism
From Windham to Branchville, peaceful Connecticut locales provided Julian Alden Weir the inspiration to create hundreds of paintings and become one of America’s leading Impressionists.
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Frank Duryea Drives the First Automobile in Connecticut
Frank Duryea was a long-time Madison resident who helped develop…
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Arbor Day’s Roots in Connecticut – Who Knew?
…that Connecticut’s Reverend Birdsey Grant Northrop popularized Arbor Day celebrations…
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George Griffin: “Devoted Friend” to Samuel Clemens
Mark 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.
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The Slaters Go Round the World
In 1894, a well-to-do Norwich family set sail from New London on a ship outfitted with Persian rugs, oil paintings, a library with hundreds of titles, and 75 cases of champagne.
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Sarah Boone: First Connecticut Black Woman to Receive Patent
In1892, Sarah Boone of New Haven became the first Black woman in Connecticut to be awarded a patent—for an improvement in the use of an ironing board.
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Mary Townsend Seymour: Hartford’s Organizer, Activist, and Suffragist
Mary Townsend Seymour was a leading organizer, civil rights activist, suffragist, and so much more in Hartford during the early 20th century.
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Charles Ritchel and the Dirigible
An entrepreneur’s design for a lighter-than-air vehicle takes flight in the late 1800s and inspires a new state industry.
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The Lives of Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus Told Through their Loving Letters
Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus were two free Black women whose lives intersected in Hartford, Connecticut in the 19th century. Letters written between them imply their relationship was more than friendship.
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First Connecticut Carpet Mills Emerge in Simsbury and Enfield
In the 1820s, the first two notable carpetmakers emerged in the north central part of Connecticut—the Tariff Manufacturing Company in Simsbury and the Thompsonville Carpet Manufacturing Company in Enfield.
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Hartford’s Charles Dillingham Discovered Broadway Stars
After growing up in Hartford, Charles Dillingham explored numerous career paths including newspaper publishing, politics, and—most famously—theatrical managing and producing.
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Map – Bird’s-eye View of Jewett City, 1889
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries panoramic or…
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Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia Originated in Stamford
In 1873, Charles H. Phillips patented Milk of Magnesia and his company produced the popular antacid and laxative in Stamford, Connecticut, until 1976.
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Cromwell’s Iron Men Made Toys for Boys and Girls
When John and Elisha Stevens formed the J & E…
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The First University of Connecticut Trustees
When the University of Connecticut started life as the Storrs Agricultural School in 1881, Governor Hobart Bigelow appointed its first eight trustees—all with agricultural backgrounds.
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How the Wobblies Won Free Speech
Denied the right to free assembly in public spaces, Connecticut workers joined in a larger national movement of civil disobedience.
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Yung Wing’s Dream: The Chinese Educational Mission, 1872-1881
In all, 120 Chinese students came to live and study in New England. When they returned home, they served as diplomats, engineers, naval officers, physicians, educators, administrators, and magistrates.
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Late 19th-Century Immigration in Connecticut
Immigration to Connecticut in the second half of the 19th…
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Andover’s Award-Winning Creamery
Started in 1886 by town residents, the Andover Creamery Corporation…
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Hubbell’s Pull-Chain Electrical Light Socket – Today in History: August 11
On August 11, 1896, Bridgeport inventor and industrialist Harvey Hubbell patented…
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An Artist’s Life in Hartford: The Early Career of Dwight Tryon
Hartford native Dwight Tryon njoyed a long, successful career as a landscape painter and teacher with studios in New York City and South Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
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W. J. Squire’s Gill Net Manufactory in East Haddam
In the early 1870s, Wilbur J. Squire (1837-1890) built his…
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The Yale-Storrs Controversy
In the late 1800s, under pressure from frustrated farmers, the Connecticut General Assembly voted to transfer land-grant status and revenue from Yale to the Storrs Agricultural School (UConn).
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Steamboat Accident – Today in History: March 29
On March 29, 1876, the steamboat City of Hartford, of…
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Dr. Mary B. Moody Challenges Victorian Mores About Women in Medicine
New Haven resident Dr. Mary Moody the first female graduate of the medical school at the University of Buffalo, and the first female member of the American Association of Anatomists.
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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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Lounsbury Elected Governor – Today in History: January 4
On January 4th 1899, George Edward Lounsbury was elected the…
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Portland Improves the Steam Engine
Thomas R. Pickering, an engineer, ran a factory power plant…
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Connecticut’s Mulberry Craze
In pursuit of silk thread, the state went crazy for mulberry trees.
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Intertwining Family Businesses
Emory Johnson, a farmer from Chatham, Connecticut, moved to East Haddam and operated one of the area’s most successful businesses of the late 19th century.
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The Shoe Box Murder Mystery
On the morning of August 8, 1886, on a walk through the Parker farm district of Wallingford, Edward Terrill and his dog uncovered what appeared to be a box of a dozen shoes that had recently fallen from a cart.
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Horseshoe Nail Capital of the World – Who Knew?
…that Hartford, famous as the Insurance Capital of the World,…
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Flying High with Early Dirigible
In what would later be described as “the first flight of a man-carrying dirigible in America,” aeronaut Mark Quinlan piloted a machine designed and patented by Charles F. Ritchel.
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The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, Hartford
Situated in Bushnell Park, the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch honors the more than 4,000 Hartford men who fought for the Union during the Civil War.
