Grating the Nutmeg

Maps tell stories. In this episode of Grating the Nutmeg , Natalie Belanger and Ben Gammell of the CT Historical Society uncover the little-known story of 18th-century cartographer Bernard Romans. A new exhibit of his maps at the museum pieces together the life story of a bold, talented, and adventurous immigrant to Connecticut who put his considerable skills to work for the American cause and may...

     For more than a generation, Kendall F. Wiggin has been one of the most influential champions of history issues and institutions in Connecticut. At the end of 2019, Ken is retiring after 21 years as Connecticut's State Librarian. In a revealing interview, State Historian Walter Woodward sat down with Ken for a wide-ranging discussion about his agency's complex role in preserving the state's pa...

How did Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemons use scrapbooks to fight unscrupulous publishers who reprinted his work without paying him? Why did celebrities like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony keep scrapbooks? How did abolitionists, suffragettes, and African Americans use scrapbooks to tell their story? Before the era of google and Instagram, how did American use scrapbooks to cu...

      Say the name Wilbur Cross and most Connecticans think of a parkway. Wilbur Cross the man, however, was a Connectican of extraordinary accomplishment. Born in 1862 in the factory village of Gurleyville, he became a world-class scholar, author, educational reformer, founding Dean of the Yale Graduate school, and, starting at age 68, a popular four-term governor who guided Connecticut through t...

Our guest, Elisabeth Petry is a journalist. She knows how to uncover a clue, follow a lead, and tell a good story. Her mother was bestselling novelist Ann Petry, whose 1946 debut novel The Street became the first novel by an African American to sell more than a million copies. In this episode, Liz tells us more about her family tree—the James and Lane Families—four generations of strivers and achi...

           Every Governor of our state makes  history, but there have been very few who know their history as well as Connecticut's current governor Edward M. "Ned" Lamont."         In this very special episode, Mary Donohue and Walt Woodward, along with Connecticut Explored publisher Elizabeth Normen and producer Patrick O'Sullivan went to the state capitol to talk with Governor Lamont about a sp...

Four  hundred years ago, in August 1619, more than 20 kidnapped enslaved African people were sold to the Virginia colonists. Slavery was well established in the early Connecticut Colony, too. Traded, sold, given as gifts, and subjected to beatings as documents attest, the enslaved people of Hartford suffered no less than enslaved people anywhere. In today's episode, Connecticut Explored 's Mary Do...

Food historian and author of Pizza in New Haven  Colin M. Caplin tells State Historian Walt Woodward and co-host Betsy Golden Kellem the fascinating story of the creation and rise to world-class celebrity of New Haven Pizza. Join us at Modern Apizza in New Haven for a lunch-time food and information feast you won't want to miss. And at the end, you'll hear about a special offer that might have you...

In this installment of GTN, Natalie Belanger of the Connecticut Historical Society takes a walk through the museum's archival collection of documents related to the Ku Klux Klan. You'll learn about the Klan's sudden rise, and rapid fall, in 1920s Connecticut, a dark time when Connecticut was torn by disagreements over immigration policy and the changing demographics of United States. To learn more...

In this Gate-leg Table interview with state historian Walt Woodward, transportation historian Richard DeLuca takes us on an expert's tour of Connecticut's long history of charging people to get from here to there. From turnpikes to bicycle roads, the state highway system to the parkways and toll roads Connecticut got rid of in the 1980s, DeLuca provides the background you need to make good decisio...

Two of Connecticut's most influential women, Beatrice Fox Auerbach, the owner of G. Fox, the largest privately-owned department store in the United States at the time and U.S. Congresswoman Chase Going Woodhouse, the second woman to be elected to the US Congress from Connecticut, spent seven weeks travelling through 10 countries in the Middle East and Europe in 1949. Only four years after the end...

This summer the Connecticut Historical Society is hosting an exhibition called  Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow . It's a traveling show that originated at the New-York Historical Society. The exhibition explores the struggle for full citizenship and racial equality that unfolded after the Civil War. Even though northern states like Connecticut did not institute Jim Crow segregation by law...

