Inside the CHS

We’re inviting CHS members, Hartford residents, and everyone from around Connecticut to join us thinking about Hartford from a variety of perspectives, from street level to neighborhood scope to bird’s eye view.

Disease was the prime source of fatalities among soldiers in the American Civil War. The story of Private Myron D. Webster provides a more personal glimpse of this reality.

On Monday, October 6, CHS hosted home-schooled children and their parents for a day of workshops. I offered a session called “Shadow an Archivist” which 10 students attended. They were given a “collection” to review and process. These were copies of documents in a real collection from the Root family of Farmington, Connecticut.

Three new exhibits open today, including “Hartford Seen: Photographs by Pablo Delano”

Documentary photographer Pablo Delano talks about the challenges of photographing the urban environment. His show opens here on Friday…

Do you remember the 5″ floppy disc, 8-track tape and VHS? The technology that created these and other forms of media is now obsolete. That is why we are moving our digital assets to the Connecticut Digital Archive hosted by the University of Connecticut.

Bridgeport was originally a parish of Stratford and only became a separate town in 1821. An 1824 map shows its streets lined with houses—including several sea captains’ houses—and a few small businesses.

I’ve spent the last couple of days helping Pablo Delano lay out the photographs for his upcoming show…

Two Talcott account books, and several manuscript maps and documents went with archivist Barbara Austen to North Andover, Mass. for conservation.

Connecticut has used radio and television to cover everything from Americans on the moon to treasures “from the vault” in a fun and historic way.

Home School Day is nearly upon us. A new offering this year is a workshop discussing the point where textile history and textile science converge!

Documentary photographer Pablo Delano talks about the process behind organizing his upcoming show, “Hartford Seen: Photographs by Pablo Delano”

One of the things I like best about my job at CHS is the opportunity to network with other museum professionals throughout the state….

Listening to an episode of Radiolab while cooking dinner a couple of weeks ago, I started angrily defending the importance of “things” out loud to my cat, and thus, a blog post was born.

Children and parents got to experience what it would be like to go back to school during colonial times at our family program last Saturday.

In an age when apps are increasingly becoming a way to alert people to important news, it can be both fun and instructive to look at how emergency information could be transmitted a century ago.

For the month of August I kept telling my husband nearly every day that I had been fighting the Revolutionary War all over again. And in a way, I was.

Our newest exhibit, Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen, showcases over 40 costumes form Hepburn’s illustrious film and stage career. “What is this?” posts have highlighted an object from the exhibit and explored its background every other week. What is this object? What is the story behind it?

To make sure I have my bad pictures for all eternity, or at least until I send them to Awkward Family Photos, I’m going to pay attention to the experts at Save Your Photos Day on Saturday, September 27 10:00 am — 12:00 noon here at CHS.

I’ve been working with documentary photographer Pablo Delano as we prepare to install his October show. Pablo has been photographing Hartford since 2008…

As school starts back in session, I am reminded of many instances in my own childhood of the excitement that leads to that first day: the school supply shopping, the nerves regarding whether or not you would get the “good” teacher, and the wonderful idea of learning something new.

We have a number of fantastic volunteers at CHS for the summer, and I am lucky enough to have a few working with me up in the costume collection.

I’ve seen movies and television shows that were set during World War I, but it still amazes me how relatively primitive things were in the early 20th century.

Our newest exhibit, Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen, showcases over 40 costumes form Hepburn’s illustrious film and stage career. “What is this?” posts will highlight an object from the exhibit and explore its background every other week. What is this object? What is the story behind it?

Artist Richard Welling loved to drawing buildings, especially very large buildings. He was therefore drawn to cities, and his two favorite cities were Hartford, Connecticut and New York City. His drawings chronicling the construction of the World Trade Center are today at the New-York Historical Society, but some of his other New York drawings came…
Read More »

On this day 149 years ago, the American Dental Association established their code of ethics. In Connecticut, compared to Horace Wells’ anesthesia of the 1840s, other innovations may prove lesser known but just as intriguing.

In recent years the issue of waste materials being sent to landfills has become a concern. Excessive packaging, involving paper, cardboard, plastic (don’t get me going on those impossible to open blister packs) and other materials, seems to be the norm now. And at home, we have large plastic bags filled with smaller plastic bags,…
Read More »

Sometimes you just don’t realize what you are looking at. I was reviewing the Wolcott papers to make sure I put the right volume- and object-numbered document in the correct “folder” of the finding aid (just one step in the project funded by NHPRC to get our manuscripts online through Connecticut History Online). I kept…
Read More »

Inscriptions on the back of this 1930s photograph of the Farmington River provide quite a bit of information about it. The dam in the foreground is said to be in the same location as the dam for the first gristmill on the river, established in 1701. In the 1930s, there was still an active gristmill…
Read More »

Last time I wrote a blog post, I wrote it about Richard Welling’s linoleum blocks. I mistakenly wrote that we don’t have prints made from the blocks. I would like to formally apologize for that. We actually do have linocuts of most of the Welling linoleum blocks. I just got through cataloging them, and they…
Read More »

I just received a few emails from people congratulating me on LinkedIn for my fifth year work anniversary. That was news to me! I started in the summer of ’09 as the Interpretive Projects Assistant and had a lot of memories working at CHS since. So of my favorite adventures in exhibits…   When I…
Read More »

I was quite literally in the middle of writing up today’s blog post, all nerdily excited to teach you a thing or two about weighted silk, when I was interrupted by some young researchers.  So, instead, I’m going to tell you about one of the reasons I love my job (don’t worry, you’ll hear about…
Read More »

On  Saturday, volunteer VivianLea Solek and I launched a project that will take years to complete, but which I think is very exciting.

Our newest exhibit, Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen, showcases over 40 costumes form Hepburn’s illustrious film and stage career. “What is this?” posts will highlight an object from the exhibit and explore its background every other week. What is this object? What is the story behind it?

When most people think of Connecticut architecture, they most often think of Colonial saltbox houses or white steepled churches nestled in green hills. They usually don’t think of the International Style of modern architecture, and they certainly don’t think of Harvard University. But in the 1940s, five architects from Harvard settled in the green hills…
Read More »

Not many things made Katharine Hepburn nervous, but the prospect of meeting French fashion icon Coco Chanel had her worried.

I usually talk about my past teaching experiences in the blog posts; so I thought I would switch it up and talk a little about the work here in the museum. Since I will doing a good deal of editing and writing for our new website this month, I decide to just to a quick…
Read More »

Over the years that I have worked at CHS I have noticed that some items seem to have a particular appeal as illustrations. Sometimes it is clearly understandable, as with the flag that decorated Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theater, or Amos Doolittle’s engravings of Lexington and Concord. But in other instances the attraction is less…
Read More »

John Trumbull (1756-1843) was the son of Connecticut governor Jonathan Trumbull and first cousin of M’Fingall poet John Trumbull. John the artist graduated from Harvard in 1773 and served as an aide to General Washington during the Revolution. In 1784 he went to London to study with the painter Benjamin West.

The gentleman driving the sulky is John A. Pilgard. The horse is Hartford Louise. Pilgard had come to Hartford as a poor immigrant boy and became a successful merchant, banker, and civic leader. A butcher and grocer by trade, Pilgard greatest love was fast horses, especially those that he bred and raced himself. He was…
Read More »