The Siege of Petersburg was one of the most significant military campaigns of the final year of the Civil War. From June 1864 to March 1865, Union troops continuously besieged and harassed the Confederate railroad hub city of Petersburg, Virginia and surrounding environs. The goal of the lengthy siege was to deplete the Confederate…
Tag: 19th century
September 24: Connecticut’s Whaling Industry Sets Sail For Extinction
In the 19th century, New London, Connecticut was one of the busiest whaling hubs in the entire world, outranked only by Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts. Whale oil was a crucial and versatile resource that played a huge role in powering the Industrial Revolution, serving as both fuel for lamps and as a lubricant…
September 23: The First Hurricane in 180 Years Slams into Connecticut
On the morning of September 23, 1815, the first major hurricane to hit New England in 180 years made landfall at Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Since the word “hurricane” was virtually unknown in early America, residents later identified the monstrous storm as the “Great Storm” or “Great Gale” of September 1815. With estimated sustained winds…
September 17: Civil War Veterans Gather to Dedicate America’s First Triumphal Arch
On September 17, 1886 — the 24th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam — thousands of spectators and Civil War veterans gathered in Hartford to partake in the dedication of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Bushnell Park. Hartford’s Memorial Arch was the first permanent triumphal arch memorial in the United States, and…
September 13: The Highest-Ranking Union Officer Killed in the Civil War
One of Connecticut’s most important Civil War figures, Major General John Sedgwick, was born in Cornwall today in 1813. After attending prestigious academies in Sharon and Cheshire, Sedgwick attended West Point and graduated in the Class of 1837 with several other future generals who served on both sides of the Civil War. These included…
September 9: The Shoe-Manufacturing Lounsbury Brothers Try On the Governor’s Office
When Phineas Chapman Lounsbury of Ridgefield, Connecticut won the Republican party nomination for governor on September 9, 1886, it marked the beginning of a short-lived but unique political dynasty. Phineas would go on to win the governor’s race later that year and serve a single term as Connecticut’s 53rd governor before retiring from political…
September 8: “Pope Dwight” — Poet, Politician, & Professor — Becomes the Transforming President of Yale
Today in 1795, one day before Yale’s annual commencement ceremonies were scheduled to take place, the college officially instated Timothy Dwight IV as its new president. Dwight would be the eighth man to preside over the venerable college, which had been founded in 1701 and was the third-oldest institution of higher education in the…
September 3: Marquis de Lafayette Returns to Connecticut on a “Last Man” Tour of America.
Today in 1824, the venerable Revolutionary War hero Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier — the Marquis de Lafayette — was hailed by adoring crowds as he journeyed through Connecticut during his 1824-1825 “Last Man” grand tour of America. Having joined the Revolutionary War effort almost fifty years earlier as a teenager, Lafayette…
September 2: Dog Parachuted From Hot-Air Balloon High Over Middletown
Silas Markham Brooks, Connecticut’s first documented hot air balloonist, was one of many native Connecticans who pursued a colorful — if unpredictable — career as a consummate showman in the 19th century. Born in Plymouth in 1824, Brooks worked in a local clock-making factory before being hired by P. T. Barnum to help manufacture…
September 1: The Root of Connecticut’s Industrial Greatness
The largely unknown man at the center of Connecticut’s 19th century industrial greatness – Elisha King Root – died in Hartford today in 1865. Root’s machine tool genius first revolutionized axe production in Collinsville and then made the Colt Firearms Company a worldwide icon of precision manufacturing. Born in western Massachusetts in 1808, Root…
August 29: Wind Power for the Prairies
During the first half of the 19th century, as thousands of Americans journeyed westward in search of new fortunes, necessity became the mother of invention as would-be farmers were forced to adapt to new climates and topographies that were unlike anything they had ever seen before. Since the Great Plains generally lacked the forests…
August 26: 42 Years After Independence, Connecticut Finally Gets A Constitution.
Today in 1818, delegates to the state’s first ever Constitutional Convention gathered at the State House in Hartford for the first time, charged with the formidable task of restructuring Connecticut state government by creating the state’s first formally written constitution. Writing a new constitution was no small task, given the social, cultural, and political…