Abstract:

In February 2003, on the 300th anniversary of the raid on Deerfield, the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association and the Memorial Hall Museum launched a Web site that both commemorates and reinterprets this event from the perspectives of all the cultural groups who were present: Wobanakiak, Kanienkehaka, Wendat, English, and French. The site brings together a multitude of Web elements including historical scenes, narratives of peoples' lives, artifacts and historic documents, interactive maps, voices and songs, essays, illustrations/paintings, and an interactive timeline to provide a window into a world of global political and religious conflict, family stories, and military sagas. Many teachers find that this site - with its wealth of primary source material; its special features like interactive maps and artifacts, zoom function, and magic lens; and its curricula section - is an excellent digital resource for their classrooms.

Story about Digital Deerfield as a teaching tool: Digital Deerfield 1704

Digital Deerfield site: Raid on Deerfield: the Many Stories of 1704

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His controversial life is memorialized in Silas Deane Online, which includes a virtual tour of his home in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Styled as an educational aid for high school students and teachers, the site has been professionally designed by Literae Interactive with funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

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Dean King's new book, "Skeletons of the Zahara: A True Story of Survival," (Little Brown, 2004) includes the results of his own original research and visit to the site of the wreck and retracing of part of the route on which the crew was taken.

Author King will speak and sign first editions of his book in the Keeney Cultural Center, Wethersfield Historical Society (200 Main Street) Monday, March 20, 2004 at 7:30 PM.

For more info and photos see: "Sands Of Suffering" (Hartford Courant 3/18/04 p. D1)

See also a review at: "Into the Fire," SFGate.com (2/2204)

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The Windsor Historical Society hosts an exhibit of furniture made there before 1715. Organized by Historic Deerfield and funded by the Connecticut Humanities Council , the exhibit highlights not only the furniture itself, but the social history of how the community of crafters became prosperous, arranged advantageous marriages among the the families of other crafters and dominated local politics of the time. (Read more ... )

The Woodworkers of Windsor: A Community of Craftsmen, 1635-1715, continues through April 15 at the historical society, 96 Palisado Ave. (Route 159), Windsor, CT. Admission is $3. For information, call (860) 688-3813.

Photos of some of the furniture are at: "The Windsor Style: Connecticut's first town was the furniture fashion center of the 17th century" (Preview Connecticut, 1/24/04)

See also: "Exhibition Explores Puritan Furniture and Life" Windsor Journal (1/29/04)

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2003 CT River Eagle Festival Photos in Connecticut Audubon's Gallery

Cold weather has forced eagles from northern parts of the Connecticut, Housatonic and Naugatuck River valleys to open water along the Long Island shore. New Haven Register, "Cold spell brings hungry bald eagles to area."

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Stephen Hannock, The Oxbow, After Church, After Cole, Flooded, 1994

Accompanying this exhibition of contemporary works, Florence Griswold Museum also presents an exhibition of river views from its own and others' collections called "The River’s Course: Views of Connecticut Rivers." This includes 27 works that explore the cultural, historical and social significance of the Connecticut, Farmington, Mystic, Thames, Lieutenant, and West rivers.

During the early years of the last century, Florence Griswold's boarding house in Old Lyme became the center of the Lyme Art Colony, noted for its depiction of the landscape around this quiet and scenic coastal village between New York and Boston. The Griswold House, built in 1817, where a succession of artists lived and painted together, is now a National Historic Landmark and a home of American Impressionism.

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The site is now Hartford, the capital of Connecticut. The "Fort Hope" area was long known as "Dutch Point" and lies near the Colt Firearms factory complex and Armsmear mansion in the "Charter Oak" or "Coltsville" historical study area on the south side of Hartford. Look for "Huyshope Avenue" and "Dutch Point Lane" on www.MapQuest.com. The greenspace to the south is Colt's Park.
(Read more ... )

In his day, Colt was seen as a visionary in industrial development and labor relations. He bought 200+ acres in the South Meadows of Hartford that was undeveloped and "worthless" because the Connecticut River flooded it every year. In a move the original Dutch garrison would have praised, he built a river dike to make the land usable. He reduced work hours, imposed fair labor standards on his subcontractors, built decent housing and social/recreational halls for his workers on the premises.

See a panel discussion of Colt's "Legend and Legacy" (largely built by his wife after his death). A bit follows:
"The Colt empire was built on a foundation of guns, art, religion, and personal mythology. Sam Colt was complex and flamboyant -- a self-proclaimed genius whose real accomplishments were matched by relentless self-promotion and repeated self-invention. His faithful wife Elizabeth proved herself to be no less extraordinary, and in the end made Sam Colt’s legend bigger than ever, and his empire her own."

