The Mapmaker’s Daughter

 

Map of Connecticut circa 1625: Indian Trails, Villages, Sachemdoms. Compiled by Mathias Spiess, Drawn by Hayden L. Griswold, Copyrighted by Mary Pierson Cheney, 1930. The Connecticut Historical Society.

It’s a Cinderella story. Mary Pierson (1874-1949) was the daughter of Stephen C. Pierson, a civil engineer based in Meriden, Connecticut. The CHS has a large map of Meriden surveyed by Pierson in 1891. In 1898, his daughter Mary married Horace Bushnell Cheney, a member of the Cheney silk manufacturing dynasty. The couple traveled widely, had a huge mansion on Forest Street in Manchester, Connecticut overlooking the Great Lawn and a vacation home in Marlborough, Connecticut. Besides helping to run the silk business, Horace was a talented amateur photographer who took many pictures of Mary and their children. In 1930, Mary, who was president of the Colonial Dames, asked Mathias Spiess, a tobacco broker who was the unofficial town historian of Manchester, to compile a map based on his extensive research on Native Americans in Connecticut. The map, which incorporates details from early Dutch maps of New England, was drawn by Hayden L. Griswold, a prominent Manchester civil engineer. The Colonial Dames distributed free copies of the map to libraries and historical societies throughout the state. I’d like to think that this map was inspired at least in part by Mary’s memories of her father, who died suddenly in 1918, while he was out surveying.

With generous support from Connecticut Humanities, the Connecticut Historical Society recently added more than 800 historic maps of Connecticut to its online database.  Also included in the database are hundreds of Horace Bushnell Cheney’s photographs of his family.

Sledding Down Drive A

Fifty years before I was born, children of the Cheney family enjoyed sledding on the Great Lawn in Manchester. My grandparents and great grandparents worked in the Cheney silk mills. The Connecticut Historical Society, 1988.133.73

When I found Drive A on a map last summer, when we were in the middle of our map project, “Finding Your Place in Connecticut History,” I knew that I had found my place. There it was on a map of Greater Hartford from the 1950s: Drive A in the housing complex known as Silver Lane Homes in Manchester. Like most of the streets in Silver Lane Homes, Drive A ran steeply downhill. Our house was located near the top of the hill; there was a big pine tree near the bottom and right after that the street curved sharply to the left. I’d forgotten about that, but the map showed it plainly. The houses were flimsy things, built for workers at Pratt & Whitney during World War II. I lived there until I was eight years old. When the houses were torn down, I moved only a block away, and the abandoned streets were fantastic places to go sledding in the winter, smooth and straight (except for that big curve) and no cars. We ran races and set up obstacle courses, jumping our sleds over hillocks and maneuvering around and under trees. My sled was a Flexible Flier, one of the fastest and best. We never complained about the snow in those days. Those wartime housing complexes don’t appear on many maps. We don’t have any pictures of them in the graphics collection at the Connecticut Historical Society (how I wish we did). Finding Drive A on a map was a special experience for me that brought back a special period in my childhood. Funny how a map can do that.

Camping at Columbia Lake

One of my favorite activities this time of year is camping.  The summer heat has broken, making it more comfortable to sleep inside a breeze-less tent, and the slight chill in the air makes it more enjoyable to sit around a camp fire.  I was thinking about camping the other day and started thinking about how camping has changed over the years.  Now-a-days we can pack all of our camping gear in a light-weight backpack weighing in at under 100 lbs without having to “do without” any of the essentials.  But can you imagine these campers putting all of their supplies in one pack?

Camp Parlor, Columbia, 1895. 1985.134.483.

Big Berries and Lots of Them!

“Hale Brothers, South Glastonbury, Conn., have printed 25,000 of this Catalogue, and will print an extra edition if necessary, so that all may learn of the wonderful productiveness of THE MANCHESTER Strawberry… Anyone who wants BIG BERRIES will receive our catalogue free, also a beautifully colored plate showing one foot of a row of the Manchester Strawberry in full fruiting, on our grounds, with berries of all sizes, ripe and half ripe, AND LOTS OF THEM.”

Advertising hype is nothing new. In 1883, Hale Brothers gave away copies of The Manchester Strawberry, a chromolithograph by the Kellogg & Bulkeley Company of Hartford, in an attempt to entice people to buy strawberry plants. It certainly makes me want to run out and buy some. To view more prints from the CHS Kellogg collection, visit our online catalog.

A letter from William Gillette

William Gillette was a native of Hartford, Connecticut, growing up in the Nook Farm neighborhood. An actor, playwright, and stage manager, Gillette is best known for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. By the 1930s, when this letter was written, he had retired to a home in Hadlyme, Connecticut. Today his house is known as Gillette’s Castle. The Manchester Cheney’s, who he mentions, ran the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company in Manchester, Connecticut. At the time, Manchester was the center of silk production in the country.

