Wethersfield Historical Society
History Happens Every Day
by Jim Meehan “There are no dividends to compare with the comfort and contentment, no returns equal to the personal pride felt by the man who owns the home that shelters his family.” – Alfred G. Hubbard, Wethersfield Homebuilder But the living quarters constructed in 1633 by John Oldham and …
“There are no dividends to compare with comfort and contentment, no returns equal to the personal pride felt by the man who owns the home that shelters his family.” – Alfred G. Hubbard, Wethersfield Homebuilder But the living quarters constructed in 1633 by John Oldham and the other “Ten Adventurers” …
Continue reading “Wethersfield’s Homebuilders: 1940s and Beyond”
By Jim Meehan “There are no dividends to compare with comfort and contentment, no returns equal to the personal pride felt by the man who owns the home that shelters his family.” – Alfred G. Hubbard, Wethersfield Homebuilder But the living quarters constructed in 1633 by John Oldham and the …
“I wonder if they know at home of our real condition here.” When Sergeant Major Robert H. Kellogg described the first night in Andersonville Prison he said that “there were ten deaths on our side of the camp that night. The old prisoners called it ‘being exchanged,’ and truly it …
Irish Immigrants in Wethersfield from 1860 to 1900 by Julia Pizzoferrato Wethersfield’s proximity to Connecticut’s bustling capitol, Hartford, made the town a convenient landing place for many Irish immigrants from 1860 to 1900. Both Hartford and Wethersfield offered employment opportunities to new residents either as domestic servants, farm laborers, or …
Continue reading “Irish Immigrants in Wethersfield from 1860 to 1900: Outcasts to Neighbors”
Slavery and Wethersfield by Martha Smart The past is never dead. It is not even past. William Faulkner Sugar and Slavery The popular book, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, written by Elizabeth George Speare in 1957, tells the story of Kit Tyler, orphaned on Barbados, traveling to relatives in Wethersfield …
Jared Butler Standish by John M. Oblak and Kayla M. Pittman Jared Butler Standish was born on 4 September 1866, the son of James Tryon Standish, Jr. and Jershua McCallen (Churchill) Griswold, and the seventh of their ten eventual children. The Standish family, as others at the time, named their …
Rediscovering Benjamin Lee Whorf by Jim Meehan “She was amazed she even had the language left to think with, assuming people thought in language at all” (“City on Fire” by Garth Risk Hallberg) “Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.” (Benjamin Lee Whorf) I …
The obituary of William W. Anderson gave the outlines of a life story, but as with most obituaries, the details are lacking. This document records both what he wrote about part of his service in World War II and what his son remembers from stories told. From the Bangor Daily …
Nothing, however, became of the proposed Goodwin Park Extension. Nor, until 1938, did the town begin to acquire, mostly by foreclosure, the land in that area – including 30.2 acres from Charles Woodward. The land purchases continued up to 1964, one year after it officially received its current name. The …