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The Innumerable Accolades Afforded Dr. William H. Welch
William Welch was a native of Norfolk, Connecticut, and one…
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Let There Be Light: An Early History of the Hartford Electric Light Company
As cities switched from gas lamps to electric lighting, one observer noted that Hartford was “far in the lead of any other city in the world in the use of electricity for light and power per capita.”
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Bursting of the Staffordville Reservoir – Today in History: March 27
On March 27, 1877, the Staffordville Reservoir Company’s dam burst,…
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Connecticut’s First Municipal Electric Utility
The first municipal electric plant in Connecticut began operating in the City of South Norwalk in 1892 to provide low-cost electricity for street lighting and, a few years later, for homes and businesses.
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Connecticut’s First Female Telephone Operator – Today in History: March 24
On March 24, 1879, Marjorie Gray became Connecticut’s first female…
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Leatherman Dies – Today in History: March 20
On March 20, 1889, the Old Leatherman, so called for…
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Lydia Sherman: The Derby Poisoner
Lydia Sherman confessed to killing three husbands and four children, but it is believed that the total number of her victims may be much higher.
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Best remembered for her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” this Hartford author’s larger legacy is a life dedicated to women’s issues and social reform.
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Park Central Hotel Boiler Explosion – Today in History: February 18
In the pre-dawn hours of February 18, 1889, the Park Central Hotel in Hartford was ripped apart by a steam boiler explosion.
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Charles Ethan Porter, Portrait of a 19th-Century African American Painter
Charles Ethan Porter was a prolific still life painter in…
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First Commercial Telephone Exchange – Today in History: January 28
On January 28, 1878, the Boardman Building in New Haven…
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The Tariffville Disaster – Today in History: January 14
On January 14, 1878, at about 10:00 in the evening, a span of the Tariffville Bridge gave way, plunging a Connecticut Western Railroad train into the Farmington River 20 feet below.
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Briggs Manufacturing Drives Voluntown’s 19th-Century Cotton Economy
The Briggs Manufacturing Company was the premier employer in Voluntown,…
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P. T. Barnum Dies – Today in History: April 7
On April 7, 1891, P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum died…
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Oldest College Daily – Today in History: January 28
On January 28, 1878, the first edition of the Yale…
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An Orderly & Decent Government: Making Self-Government Work, 1888-1905
Connecticut’s ancient system of town-based representation ensured the continuation of small town values and perspectives.
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Stimulated by immigration and industrialization, Connecticut cities expanded rapidly
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Connecticut saw its population of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe swell in the last decades of the 19th century.
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The late 1800s witnessed significant challenges to Connecticut’s voting and taxation laws.
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In 1873, the legislature began to look more closely at the problems of Connecticut’s workers.
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After the Civil War, arms manufacturing kept Connecticut industries busy, but an economic depression in the 1870s drastically changed things.
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In the years following the Civil War, Connecticut’s transformation to an urban, industrial state intensified.
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Video – When Disaster Struck: King Blizzard
The CPTV Original, When Disaster Struck Connecticut, provides an in-depth look at the four major natural disasters that befell Connecticut between 1888 and 1955. This clip of archival sources and eyewitness accounts paints a vivid picture of how Connecticut residents coped with the monumental storm that hit New England in March of 1888. King Blizzard delivered 20 to 50 inches of snow with drifts of up to 20 feet.
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Blizzard of 1888 Devastates State
An unexpected and deadly March storm, stretching from Washington, DC, to the Canadian border, buried Connecticut in as much as 50 inches of snow.
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Video – Free-for-all Race at Charter Oak Park
A crowd of some 25,000 to 30,000 people turned out to see John R. Gentry compete for a $6,000 purse.
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A Bird’s-eye View of Bridgeport
The lower perspective of this 1882 example is somewhat atypical of most of the bird’s-eye views of the era, but its emphasis on industrial accomplishment is a hallmark of the genre.
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Protected: Brass City/Grass Roots: From Farmers to Developers: The Rasmussens of Town Plot (4)
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Read Protected: Brass City/Grass Roots: The Pierponts of East Farms (3)
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Read Protected: Brass City/Grass Roots: Waterbury Farming in the Late 1800s (2)
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Read Protected: Brass City/Grass Roots: Bucks Hill: Waterbury’s Rural Holdout (6)
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Bird’s-eye Views Offer Idealized Portraits of Progress
Panoramic prints of growing cities and towns became popular in the late 1800s as Connecticut transformed from an agricultural to an industrial state.
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A Bird’s-eye View of Moosup
This depiction of a Quinebaug Valley town and its satellite communities—Uniondale and Almyville—records an idealized view of the 19th-century textile boom.
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Yankee Ingenuity: Curtis Veeder, a Mechanical Genius and Shrewd Businessman
Curtis Veeder, born in Pennsylvania, was a machinist with a knack for invention. An avid cyclist, he patented a bicycle seat he sold to the Pope Company, and later invented a cyclometer for measuring distances traveled by bicycles.
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Three Young Engineers: Charting New Haven
When 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.
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The League of American Wheelmen and Hartford’s Albert Pope Champion the Good Roads Movement
How the 19th-century cycling craze led to improved roads and paved the way for future federal highway construction.
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Bird’s-eye Views of Winsted
As bird’s-eye view maps declined in popularity during the early 20th century, artists incorporated technical advances in hopes of reversing the trend.
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A Bird’s-eye View of East Haddam
In 1880, East Haddam was already a popular tourist destination and, despite its small size, boasted two steamboat landings to accommodate visitors.
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