Letter from William Gillette, Cheney papers, 1795-1915, Ms 79282.

Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, CT

I am sure I have written this before, but stumbling upon documents like this is part of the reason I love my job. This letter, the rest of the collection, and many others are all available for research. Come visit!

September in the Archives

We have now completed the first month of our 2010-2012 NHPRC grant-funded cataloging project. In most ways, the 2010 project has picked up where the 2008-2010 project left off. Account books, diaries, and town papers remain high priority for cataloging, but if a manuscript collection contains more than just a single sheet, it is likely on our list.

No two collections of town papers and records are alike. Often they consist of tax documents (rates, bills, etc.), school records, and property deeds. Many times the collections comprise just a few documents, pulled (some might say haphazardly) from various other manuscript collections. Occasionally they are marked with the other accession number; most often they are not. Without any idea where they originated, it is impossible for us to return them. Creation of such collections is not a practice that actively continues at CHS. However, much of it is  information we want to make sure our researchers are aware exists. In September I added records to the online catalog for the following towns/areas: Bozrah, Burlington, Canton, Chaplin, Chatham, Coventry, East Hampton, Haddam, Hampton, Kensington, Killingly, Killingworth, Manchester, Milford, Newington, Portland, Preston, South Windsor, Tolland, and Woodstock. Many towns have already been cataloged, so if you do not see the one you are looking for, make sure to check the online catalog.

Among the other collections making their online catalog debut are the papers of the First Church of Windsor and the Tyler family. The earliest pieces from the Windsor church’s collection are the following from a 1681 seating chart.The two, non-contiguous sheets display the assignments made by the town’s Selectmen.

 

Seating chart, Windsor Church records, 1681-1850, Ms 00079. Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, CT

 

The bulk of the material in the collection dates from the late 1780s and the tenure of the church’s minister, Rev. David Rowland. It includes a letter from Rowland accepting his position, a controversy concerning some of his methods, and agreements for his son, Rev. Henry Rowland, to co-lead the church.

The Tyler family collection is mostly military orders signed by John Tyler and Samuel Tyler. The most original piece is a report of the guards at a prison in New London, Connecticut.

 

"A Report of the Officer of the Day," Tyler Family papers, 1777-1811, Ms 23054. Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, CT

 

The report lists the prisoners’ names, regiment, name of the person who confined them, the crime, and number of nights confined. On this day there were ten men arrested for desertion and four who had been taken prisoner of war at sea. The piece also details the number of guards present at the prison and where they were stationed.

All of these collections are open and available for research. Come visit! Your admission will cover both the research center and to our galleries, particularly our newly opened Connecticut Needlework exhibit.

Please contact us if you have any questions about the CHS, our collections, and the learning opportunities we offer.

Welcome home, Willie!

“…if I do get home alive I shall expect to see you in Hartford to see us when we land & when I come out to Manchester on the cars I shall expect to see you standing on the platform at Buckland with a little note for me with some little love message in it…”

Cpl. William L. Norton letter to Jennie E. Annis, March 25, 1863, MS 100767. Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Connecticut.

Corporal William L. “Willie” Norton, Company B, 10th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, missed his sweetheart. Jennie E. Annis was home in Buckland (Manchester), Connecticut.  Willie was fighting in the South with the Union Army. Recently CHS acquired two letters written by Willie to Jennie. The first was written in March 1863 from Island St. Helena, South Carolina,  and the second was written from Seabrook Island, South Carolina in July 1863.

In March Willie wrote about the snakes and lizards living on the island, as well as an alligator that was recently shot. He missed Jennie, and having lost her photograph, requested a new one.  As indicated by the excerpt above, Willie longed for his homecoming. Additionally, Willie reminds Jennie to send him the results of the gubernatorial election.

When Willie wrote on July 6, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg had ended three days earlier. “We have heard,” he wrote, “that [the Confederate troops] are within 15 miles of Philadelphia & that when the rebs advanced on Harrisburg the militia run without firing a gun! Shame on them.” He was obviously unaware of the entire story. He still missed Jennie, and continued to lament the loss of her photograph.

We do not know if Jennie was waiting at the Buckland platform, but Willie did return home to her. They married, and are listed on the 1880 census in Northampton, Massachusetts. When the letters returned to Connecticut last month they joined another item in the CHS collection, a history of Company B, 10th Regiment written by William L. Norton (MS 88894). Penned in 1884, the history contains extracts of letters from the Civil War years, including the two letters just acquired.

William L. Norton and Jennie E. Annis Norton are both buried at Buckland Cemetery in Manchester, Connecticut. She died in 1885 at age 44. Willie lived until 1921, dying at age 79.