In this episode, recorded at the Park Street Library@the Lyric on Sept. 21, 2022 to a full house, two of our Connecticut History Game Changer Honorees discuss their work. The conversation was hosted by Jasmin Agosto, Community Outreach Coordinator for the Hartford History Center at the Hartford Public Library. Before we go to our new episode, I need to ask our listeners for your help! We need your thoughts and ideas about the podcasts that highlight our 20 Connecticut History Game Changers in th...
Oct 15, 2022•54 min•Season 2Ep. 152
Connecticut Explored is celebrating its 20th anniversary with “20 for 20: Innovation in Connecticut History,” a series of articles, podcasts, and public programs that highlight 20 "Game Changers" in the field of Connecticut history. The insights and ideas we gather through this five-minute survey will help individuals and organizations who are committed to keeping Connecticut history vibrant and relevant. Thank you for your time! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/OCT1FREEMAN -----------------------...
Sep 30, 2022•27 min•Season 2Ep. 151
Connecticut Explored is celebrating its 20th anniversary with “20 for 20: Innovation in Connecticut History,” a series of articles, podcasts, and public programs that highlight 20 "Game Changers" in the field of Connecticut history. The insights and ideas we gather through this five-minute survey will help individuals and organizations who are committed to keeping Connecticut history vibrant and relevant. Thank you for your time! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CHS915 ----------------------------...
Sep 15, 2022•34 min•Season 2Ep. 150
Connecticut Explored is celebrating its 20th anniversary with “20 for 20: Innovation in Connecticut History,” a series of articles, podcasts, and public programs that highlight 20 "Game Changers" in the field of Connecticut history. The insights and ideas we gather through this five-minute survey will help individuals and organizations who are committed to keeping Connecticut history vibrant and relevant. Thank you for your time! Visit: www.surveymonkey.com/r/PODCAST1 ---------------------------...
Aug 30, 2022•35 min•Season 2Ep. 149
The discovery of four 18th century male skeletons thought to be possible soldiers in the April 27, 1777 Battle of Ridgefield, prompted the most in-depth research into that crucial Revolutionary War conflict ever undertaken. In this presentation to the town sponsored by the Ridgefield Historical Society earlier this year, state historian Walt Woodward, historian Keith Jones, state archaeologist emeritus Nick Bellantoni, state archaeologist Sarah Sportman, archeologist Kevin McBride, and Historian...
Aug 15, 2022•46 min
The airship Hindenburg passed over Connecticut 21 times during its 17-month service between 1936-37. In the 1930s, air travel across the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and North America was 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’...
Jul 31, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 147
For this episode of Grating the Nutmeg , Natalie Belanger of the Connecticut Historical Society talked to Joanie DiMartino, Connecticut state Coordinator for the National Votes for Women Trail. They discussed the origin of the marker program, and the criteria that went into choosing the Connecticut people and places honored with a marker. In addition, Joanie shares her thoughts on why the markers matter, and what the story of the suffrage movement can teach us about social justice movements toda...
Jul 14, 2022•37 min•Season 2Ep. 146
In the Summer 2022 issue of Connecticut Explored , author and historian Steve Thornton of the Shoeleather History Project brings us the story of the internationally-renown activist, actor, and singer Paul Robeson and his wife Eslanda, an anthropologist, author and activist in her own right. The Robeson’s home from 1941 to 1953 in Enfield, Connecticut is on the Connecticut Freedom Trail as well as the National Register of Historic Places. The Hartford Courant reported on April 1, of 1941 that, “T...
Jun 30, 2022•39 min•Season 2Ep. 145
Painting by Everett Raymond Kinstler, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Join Walt Woodward on a visit to the Katharine Hepburn Museum at "the Kate" in Old Saybrook. His interview with Executive Director Brett Eliott and Director of Community Relations Robin Andreoli about this gem of a museum for America's most Oscar-winning actor (and long-time Saybrook resident) should convince you to put both the Katharine Hepburn Museum and "the Kate" on your must-see-this-summer list. It's a must hear p...
Jun 15, 2022•35 min•Season 2Ep. 144
In this episode, CTExplored publisher Elizabeth Normen talks with Connecticut River Museum curator Amy Trout about the museum’s summer exhibition Speed: Hydroplane Racing on the Connecticut River, 1900 – 1940. Trout tells us what a hydroplane is and why racing them became popular in the midst of the Great Depression. As opposed to yachting, she explains, hydroplane racing was an everyman’s sport that people flocked to the riverfront to watch. She talks boat design, which outboard engines were po...