See online images of Colt factory & the local memorials his wife commissioned, and the sprawling mansion that they built.

But even the greatest empires fall to time and disruptive technologies. By 1990, Colt Manufacturing was a failing business in a shrinking industry, and no one was interested in buying it. The State of Connecticut sank $25 million in state pension funds into a buyout which was criticized then as a political maneuver to save almost 1000 union jobs. Colt filed bankruptcy within two years, and the state lost most of its investment. The state calculated it lost only $21 million, after the "Colt" trademark was sold to the Economic Development Authority of Connecticut in 1994. See Congressional testimony.

The old, low-slung brick factory still dominates a portion of Hartford, hugging Interstate I-91 just south of the newer 'skyline' buildings. Its landmark "onion dome" is still maintained a bright blue with gold leaf stars.

On October 7, 2003, President Bush signed legislation directing a study of Coltsville as a possible new National Park. See National Review comment (favorable) on the plan, with links.

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At the mouth of the river, the day started sunny, and Katherine Hepburn, then 31 was visiting her family home at Fenwick. She was having a swim when the skies darkened, the wind rose and within a few minutes, had collapsed the chimneys and torn a wing off their house. The family escaped through a window and watched their house swept into Long Island Sound. In her autobiography, "Me" she wrote: "Our house -- ours for 25 years -- all our possessions, just gone. My God, it was like something devastating and unreal, like the beginning of the world or the end of it."

In Hartford, the rain already had the Connecticut 12 feet above flood stage and rising at six inches each hour. The hurricane's rains hit on top of that, driving the Park River out of its banks and swelling the Connecticut to four times its normal width. It would finally crest at 35.4 feet -- 19.4 feet above flood stage. The Hartford Courant called it the most calamitous day in state history.

Journalist and mystery novelist R.A. Scotti detailed the hurricane through stories of how it affected individuals in "Sudden Sea". A book reviewer of Everett S. Allen's "A Wind to Shake the World: The Story of the 1938 Hurricane" told the story of one New Englander who lived through it: "On the day of the hurricane, a Yankee farmer received a package containing a barometer that he had ordered through the mail. No matter how many times he tapped it, the mercury remained stuck at the bottom of the glass. Finally, he re-packaged the 'broken' barometer and returned it to the post office. By the time he got back to his own property, his house had washed out to sea."

PBS, which made a movie about the storm, has maps, photos and teacher guidance materials at their site about the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, including a bibliography for further reading both on and off line.

A commemorative website maintained by the New Haven Railroad includes photos showing the destructive force of the hurricane that had the power to cast sea-going tugboats onto the tracks of coastal rail lines.

A more technical report on the storm carried by the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, a Department of Defense research unit, describes the damage: "The winds grew gradually during the morning of the 21st, and through the afternoon and evening, 80-100 mph winds crushed houses, knocked down trees, and lifted barges and boats onto land. Throughout New York and New England, the wind and water felled 275 million trees, seriously damaged more than 200,000 buildings, knocked trains off their tracks, and beached thousands of boats (Haberstroh, 1998). Damage from the storm was estimated at $600 million. This value is in 1938 Dollars; multiplying by 10 provides an estimate in present currency. Considering that wind and rain damage extended as far north as Rutland, Vermont, that entire city blocks burned in New London and other industrial towns, and that downtown Providence, Hartford, and other cities were flooded, if this storm were to occur today, the cost of the damage wrought would be staggering."

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Clede's delightful article, first published in 1987, takes us with him as he motors up the Connecticut past Saybrook Light, past the Tara Mar (where scenes from "Parrish" were filmed), into Hamburger Cove, past Seldon Creek, Gillette Castle, Goodspeed Opera House and Middletown, into the Cove at Wethersfield, settled by John Oldham and others in 1634. In the Cove, a single warehouse remains as memorial to Wethersfield's 17th century shipbuilding and international trading history. (More ... )

English adventurers from Massachusetts Bay had other ideas, establishing competing forts on the river. Holland lost its claim as English settlements at Wethersfield and Windsor in 1634 spread out and farmed the land claimed by the Dutch. When Charles II came to the throne of England, he granted lands in the New World to his supporter, James, the Duke of York. In 1664, York's forces arrived to claim his royal grant, drove the Dutch from "New Amsterdam" and "New Holland" to the west of the Connecticut River Valley and renamed the territory and city New York. The Hudson River retains the name of Henry Hudson, the Dutch Explorer who was the first recorded European to explore it as far as Albany in the "Half-Moon" in 1609.

