The first week of November 1960 was a grueling one for Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who was finishing up the last stretch of his rigorous — and ultimately successful — campaign for President of the United States against Republican Richard Nixon. In the early morning hours of November 6, after a full…
November 5: Ella Grasso, First Female Governor
Born to Italian immigrants in 1919, Ella Rosa Giovanna Oliva Tambussi grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood of first and second-generation Americans in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. Her parents, determined to invest in a better future for their daughter, saved up enough money to send Ella to the prestigious Chaffee School in Windsor. Afterwards, she…
November 4: Connecticut Founder John Winthrop Jr. Arrives in America
Today in 1631, John Winthrop, Jr., one of the most significant leaders in Connecticut history, first set foot in the New World, having arrived in Boston where his father, John Winthrop Sr., was governor. A remarkable Renaissance man of many talents, the younger Winthrop was well-versed in medicine, theology, and alchemy, and quickly acquired…
November 3: Joshua Hempstead’s Diary
Born in New London in 1678, Joshua Hempstead lived a rather unremarkable life for a colonial freeman. He was one of nine children; being the only son, he inherited his father’s house and, after marrying in his early 20s, had nine children of his own with his wife before she passed away in 1716. …
November 2: The “Best Built Car in America” Hits the Road
On this day in 1902, the Locomobile Company of America delivered its first four-cylinder, gasoline-powered car, designed by engineer and former racecar driver Andrew Riker, who personally drove the $4,000 car from Bridgeport, Connecticut to New York City to present it to its new owner. The Locomobile Company, whose headquarters and main factory were…
November 1: The Wilbur Cross Parkway Opens
Today in 1949, ten long years after construction first began, the Wilbur Cross Parkway finally opened to the public following a formal ceremony in at the brand-new West Rock Tunnel in West Haven. There, Lieutenant Governor William T. Carroll proclaimed the newest stretch of Route 15, named after Connecticut’s popular governor who led the…
October 31: Connecticut’s Greatest Legend Happened Today…. or Did It?
One of the most important symbols in Connecticut history is the Charter Oak: The giant, gnarled oak tree that represents Connecticut’s “steady habit” of self-rule and resistance against tyranny. Depictions and namesakes of the Charter Oak are plentiful throughout the state: schools, streets, social organizations, parks, Connecticut’s state quarter, and even a brewery proudly…
October 30: Yung Wing, Chinese-American Educational Pioneer
Born in 1828 to a poor farming family in Macau, Yung Wing was sent to attend foreign missionary schools in southern China at a young age, in hopes that learning English would lead young Wing to a more prosperous career path. In 1847, when Yung was 19 years old, he accompanied his former headmaster…
October 29: The First Issue of the Connecticut Courant Published
In October of 1764, 29-year-old Thomas Green, a fourth-generation printer, suddenly found himself out of a job working at the Connecticut Gazette print shop in New Haven. The Gazette, Connecticut’s very first newspaper, had been established several years earlier by the enterprising Benjamin Franklin, who had just sacked Green in order to install his nephew…
October 28: The Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association Formed
On this day in 1869, at a meeting in Hartford attended by civil rights luminaries including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and William Lloyd Garrison, Isabella Beecher Hooker and her husband John formally established the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association. Isabella was born into the famous Beecher clan of Litchfield in 1822. She and…
October 27: Corporal Timothy Ahearn’s Bravery Memorialized in Bronze
Born in 1898 to Irish immigrants living in New Haven, Timothy Francis Ahearn was still a teenager when he enlisted in the 102d Infantry Division — famously known as the Yankee Division owing to the New England origins of most of its men — and was deployed overseas to fight the Germans during World…
October 26: Hartford’s Underwood Typewriters Speed Past the Competition
The first few decades of the 20th century were heady years for the American typewriter industry, after the invention of portable typing machines in the late 1800s revolutionized the business world by making clerical work faster, cheaper, and easier. Connecticut was home to several of the world’s most popular and innovative typewriter companies…