Inside the CHS

I would be remiss if I didn’t spend at least one entry talking about the man who started it all, Gerson Fox. I hope I don’t bore you by sharing a little of his history here before I talk about one of my favorite items in the entire collection, Gerson’s account book. Gerson Fox was…
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Conspiracy theories abound, it seems, even in the 1860s. A new collection arrived last week, and the most fascinating documents in it were a transcript of a state Supreme Court case against Austin F. Williams who was accused of adultery, and his rebuttal. Both date from 1864. The transcript is hard to decipher, but includes…
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Last week, I wrote about the friendship between Beatrice Fox Auerbach and Eleanor Roosevelt, as evidenced through their correspondence. I thought it might be fun this week to include a sample letter from the collection. Here are the scanned images of a letter Mrs. Roosevelt wrote to Mrs. Auerbach on June 17, 1960: If you…
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Beatrice Fox Auerbach was born on July 7, 1887, which means today is her 120th birthday! I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of an appropriate (and fun!) way to commemorate the occasion. I started wondering how she had celebrated her birthdays and realized that the collection doesn’t really offer any glimpses into that…
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A collection we have had for a while but has never been fully processed consists primarily of letters from missionary Amos Starr Cooke and his wife Juliette to Amos’s sister Mary Keeler Seeley of Danbury, Conn. The letters from Hawaii start in 1837 and the last one is dated 1854, although Amos did not die…
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In many articles I’ve read about Beatrice Fox Auerbach, she has been nicknamed Hartford’s “First Lady,” probably because of her positive impact on its community. For similar reasons, Eleanor Roosevelt has been dubbed the “First Lady of the World.” And between 1946 and 1962 these two “First Ladies” corresponded with one another. Their early correspondence…
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One of my favorite parts of the G. Fox collection is the Oral History Project that is currently being completed by oral historians Bruce Stave and Sondra Astor Stave, pictured here. They have been interviewing former employees of G. Fox & Co. as well as some of the descendants of Beatrice Fox Auerbach. The final…
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When I was in graduate school the first time, I developed a course to study social movements of the 19th century, including abolitionism, womens’ rights, etc. There were a lot of women’s groups formed to help more unfortunate women. But today, I finished cataloging the treasurer’s records for a charitable fund created by a MAN….
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Leena Cravzow (1913-2006), the daughter of Russian Jews, was an accomplished pianist in Hartford. She attended Julliard School of Music and also took lessons from the noted pianist R. Augustus Lawson. Lawson, who was African American and Indian, was born in Kentucky but moved with his family to Hartford. He studied at Fisk University and…
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In January, I began processing a collection of G. Fox & Co. materials, including both company records and family papers. It’s a rather large collection so once a week for the next several weeks, I’m going to be highlighting a different part. I’d like to begin this week, though, with a brief overview of the…
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How would you feel if your younger son went off to war? Annie Smith of New London, was nearly beside herself when son Frank joined the Quartermaster Corp in 1918. Her letters to him, part of the many letters sent to popular Frank, are filled with comments about how much she misses him, how she…
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It is so exciting to find diaries that actually give details about daily life.  Four volumes we recently received do just that.  The writer, Edward Steele, was a day laborer who lived in Wethersfield.  His spelling indicates he was not too well-educated, but he noted when he and his wife Maggie went to the theater…
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In an effort to better help our patrons find the information they need, visitors to the CHS library now have access to the genealogy database Ancestry from our public computers.  Ancestry.com provides access to federal census records, military records, the social security death index, state indexes and censuses, immigration data, and a host of other…
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In our stacks are numerous black boxes that, like the ones in airplanes, can yield amazing information.  One such box was labeled “Hartford deeds, land and probate records” with everything filed in chronological order.  A volunteer spent several days going through the files and identified some very interesting documents.  One of these is an estate…
