Inaugural Doings, 1897
As we all prepare to experience the inaugural media extravaganza, it is worth remembering that for much of our history, most people followed the festivities only in the print media. The inauguration of William...
Author: Christine Gauvreau
Sleds, “20 Styles, 50 cents to $3.50”
In 1906 when the John E. Bassett & Co. ran this ad in the New Haven Morning Journal and Courier, the venerable dry goods and hardware store was already 122 years old, having been...
Standing Rock, 1889: The Sioux Treaty
The encampment and protests happening at Standing Rock are current news, but these events are also part of a larger story that goes back hundreds of years. In 1889, people in Connecticut may have...
New Haven Encounters “La Moto Girl,” 1908
From March 16th to 18th in 1908, New Haven audiences were able to marvel at “La Moto Girl,” who appeared at the New Haven Theatre in an act anchored by Valadon, The...
Connecticut African Americans Found the Sumner League, August 1894
On August 22, 1894, around 200 Connecticut African American leaders met at the famous Savin Rock establishment of the caterer J. W. Stewart and formed a new organization for the “betterment of the conditions...
Hungarian Immigrant Lives in Connecticut, 1909-1922
“Bridgeport is the largest Hungarian city in America. . . . here in Bridgeport, one out of every ten men is Hungarian. . . . The Hungarians of this country have nowhere else more...
Free Speech & Seditious Speech in World War I Era Connecticut
Introduction The struggle over the definition of the right to free speech was a central feature of the World War I era home front, and events in Connecticut were at the center of a...
The American Labor Party Movement in Connecticut, 1918-1921
Introduction According to the political sociologist Robin Archer, “Labor-based political parties have been an important electoral force in every advanced capitalist country. Every one, that is, but the United States” (p. 1). Historians have...
Polish Immigrant Lives in Connecticut, 1909-1922
Introduction On May 16, 1910, on the occasion of the unveiling of statues of Pulaski and Kosciuszko in Washington, D.C. by President Taft, the Norwich Bulletin reprinted an article from the Hartford Times entitled...
African Americans and Civil Rights in Progressive Era Connecticut
Introduction “For African Americans,” urban historian Steven J. Diner wrote, “the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century seemed in many respects the worst of times” (p....