May 31, 2022•31 min•Season 2Ep. 143
In 1822, the Hartford Retreat for the Insane was chartered as one of the first mental health centers in the United States, and the first hospital of any kind in CT. In 2022, the CHS is exploring of the story of mental health in our state. Recently, the CHS invited Dr. Harold I (Hank) Schwartz to talk about the history of the Hartford Retreat, renamed the Institute of Living in the 20th century. His presentation took us through the state of mental health care in the early 1800s, the reasons for t...
May 16, 2022•48 min•Season 2Ep. 142
Most people in the tri-state area have driven the Merritt Parkway with its extraordinary bridges and landscaped vistas. But can a roadway built in the 1930s during the Great Depression survive today in the 21st century without losing its charm? In celebration of Historic Preservation Month, we will learn how the Merritt Parkway, the state’s most heavily visited National Register historic district, was saved from modernization and restored to its original design. In this episode, Asst. Publisher ...
May 03, 2022•30 min•Season 2Ep. 141
For over 2000 years, the American chestnut was the tallest, largest, and most omnipresent tree in all Connecticut. It’s a tree for which a hundred hills, countless streets, and at least one Connecticut town were named, a tree whose nuts we sing about on the holidays, and a tree which helped frame our houses, shape our furniture, fence and feed our livestock, make tracks for our trains, and hold our utility lines. In this episode, Jack Swatt, President of the Connecticut chapter of the American c...
Apr 15, 2022•41 min•Ep. 139
In this episode, architectural historian Mary Donohue and podcast engineer Patrick O’Sullivan explore the Hartford work of early twentieth century architect Donn Barber especially his magnificent Connecticut State Library building and two of the city’s early skyscrapers. Her guest, retired Connecticut State Librarian Ken Wiggin, explains how Barber got the plum commission to design the Connecticut State Library. Donn Barber, born in 1871, a New York City architect, could be called the “Father of...
Apr 01, 2022•30 min•Season 2Ep. 139
Spurred by Abraham Lincoln’s campaign stop in Hartford in March 1860, the Wide Awake movement spread from Connecticut throughout the North like wildfire. In this episode of Grating the Nutmeg, the Connecticut Historical Society’s Natalie Belanger takes a look at this pivotal youth movement of the Civil War era. Listen to find out how this home-grown political movement and their signature torchlit parades helped to redefine American democracy on the eve of the Civil War. This topic was inspired b...
Mar 15, 2022•33 min•Season 2Ep. 138
March is Women’s History Month and in this episode publisher Elizabeth Normen talks with author Eve Kahn about her 2019 book, Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Wiliams,1857 - 1907 (Wesleyan University Press, 2019). It’s a rare insider view of the challenges women artists faced in the late 19th century. Kahn drew from a collection of Williams’s gossipy letters home in which she describes her desperation to escape her teaching job at Smith College to paint and tr...
Feb 28, 2022•37 min•Season 2Ep. 137
Forty years ago, a freshman legislator in the Connecticut General Assembly wrote and engineered passage of one of the most important pieces of consumer protection legislation in history – The Lemon Law (actually two laws passed in 1982 and 1984) that required automobile manufacturers to repair defective vehicles in a timely manner, replace the vehicle with a new one, or refund the customer's purchase price. Today Lemon Laws are in place in every state of the union and countries around the world....
Feb 15, 2022•50 min•Ep. 136
As we all ease into 2022, we want to thank our listeners for supporting Grating the Nutmeg! We’ve just had our 6th birthday and hit over 100,000 downloads! We couldn’t have done it without you. Be sure to let us know if there are topics you think we should investigate. If you could manufacture something out of stone or metal and make a buck, chances are it was produced in Connecticut. Asst. Publisher Mary Donohue explores the history of an unusual and unique--in the truest sense of the word--Con...
Jan 30, 2022•24 min•Season 2Ep. 135
In this episode, 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. M...
Jan 15, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 134
Is there a sucker born every minute? I don’t have the answer to that but it is attributed to one of Connecticut’s most famous residents, circus showman P. T. Barnum. Did he really say it-no one knows for sure but we do know that he made and lost several fortunes, helped to create the American circus, exhibited a phony mermaid cobbled together from a monkey and a fish and that he loved Bridgeport! Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored , the magazine of Connecticut history, finds o...