BONUS CONTENT: LECTURE ONLY 

  In Part 2 of our Series Commemorating the 250th Anniversary of the Founding of Dartmouth College and Its Roots in the town of Columbia. Mohegan Elder Beth Regan tells the story of Samson Occom. Occom,  a Mohegan convert to Christianity,  was educated by Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, became a teacher and minister, raised much of the money used to establish Dartmouth, and went on to found the utopian nat...

Recently, alumni of Dartmouth College, members of the Mohegan nation, the Columbia Historical Society and state and local officials gathered in the quiet corner town of Columbia to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of that Ivy League Institution. Why Columbia? That is where the Great Awakening minister Eleazar Wheelock, inspired by the educational achievements of Mohegan student Sa...

This episode celebrates the 100 th  anniversary of the most influential design school of the twentieth century, the Bauhaus, and Connecticut's connection to it.  Connecticut Explored's Assistant Publisher Mary Donohue and conceptual artist, photographer and frequent Connecticut Explored contributor Bob Gregson talk about pioneering Modern artists Anni and Josef Albers, who escaped Nazi Germany in...

                It's not very often that a historian interviews a poet for a history podcast, but in this episode state historian Walt Woodward interviews award-winning poet, novelist, essayist, environmentalist, and former Deputy Commission of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection David K. Leff about his   new verse novel,  The Breach: Voices Haunting a New England Mill Town (Hom...

In this podcast cross-over episode,  Johnna Kaplan, author of  Connecticut Explored's  spring 2019 story about Fort Trumbull in New London, Connecticut is joined by her  Going/Steady podcast co-host Kerri Provost. Listen as they dive into the history of Fort Trumbull, a Connecticut state park that's seen a devastating Revolutionary War battle, witnessed Prohibition-era high-speed boat chases, and...

The story behind this episode started with the high-profile heist in 1991 of a stained-glass window from the nineteenth century mausoleum of a New London industrialist. The window was designed by world-famous artist Louis Comfort Tiffany.  But the thieves hadn't counted on a persistent detective. Tiffany, best known for his brilliant innovations in glass, had deep Connecticut roots. A new permanen...

Recently, US News and World Report ranked Connecticut 4th best among the 50 states in the quality of our healthcare. We have great research universities and teaching hospitals, and pharma, biotech, and medical engineering companies most states envy. That's what makes this podcast so surprising. This is the story of how the little Litchfield County hill town of Sharon – with a population of 2700 pe...

After World War II, one Connecticut community made a conscious effort to reject racial segregation. The founders of Village Creek in Norwalk created a cooperative neighborhood which promised not to discriminate based on "race, color, creed or politics."   Over the next decades, the Villagers faced criticism from many quarters, but the community survived and thrives today. In this episode, Natalie...

      S tate Historian Walt Woodward asked five of Connecticut's leading voices for the history community, what their favorite winter history reads are this year. Briann Greenfield of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, State Librarian Ken Wiggin, Sally Whipple of the Old State House, Jason Mancini of CTHumanities, and Christina Volpe of the Connecticut League of History Organizations, each shared t...

This is the fifth in our series of talks presented by Connecticut's Old State House commemorating the 300th anniversary of Connecticut's first state constitution. In this episode judges Henry Cohn and Jon Blue wrap up our discussion of the state's first constitution in "Why the Constitution of 1818 Matters Today." This has been a great series pairing historians and legal scholars. In the first in...

  Charles Lyle, executive director of the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum in Wethersfield, whets your appetite for a visit to the Webb, Stevens, and Deane houses to see how the holidays were celebrated in three eras: c. 1770, c. 1830, and c. 1930. Find out how, in the 1800s, Clement C. Moore and Thomas Nast created Santa Claus, and the origin of the New Year's resolution--all in this episode of Grating...

Food historians Keith Staveley and Kathleen Fitzgerald join state historian Walt Woodward at his dinner table in Columbia for a talk about traditional New England holiday foods - authentic and not-so-authentic – and the stories behind them.  PLUS, Keith and Kathy brought along 9 truly historic and delicious New England food recipes, translated into modern cooking instructions kitchen-tested for au...