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!
Summer 2022 / Outsider Perspectives
We’re wrapping up the Summer 2022 issue in which we explore people from outside Connecticut, their impact on the state, and what they thought about the state and its residents. Watch for our special FALL 2022 20th Anniversary issue coming September 1!
The U.S. National Park Service’s Founder, Director, and Champion
In his last column as state historian, Walter Woodward, who retired from UConn June 30, tells us about Stephen Mather, founder of the National Park Service. Woodward explains the Connecticut connection. “Stephen Tyng Mather was born and educated in California, but he considered his family’s ancestral 1778 Mather homestead in Darien his true home. He summered there as a boy, inherited the home from his father in 1906, and was buried on the grounds in 1932, according to the Mather Homestead website (matherhomestead.org). In my reading of his life story, Mather’s Connecticut roots gave him a love for America’s origins and history, while his western upbringing instilled a similar passion for the country’s extraordinary natural landscapes.”
Mather started out in borax mining in the West, but, as Woodward writes, a meeting in 1912 with preservation John Muir had a huge impact on him. “Muir had decried the damage lumbering and mining had inflicted on America’s wilderness, devastation Mather witnessed on trips to the Sequoia and Yosemite national parks two years later.”
At the time, there were already 13 national parks, overseen—badly—by a patchwork of entities with little support from Congress. Until, Woodward writes, “Mather embarked on a personal mission to save the national parks.”
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Kids’ Page: The First Immigrants—The English
Inspired by Walt Woodward’s column, “Immigrants All,” the Summer 2022 issue’s Kids’ Page introduces students to the impact of the first major wave of outsiders to Connecticut—the Dutch traders and English settlers.
People have lived in Connecticut for more than 10,000 years. About a dozen tribes of Native people lived here. Their descendants still do. They include the Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Schaghticoke, Eastern Pequot, and Golden Hill Paugussett.
Many names of places in our state come from our early history. Just look at the name of our state! Our state is named for our largest river. In the Mohegan-Pequot language, Connecticut means “long, tidal river.”
About 400 years ago, people from Europe sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. Their arrival would change Connecticut forever.
The first to arrive were Dutch traders. Adriaen Block and his crew sailed their ship up the Connecticut River in 1614. The Dutch built a trading post. They traded with the Native Americans for goods each wanted from the other. They came and went.
These first Europeans brought diseases. The Native people could not survive these diseases. Many died.
In the 1630s English people came. They wanted to trade, too. But they also wanted to stay. They built settlements. Windsor, Wethersfield, Hartford, and Saybrook were the first ones. The English disrupted the Native peoples’ way of life. There was cooperation. But there was also conflict.
The British declared war on the Pequot in 1637. The war was fought for control of land and trading rights. The war was devastating to the Pequot. By its end, the English and their Native allies had gained control of the region. More English came. More towns were settled. The struggle for control of land continued.
Connecticut’s Native peoples were resilient. They survived on their land. Today they thrive in two worlds: the traditional Native life and modern American life.
This story is adapted from Where I Live: Connecticut. Read more about Connecticut’s Native American peoples and English settlement at WhereILiveCT.org.
Read all Kids’ Page stories at ctexplored.org/kids-page for free!
Teachers may subscribe to the print magazine at a discount. Visit CTExplored.org/Shop. Find out more about Where I Live: Connecticut, a social studies resource for grades 3 & 4, at WhereILiveCT.org.
The Latest from Grating the Nutmeg
147. The Hindenburg Flies Over Connecticut
The airship Hindenburg passed over Connecticut 21 times during its 17-month service between 1936 and 1937. Air travel across the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and North America was then in its infancy. The vast airships of the German Zeppelin Company (zeppelins or dirigibles) took an early lead competing not with airplanes but luxury ocean liners. In this episode, Asst. Publisher Mary Donohue talks to historian Alexander Rose, author of Empires of the Sky, Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men’s Epic Duel to Rule the World (Random House, 2020). And you’ll hear from Bridgeport historian Carolyn Ivanoff, author of “The Hindenburg Flies over Bridgeport” in the Summer 2022 issue. Find out more about why the Nazi swastika is visible in many of the photos taken over Connecticut.
Programs and Exhibitions to Enjoy This Month
2022 Stowe Prize, September 22
The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center is delighted to announce Dr. Clint Smith as the 2022 Stowe Prize winner for his New York Times bestselling book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery across America. Join a free virtual program streamed online and screened on the Stowe Center grounds on Thursday, September 22 (rain date September 23). The program will feature Dr. Smith’s assessment of the Stowe Center’s role and responsibility as a museum teaching race history through the narrative of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s life and writing and as an organization mission-driven to inspire social justice and positive change. Visit stowecenter.org for details.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, HarrietBeecherStoweCenter.org
In Search of a Solution
Connecticut has seen a decades-long pattern of abandonment of cemeteries that suggests there are impediments within the burial site industry to normal market forces that would typically result in consolidation into economically viable units. The trustees of Laurel Hill and Central cemeteries are among those escalating a call for action because of what it sees as the persistent lack of oversight, audit, and enforcement in the industry despite grass root efforts and legislative initiatives over more than 25 years.
For more information, visit centralcemetery.net
The French in Lebanon
In November 1780, 250 French troops from the Voluntaires Etrangers de Lauzun arrived in Lebanon, Connecticut for the winter. Officers stayed in private homes while enlisted men bunked in hastily-built barracks. The troops were a welcome source of extra income to area residents, but many locals found them disruptive and unfriendly. Unlike others in town, Eunice Trumbull and her daughter Faith enjoyed their guest. Visit the Jonathan Trumbull Jr. House Museum, part of the Lebanon Historical Society, on Saturdays this summer to learn more. Lebanon Historical Society Museum, HistoryofLebanon.org
The Influence of Venetian Glass
This fall Mystic Seaport Museum invites you to Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano, the first comprehensive survey of American engagement with the art world of late 19th-century Venice. Featuring more than 150 objects, this exhibition, organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, will present exquisitely crafted glass vessels among paintings, watercolors, and prints by the many talented American artists who found inspiration in Venice.
Mystic Seaport Museum, Mysticseaport.org
Editors’ Picks
Stories we love from back issues to read now.
“Connecticut’s Forest and Park Pioneers,” Winter 2016-2017
“Weir Farm National Historic Site,” Summer 2008
“Making a Success of Coltsville,” Winter 2005/2006
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