Dollie McLean: From the West Indies to the Capital City

Ms 84342 Dollie McLean. This is a photographic reproduction by Robert J. Bitondi, and was included in the research collection, Black Women of Connecticut, for the CHS exhibition “Achievements against the Odds”.

Born (Dollie) Clarice Helene Simmons in Antigua, West Indies, Dollie McLean was raised in Manhattan, later lived in the Bronx, and graduated from both the University of Hartford and FIT. Mrs. McLean has been an avid participant in the arts throughout her life, having performed off-Broadway as an actress and dancer with various organizations like the Negro Ensemble Company.

What is this?

Our exhibit, Making Connecticut, showcases over 500 objects, images, and documents from the CHS collection. “What is this?” posts will highlight an object from the exhibit and explore its importance in Connecticut history every other week. What is this object? What is the story behind it?

Another Charlotte Cowles (Hull) letter to write about!

Letter addressed to Charlotte C. Hull from Isabella Hooker. Ms 101809.

One of our good friends recently purchased and then donated to us a letter written by Isabella Beecher Hooker to Charlotte Cowles Hull. Yes, a letter to “our” Charlotte Cowles after her marriage to Joseph Hull.  Isabella Beecher and her husband John Hooker introduced Charlotte and Joseph and evidently maintained that friendship. The letter was written February 21, 1845, at which time Charlotte had a child and was living in Essex, Connecticut.

A dreadful accident

Charlotte Cowles letter to her brother, October 13, 1833. Ms 101754.

On October 7, 1833, the boilers on the Steamer New England exploded while the vessel was unloading passengers at Essex, Connecticut. It was on a voyage from New York to Hartford. Six days later, Charlotte Cowles writes a letter to her brother about acquaintances of theirs who were on the vessel. Charlotte writes:

What is this?

Our exhibit, Making Connecticut, showcases over 500 objects, images, and documents from the CHS collection. “What is this?” posts will highlight an object from the exhibit and explore its importance in Connecticut history every other week. What is this object? What is the story behind it? To find out more,

Illustrating Stylish Travel

Often times at the CHS, we write articles, present programs, and give tours based on our collections.  Many times these articles, programs, and tours are based on information and items we already know we have in the collection.  However, sometimes the topic comes first, and the illustrations come second.

Cheney Album. Volume 5. 1991.28.5.

Auction Angst

The auction house said they would call before 11:00 am. It was 11:01 and I was in a panic, only to have the call come in at 11:02. We were bidding on an amazing collection of letters written by a young woman, Charlotte Cowles, of Farmington, Connecticut. We have plenty of other collections of letters, but these were different.

Charlotte, the daughter of Horace Cowles, grew up in an abolitionist home and her family actively assisted runaway slaves on their way to Canada. She attended abolition meetings; she commented on changing opinions in the community; she reported on anti-slavery meetings; and she read anti-slavery literature including the book Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses by Theodore Dwight Weld.

Her comments in these letters, written to her brother Samuel between 1833 and 1841, include the “new” custom of singing at funerals, local elections, the exhibition of an electrical machine, the explosion of the Steamboat Essex, and the arrival of the new minister, Noah Porter. It is these intelligent observations that make this collection truly valuable for local and social history.

The end of the story? We had the winning bid! My stomach did a final flip-flop and my hands were shaking from the adrenaline, but this wonderful collection is coming back to Connecticut, thanks to the CHS and the help of many friends of the Farmington Historical Society. Thank you!

10 Eggs, a Pint of Brandy

One of our current exhibitions is Cooking by the Book: Amelia Simmons to Martha Stewart, an exploration of food in Connecticut from the colonial times to the present. The developers read any number of cookbooks in preparation. In the collections here at CHS we have a large assortment of both printed and manuscript recipes gathered by individuals or organizations, like those produced by a church or civic organization.

Give us back our cows!