References: McMaster, A Brief History of the United States (Project Gutenberg)

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U.S.A. Today takes us on a virtual tour of Hepburn's house and home, once very private, and about the sidewalks and shops of the village she chose to be her final home. They offer a slide show of the house exterior and the Borough.

Pulitzer Prize winner A. Scott Berg's account of his two-decade friendship with Ms. Hepburn, "Kate Remembered (Putnam, 2003), was published 13 days after her death at age 96. U.S.A Today offers the opportunity to (read the first chapter from Kate Remembered.)

With 19 rooms, eight bathrooms, a screened patio and a four-car garage, the Fenwick house was ample for Kate. It needs some work, they say, and is virtually at sea level. In fact, it was washed away in the Hurricane of '38. The Hepburns rebuilt it, of course, in brick this time, and now it depends on the kindness of strangers.

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As if searching for a way east to join the Connecticut, the Farmington flows south through New Hartford as the scenic rapids in "Satan's Kingdom" into Canton , then Collinsville and Farmington, where it turns back north, through Avon and Simsbury, then east to rumble through the Class III rapids of Tariffville Gorge. It finally slides into the Connecticut River in Windsor at the site of the first English settlement in Connecticut, then known as "The Island." The land was originally granted to Joseph Loomis in 1639 and is the present day site of the Loomis Chaffee School just north of Hartford.

We climbed the walking trail along the ridge in Talcott Mountain State Park at the high point of which stands the Heublein Tower, a 165-foot structure built in 1914.

From the trail we enjoyed views of the Farmington River among the tobacco barns and cropland to the southwest, with another traprock range of hills in the far distance:

And views to the northwest, where oxbow ponds lined with rows of trees in the foreground give way to the reforested acres of Simsbury, beyond which lie the Litchfield Hills in the northwest corner of the state and the Berkshires in southwestern Massachusetts.

This was the vista from which, in 1676, the Indian leader "King Philip" is said to have watched as his warriors burned Simsbury to the ground. The large cave in the sheer west face of the mountain is known as King Philip's Cave and the ridge, of which Talcott Mountain is a part, the Metacomet Ridge. The burning of Simsbury was but one incident in the extended conflict between Indian tribes and English colonialists known as "King Philip's War," one of the bloodiest in America's history, ranging from Massachusetts Bay to Rhode Island and Connecticut. But that's another story: King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict.

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In order for New Haven to partipate in the profitable river traffic between Northhampton and the seaports on Long Island Sound, the Farmington Canal was funded and built between New Haven and Northampton during 1825 to 1835. It was plauged with problems from the start, and never proved a financial success. Hartford improved the natural waterway to Northampton with the Enfield Canal built around the shallow water at Windsor in 1829. But the development of the railroads was the final downfall of the Farmington Canal, of which a few ruins still survive along a Heritage Greenway Park.

Two miles of mountaintop resembling a sleeping giant give this park its name, and make it a distinguishing feature on Connecticut's skyline.

The Sleeping Giant Park Association describes the geologic formation and the native legend connecting it to the geology of the Connecticut River:

"The trap rock ridges in Connecticut began life about 170 million years ago when volcanic eruptions formed the columnar patterns of basaltic rock. This hard rock which fractures at near 90 degree angles gives the rock the name trap meaning step or stair in Swedish. In Connecticut most of these ridges run north-south, but one unique ridge six miles north of New Haven runs east-west and has the distinctive profile of a recumbent human, especially when viewed from the south. This Sleeping Giant has held a mythical quality for all who see it.

The Native Americans in the area called the Giant Hobbomock, an evil spirit who became angry at the neglect of his people and stamped his foot near the current location of Middletown causing the Connecticut River to change course. Keitan, a good spirit cast a spell on Hobomock causing him to sleep forever so that he would do no further damage."

Along the climb, one finds panoramic views of Quinnipiac University.

And at the top (accessable via an easy graded fire road built by the WPA) is the 1930's era stone tower built on the high point of the Giant's "left hip" from which one can see Long Island sound and the Giant stretched out all around you.

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This lake laid down thick sediments that not only preserved the history of dinosaurs and mastadons and the "armored mud balls" found nowhere else, but also formed the foundation for a rich agricultural and industrial future. Little, Geological History of the Connecticut River Valley

This weblog is about the cultures that grew in this well-watered valley.

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