Welcome to your bi-weekly newsletter from Connecticut Explored with the latest stories, the newest Grating the Nutmeg podcast, programs and exhibitions from our partners to see/watch this month, and more!
Winter 2021-2022 / In Their Own Words
Voices from the past—an aspiring gold miner, a 6-year-old girl at sea, a fugitive from slavery, a Patriot at war, a Pequot son, a New Woman artist—all are featured in our new Winter 2021-2022 issue. They speak their truth and will transport you back in time!
Edwin Ayer — “My Adventures in Mining and Exploring”
What was travel like in the days before planes, trains, and automobiles? Two stories in the Winter issue give us a window into a world that’s now hard to imagine.
With the Connecticut and U.S. economy “suffering one of the greatest depressions that I can recall” in 1848, a 24-year-old Edwin Ayer caught gold rush fever and decided to take his chances—though California was a “country so remote and so little being known of it and all modes of travel there so long and risky.” Tedd Levy brings us Ayer’s story courtesy of Old Saybrook Historical Society where it’s archived.
To get to California, Ayer endured a 255-day voyage around the tip of South America. But before that, as others had done, he joined a group of men and formed a company, in this case, The New Haven and California Joint Stock Mining Co. The group bought a decade-old ship, the Anna Reynolds, and outfitted her to accommodate would-be miners, sailors, and supplies. “We had a house built on the deck,” Ayer recalled, “which was as near to being the Black Hole of Calcutta as anything I ever knew of, for men to be forced to live in, and it gives me the horrors when I think of it.”
Writing some 50 years later, Ayer detailed a voyage that included a “succession of gales of wind dead ahead,” ports with water supplies that were barely drinkable, islands “strange and weird to suit any recluse” with “sea birds without limit,” “bad reefs of rocks,” and “snow squalls … common and violent.” Then, just 3 days from the Golden Gate—after 252 days at sea—DISASTER. “We met in collision (with) a large bark in the night. We struck head on and head on… .”
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A Tourist Visits the Capitol City
In September 1889 Agnes Watson of Scotland, with her husband and her daughter Maggie, visited her uncle Henry Affleck in Glastonbury. Watson described Glastonbury as not so much a town as a “settlement,” though she noted its “post-office, manufactories, such as soap works, a tannery, a creamery, and shirt and collar factories.” She marveled at the “acres and acres” of peach orchards “loaded with their delicious fruit.”
In a letter to her son back home, she recorded some hilarious observations—such as confusing Hartford with the nation’s capital. “There is what is called the ‘Capitol,’” she writes, “a vast building in which is kept the charter of American freedom.” She had a tour of that building that’s, needless to say, no longer available:
“On its summit is an immense gilded dome, surmounted by the figure of Liberty in bronze. We were partly hoisted and partly climbed to the summit—240 feet…. I also sat in the State chair of the Governor of the United States, a chair which cost £100 to carve out of an old oak, in which had been hidden the charter during the last war.”
Nevermind that “the last war” had actually been the Civil War, Watson has some equally fun and revealing observations about dining in one of the city’s fine hotels. Alas, her opinion of the state of the roads was less enthusiastic. “Driving six miles from [Hartford] to Glastonbury, the roads are like ploughed fields.”
Read the full story in the Winter 2021-2022 issue with your print subscription, or receive full stories with a CTExplored/Inbox PREMIUM subscription, just $30 a year.
Subscribe to the print magazine at CTExplored.org or try us out with our First One Free offer.
The Latest from Grating the Nutmeg
Episode 134. “Another Name for Happiness:” The Life of Ann Plato
Connecticut Historical Society’s Natalie Belanger, frequent contributor to Grating the Nutmeg, talks with Antoinette Brim Bell, Professor of English at Capital Community College, about Ann Plato, one of the first Black women to publish a book in the United States. Ann Plato is part of Capitol Community College’s NEH-funded Hartford Heritage Project which highlights the history of the Talcott Street Church, the first Black congregation in Hartford and where Plato was a teacher. Visit the Hartford Heritage Project’s website for more information. Ann Plato’s book, Essays: Including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Poetry, has been digitized by the New York Public Library and is available to read online.
Programs and Exhibitions to Enjoy This Month
Diaries Online
The digital collections at the Connecticut State Library include personal stories found in early accounts books, diaries, and journals that are available online to the public. One of the diaries available is that of Thomas Minor, a 17th-century farmer in Stonington who was born in England and came to New England in 1630. For 30 years Minor recorded his day-to-day activities, family events, and local affairs. The diary also documents interactions with indigenous individuals. You can view his diary along with those of others at cslib.contentdm.oclc.org/digital and hdl.handle.net/11134/30002:cslBooks.
Winter Wonderland
Hill-Stead Museum and its 152-acre campus is a National Historic Landmark. Nearing its 75th anniversary, Hill-Stead’s gorgeous grounds and gardens remain open to the public daily, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., for winter activities such as hiking, sledding, and snowshoeing!
Hill-Stead Museum, Hillstead.org
New National Historic Places
The State Historic Preservation Office is pleased to announce two additions to the National Register of Historic Places that recognize Civil Rights history. The New Haven Armory (a.k.a. Goffe Street Armory) was used by the Second Company Governor’s Foot guard until 2009. It had an important role in the Civil Rights Movement for its association with the Black Panther rally in 1970 and as the venue for the annual Black Expo. Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden is significant as an excellent example of Modern architecture and for the congregation’s commitment to social justice and the Civil Rights Movement. In 1960 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there, drawing an audience from outside the congregation. [See also “Site Lines: Gaining Religious Equality,” Spring 2016.]
An Inside Look
The Amistad Center for Art & Culture has installed six works of art in its John Motley Study Center. The capsule exhibition seeks to increase awareness of self-taught African American artists who created work outside of the mainstream art world and were thus labeled as “folk” or “outsider” artists. The works, from both organizations’ collections and dating from the 1930s to the 1990s, address powerful themes such as identity and faith. Also see their newest exhibition, Changing Lanes: Mobility in Connecticut, on view through April 3.
The Amistad Center for Art & Culture at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, AmistadCenter.org
A Sister Tells Her Story
Nothing Special is a disarmingly candid tale of two sisters growing up in the 1970s in rural Connecticut. Older sister Chris, who has Down syndrome, is a charming extrovert, while the author, her younger, typically-developing sister Dianne Bilyak, shoulders the burdens of their parents. Bilyak details their lives through heartrending and hilarious vignettes. Published by Wesleyan University Press in March 2021. Visit hfsbooks.com/books/nothing-special-bilyak/.
Editors’ Picks
Stories we love from back issues to read now.
“John E. Brockett Goes for the Gold,” Winter 2016-2017. Another gold rush adventurer tells all.
“Round the Horn in Search of Seals and Fortune,” Summer 2013. New Haven’s Joel Root took a similar voyage round the Horn in 1803.
“Full Steam Ahead: Steamboat Travel in Connecticut,” Spring 2009
“Destination: Stafford Springs,” Spring 2007
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