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Earlier this week, we received six scrapbooks containing samples of the work of Mary (Peggy) Parsons while a student at Miss Wheeler’s School in Hartford.  Mary Parsons was born about 1897 and attended first through sixth grade at Miss Wheeler’s School.  The scrapbooks contain photographs of her class and schoolmates and various friends, plus samples…
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Every once in awhile I get the chance to go through some collections we have had for years but that have never been processed before. When I do, I always find something intriguing, or at least interesting. So, last week I started going through the Ogden Griswold papers. However, there are more letters between his…
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Yesterday, I was moving items around in the manuscript stacks and came upon an envelope that had printed in large block letters “Sealed unitl 1990.”  Well, since that was 17 years ago, I figured I should take a look.  What I found was correspondence between actor William Gillette and his lawyer at the firm Shipman…
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The CHS library has recently acquired a new, complete set (4 vols, 1922-23) of Sanborn  Fire Insurance maps for Hartford with updates through 1960.  The Sanborn fire insurance maps were originally compiled to help insurers assess the value of property, identify risk factors, and underwrite losses.  The company mapped approximately 12,000 cities and towns, beginning…
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Sometimes in the archives world I feel as if I am in a time warp.  Yesterday it was the Connecticut’s 9/11 Memorial Board and today, I am back in the 18th century!  A very recent purchase is an account book kept by Ichabod Brewster of Lebanon, Connecticut from 1752-1762.  Yes, another account book, but Brewster…
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It is often hard to accept the concept that history is as recent as yesterday. That concept was put to the test recently when the CHS library acquired mementos from the 9/11 tragedy. The Connecticut Helps Office of Family Support invited victims families and friends to contribute to a Memorial Board in March 2002. The…
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Many of our military records revolve around units that served during the Revolution and the Civil War. Like other states, Connecticut maintained a militia between those two conflicts, and the records of the First Mohican Rifle Corps, 1840-1844, provide a picture of the workings of the militia. The Mohican Rifle Corps was part of the…
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Today, Litchfield County is considered the summer playground of the wealthy. Apparently the area of Bantam Lake served as a resort of sorts in the 1870s. Recently added to the collection is the guest book from the Bantam Lake House, 1875-1878. Many of the visitors were from Litchfield County, some were from New York State,…
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It never fails to amaze me what materials still show up for sale. This week we purchased an indenture, dated June 7, 1854, for a child from the Hartford Orphan Asylum. George Bartow was “surrendered in writing by the father” to the Asylum and then bound out to Lucian Bidwell of Canton to learn the…
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Although we have an “American Revolution Collection”, there are still many important documents found in other collections or by themselves. Here are a few examples. From February 25, 1780, we have an account of the State of Connecticut with Joshua Elderkin, Commissary for cloth sent to the Northern Army and to the Ship O. Cromwell,…
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Today we hear about packages going to soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq with relatively few problems. In 1862, Eugenia Monroe wrote to General Wooll asking for his assitance in getting a package of clothing to her brother, Austin G. Monroe. Austin, of Norwich, served with the 2nd Infantry Regiment of Connecticut Volunteers, Rifle Co. B…
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A 19th century love story is contained in the letters between Frederick Allen Lucas and his “dear friend” Sarah Jane Wadhams, both of Goshen, Connecticut. He was serving with the 2nd Regiment of Heavy Artillery, Connecticut Volunteers and longed for news of home. Tentative at first, the letters gradually reveal more personal information and insights…
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We recently (January 2007) purchased at auction ten diaries written by Albert Walker (1836-1902) of Glastonbury, Connecticut. He was a farmer and spoon maker by trade, but also rolled cigars, repaired and cleaned clocks, played the fiddle for dances, and performed magic and ventriloquism. An essay he wrote on ventriloquism and dialog for a Punch…
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Welcome to the Connecticut Historical Society Library’s new blog. We will be reporting new additions to our collections, mostly manuscript but some printed material and media as well. We are constantly adding new manuscripts and rediscovering ones already in the collection. Information about these items/collections will appear here before they show up in our online…
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