I recently came across four letters in our catch-all “Miscellaneous Manuscripts” boxes that provided a real aha moment. The letters were written by Amos Laurence of Brookline, Massachusetts, to Abby Smith of Glastonbury, Connecticut. Abby is one of the Smith sisters whose claim to fame is that they refused to pay their town taxes because as single women they had no representation in town government. The town took their cows in lieu of payment. News of their plight evidently made it all the way to Boston. Laurence seems to be rather progressive–on January 14, 1874, he wrote:

The account of y[ou]r hardships is interesting and y[ou]r action will be highly beneficial in bringing the subject to public notice, and in leading to the correction of a great injustice. The taxation of the property of women without allowing them an representation even in Town affairs is to unfair that it seems only necessary to bring it to public view to make it odious and to bring about a change. Therefore you deserve the greater honor not only because you have suffered in agood cause, but because you have set an example that will be followed and that will lead to happy results.

A letter of support from Amos Laurence to Abby Smith for refusing to pay her taxes to the town of Glastonbury. Ms 38267

He continues with some examples:

In the town where this is written [i.e. Brookline] a widow pays into the town treasury $7830 a year, while 600 men, a number  equal to half the whole number of voters pay $1200 in all. . . . That is, each one of 600 men who have no property, who pay only a poll tax, and many of whom cannot read or write, has the power of voting away the property of town, while the female owners have no power at all.

In an earlier letter Amos wrote about excess spending by various levels of government. Yet another example of how, no matter the amount of time that has passed, nothing changes.

If you take the New York papers you will have seen recently the results of “manhood” suffrage without qualifications, in the annual addresses of the Governors of States. What a piling up of state and municipal indebtedness! Has there ever been seen in the history of governments such a reckless expenditure of money, the greatest part of w[hic]h has been borrowed.

I wonder what he would think of the current threat of the “fiscal cliff”?

In his third letter he celebrates that there was a movement in town to buy back the Smith sisters’ cows and present them to their rightful owners, which is exactly what happened. The Smith sisters are folk heroes in Glastonbury, and here at CHS we have their mother’s diary (see the earlier blog entry about Hannah Hadassah Hickock), Julia’s translation of the Bible and her diaries (Ms Smith, Julia), published books about the sisters, and a portrait of their house, which is still standing in Glastonbury.

The homestead of Abby and Julia Smith in Glastonbury, Connecticut. 1979.63.263.

Dear diary

At CHS we have an extensive and constantly growing collection of diaries because of the detail they provide about  daily life of ordinary people, the ones who do not usually appear in the history books. The contrasts between diaries can be striking, as it is between the two that we recently added to the collection.

While a bit sparse, the first diary illustrates the life of a woman in the upper middle class in either Danbury or New Fairfield, Connecticut. Her husband’s  name was Ralph and they had a son Billy, whom she walked to Wooster School. I found that there is a private school in Danbury by that name. There are also frequent visits to Ball’s Pond in New Fairfield, hence the question as to their actual home.

What is notable is the number of times she recorded going to New York City to see a show or two, or going to “The Club”. She also attended performances of the Empress Stock Company, which is probably a Danbury venue.  In the page illustrated below, she (no name has yet been identified with the writer) attended a show at the Palace theater and later attended “Show Boat” on Friday. On Saturday they went to see Ed Winn in “Manhattan Mary”, but not until after her shampoo, wave and manicure

A woman from Danbury attended several shows in New York City over the course of two days. She also had a shampoo, wave and manicure. Ms 101709.

Laura Dodge wrote her diary in the midst of the Great Depression when her husband evidently was not employed and earning a wage. Ms 101708.

Contrast this diary with the one kept by Laura Dodge of Woodstock, Connecticut. On Monday, March 8, 1937, her husband Leon was a bearer at the funeral of Mrs. Howard who was only 74 years old. The next day Leon was out chopping wood. Another person is reported as dying. Leon continued to chop wood on Wednesday and Thursday. I began to think, why isn’t Leon working? Well, the year was 1937 and people were out of work during what we call The Great Depression. In fact, Leon does eventually get paid in the spring and summer for working on the roads. At the end of this year, Laura remarked that several W.P.A. men had come to work on the roads as well so maybe that is how Leon was getting paid.

Diaries make those topics we read about in history, like the Great Depression, come to life by making it personal. You are invited to come to the Research Center and read any of the hundreds of diaries in our collection. They range in date from 1780 to 1980 and were written by men, women and children. What a fun way to make history come alive!

The next question is, what will the new diary look like? Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, web sites? And, more importantly, how will we preserve them?