Jan 08, 2022•26 min•Season 2Ep. 133
In the spirit of the season, we’re pleased to present a Victorian era Christmas story, written by the celebrated 19th century author from Guilford, Reverend William Henry Harrison Murray. Better known as “Adirondack” Murray, because his books almost single-handedly transformed that region from a New York wilderness to one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations, Murray was one of the first mass audience authors to promote recreational camping as a leisure time activity, and coined the...
Dec 16, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 132
Natalie Belanger of the Connecticut Historical Society is joined by historian Barbara Sicherman, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emerita at Trinity College, to discuss the landmark reproductive rights case, Griswold v. Connecticut . Professor Sicherman talks about the origins of the lawsuit, what it meant for women in our state, and its long-term influence on civil rights rulings. If you want to learn more, you can read Barbara Sicherman’s article, " Connecticut Women Fight for Reproductive R...
Dec 01, 2021•35 min•Season 2Ep. 131
Recently, Connecticut State Historian Walt Woodward announced he will be retiring next July 1st. To find out what "historical" retirement is like, Woodward sat down with Nick Bellantoni, who retired as state archaeologist in 2014, and is now Connecticut's state archaeologist emeritus. The resulting conversation was a fascinating discussion of archaeological sites in Connecticut, Nick's successor state archaeologists, and Nick's own career of amazing discoveries.
Nov 15, 2021•55 min•Ep. 130
What more do we need to know about Sam Colt? In Hartford we have the iconic blue-domed Colt Armory, Colt Park, the Colt addition to the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Church of the Good Shepard and Colt’s home Armsmear. But it turns out that we may not have known much about Colt’s life before he became fabulously wealthy—he traveled with a novelty act, womanized, drank, smuggled guns to Russia, bribed politicians, and blew up ships in New York Harbor with electricity. Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of C...
Oct 31, 2021•37 min•Season 2Ep. 129
A Connecticut Historian Makes History: Recovering Phyllis Wheatley’s Lost Years UCONN legal historian Cornelia Hughes Dayton was searching through Massachusetts Court cases from the 1700s, working on a project involving mental disabilities in early America, when she came upon a find that was itself history-making: a cache of court cases that illuminate the formerly “missing years” in the life of America’s first published African American author and the mother of the African-American literary tra...
Oct 15, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Are you your family’s historian? The one that listens to all the elders' stories or digs into that big box of old family photographs? Ever wonder how many of your dad’s stories are really true? Or if you have a big family secret that hasn’t been revealed for generations? If so, this episode is for you! In celebration of National Archives Month, we’re talking to two accomplished family historians. Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored , the state’s history magazine, interviews aut...
Oct 01, 2021•31 min•Season 2Ep. 127
History has often been described as the present having a conversation with the past. Meet Kevin Johnson, who makes those conversations both real and personal: as a Technical Assistant in the History and Genealogy unit of the Connecticut State Library in Hartford; as William Webb, a Civil War volunteer in the 29th Connecticut Colored Volunteer infiantry; and as Jordan Freeman, the African American who died a heroes death at the Revolutionary War Massacre at Fort Griswold. It's 250 years of histor...
Sep 15, 2021•51 min•Ep. 126
In this episode, join Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored , for a discussion with Dr. Helen Sheumaker about Victorian jewelry and wreaths made from human hair. Dr. Sheumaker is the author of Love Entwined: The Curious History of Human Hair Work. She teaches history and American Studies at Miami University of Ohio. Find out more about this now unfashionable way to remember your loved ones! Read Dr. Sheumaker’s feature story in the Fall 2021 issue of Connecticut Explored-order yo...
Sep 01, 2021•21 min•Season 2Ep. 125
What do the nineteenth century author Lydia Sigourney, the 18th century hero-turned-traitor Benedict Arnold, and the Revolutionary War battle of Bunker Hill have in common? They all come together in the story you are about to hear from Sigourney’s 1824 book SKETCH OF CONNECTICUT FORTY YEARS SINCE . Sigourney’s book, written early in her career, is a rare historical treat: a tale by a future-famous writer, written in 1824, reminiscing about life forty years earlier in 1784. The past remembering t...
Aug 19, 2021•36 min
In this episode, join Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored, for a discussion with Pablo Delano, visual artist, photographer and professor of fine arts at Trinity College - and the artist behind the new book Hartford Seen, published in 2020 by Wesleyan University Press. His work is featured in the photo essay “Visually Breathtaking Hartford Explored” in the Summer 2021 issue of Connecticut Explored magazine. Professor Delano’s father, Jack Delano, was a renown American New Deal-e...
Jul 30, 2021•36 min•Season 2Ep. 123
