Today in 1861, 32-year-old Major Theodore Woolsey Winthrop, a descendant of one of the most important figures in the founding of Connecticut, died in action at the Battle of Bethel in eastern Virginia, one of the first land battles of the American Civil War. Winthop was the first Union officer to die fighting in…
Tag: civil war
April 25: Oliver Winchester Aims for Success in The Rifle Industry.
In early 1857, businessman Oliver Winchester bought controlling interest in a struggling Connecticut firearms company from two inventors named Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson. With access to machine tools, raw materials, and a number of valuable patents — especially rights to the Henry Repeating Rifle, the world’s first multiple-round-firing longarm — Winchester formed…
April 16: Frederick Douglass & Social Media in Hartford, 1864
Carte-de-visite photographs were the hot social media of the mid-nineteenth century. These small portrait photographs, mounted on cards, were some of the first such images to be commercially reproduced, and they created a craze for collectible photographs. People collected carte-de-visite portraits of family, friends and celebrities and then mounted them in photograph albums….
April 15: The Middletown Man Who Built the First Transcontinental Railroad – But in Another Country.
Back when they taught such things in the classroom, many Connecticans learned this palindrome (a phrase that says the exact same thing read backwards or forwards) in geography class: ” A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Panama.” What we were not taught, though, is that men made plans to make transportation across Panama a…
March 5: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Connecticut
Today in 1860, sectional tensions over slavery and its expansion into the country’s newly formed states and territories was nearing the breaking point. It was a crucial election year, and members of the nation’s political parties were actively trying to decide who would be their standard bearers in the upcoming presidential campaign. For the…
March 3: The Connectican Who Helped America Strut Her Stuff
The United States of America’s first century was marked by incredible growth in nearly every possible way, propelled by the forces of westward expansion, immigration, and the Industrial Revolution. As the 100th anniversary of the nation’s 1776 founding approached, a proposal came before Congress to celebrate America’s emergence as one of the world’s great…
February 19: Roger Sherman Baldwin: Governor, Senator, but Most of All, Abolitionist
Today in 1863, in the midst of a bloody Civil War that pitted Americans against each other over questions of slavery and freedom, scores of Connecticans mourned the passing of Roger Sherman Baldwin. One of Connecticut’s most accomplished politicians and perhaps its most ardent abolitionist lawyer, Baldwin had lived just long enough to witness…
January 10: Legendary Arms Maker Samuel Colt Dies at 47
Today in 1862, Samuel Colt, a man who had endured years of failed business ventures before finding both fame and fortune in Hartford, died suddenly at age 47, one of the richest men in the United States.. In just 15 years, Colt had created a record of innovation in marketing and manufacturing whose impact…
January 6: The Inaugural Ball That Didn’t Happen
Long known as “the Land of Steady Habits,” Connecticut is home to scores of political and cultural traditions that span generations, including many that stretch back into the colonial era. One such tradition has been the Inaugural Ball, a ceremony filled with plenty of pomp and circumstance thrown for newly elected governors by the…
December 31: Cutting-Edge Teamwork Turns A Starr Into A Star
As a major in the Continental Army, Nathan Starr forged and repaired weapons as part of his service during the Revolutionary War. After the war was over, Starr returned to his hometown of Middletown, Connecticut, and made a living manufacturing blades of a different sort: mostly agricultural tools like scythes for local farmers. In…
December 26: The Governor Who Refused to Leave Office
One of Connecticut’s most accomplished citizens — and governors — also had one of the state’s most unusual nicknames. Morgan G. Bulkeley — Civil War veteran, financier, insurance executive, first president of baseball’s National League, and strong-arm politician — earned himself the nickname “the Crowbar Governor,” while serving in that office in 1891.” Bulkeley…
December 8: “The Learned Blacksmith” . . . & Patriotic Pacifist
Elihu Burritt, a self-educated lecturer who was arguably the most famous pacifist of the 19th century, was born in New Britain, Connecticut today in 1810. As the 10th child of a shoemaker, young Elihu (rhymes with “Tell-a-Few”) was unable to devote much time to schooling; as a teenager, he apprenticed himself to a local…