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The Danbury Museum & Historical Society Authority invites you to enjoy a little bit of yesteryear in a daylong celebration o f 18th century Danbury!
On August 28, 2010 from 10am -2pm re-enactors will present living portraits of Danbury life in the 18th century.
Join us for open hearth cooking demonstrations, “spycraft”, revolutionary war style, tinsmithing, colonial dancing and much, much more. All living history demonstrations will be hosted in the museum buildings and on the museum grounds at 43 Main Street, Danbury, CT 06810
At 3pm we will walk a short distance to the Wooster Street cemetery for the headstone rededication of Revolutionary War hero Major Frederick J. Whiting. Whiting was a Danbury resident and was the Adjutant to Colonel Elisha Sheldon, commander of the Second Continental Light Dragoons. At the end of the Revolutionary War Major Whiting was in Newburgh, New York with General Washington at the formation of the Society of the Cincinnati. The rededication and a libation ceremony will be conducted by the present day Second Continental Light Dragoons. Your presence would be a tribute to this true American Patriot and a testament that his work, and the work of all our Revolutionary War heroes, has not been forgotten.
All the above activities are free and open to the public.
For more information please visit our website at www.danburymuseum.org or call 203-743-5200.
Wow! We have a lot of cemetery events happening!
Thank to Ruthie Brown at the Connecticut Gravestone Network for passing these along.
The Coventry Cemetery Commission invites you to join us for the Unveiling Ceremony of the new cemetery sign at Nathan Hale Cemetery on Saturday, 9/25 at 11:00 a.m. While there, enjoy the recently established self-guided walking tour and contemplation area. Refreshments will be served.
Rain date is Sunday, 9/26, same time.
Friends of Center Cemetery invites you to Center Cemetery’s 300th Birthday Celebration
Saturday, September 18, 2010
944 Main St, East Hartford, CT
Beginning at 4 p.m. with the Civil War Monument Rededication
The ceremony will acknowledge the completion of the 10 year long restoration process, managed by Friends, of the town’s 1868 Civil War monument with its crowning by a replication of its missing wing-spread eagle.
Following at 5 p.m. in the entrance area of cemetery:
Displays, Vendors, Palm and Tarot Card Readers, Gravestone carving, Homemade Refreshments
Evening Highlight: Historical Lantern Tour
See the pageantry of long deceased personalities of town history come back to life:
privateer Gideon Olmsted, Civil War poet-laureate Henry Brownell, grandame Sarah Williams, artist Henry Hammond Ahl, laboring Irish girls, gravedigger Uncle Hick and pal, and a black Civil War volunteer who sings.
Tour Admission $10
(free for children under 6)
Tour groups begin at 7 p.m.
leaving about every 15 minutes and last about 1 hour, 10 minutes each.
Proceeds go to help preserve our old stones and monuments.
A rain date will be announced when determined.
For more information call
Ruthie Brown (860-643-5652)
or Ray Tubbs (860-528- 2987)
The Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford, CT wants to let you know that the Kellogg Brothers‘ print show will be closing this Saturday. Make sure you get out and see this before it closes! (see press release below)
Also, check out the new book by Nancy Finlay about the history of the Kellogg Brothers prints:
Picturing Victorian America: Prints by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut, 1830-1880.
Cranky
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Don’t Miss Out!
Pictures for Victorian America: Prints by Hartford’s Kellogg Brothers closes Saturday, July 17.
 Panel Discussion:
Reflections on Hartford’s Kellogg Brothers
Saturday, July 17 | 3:30 pm
NO CHARGE WITH GENERAL ADMISSION
Panelists Georgia B. Barnhill of the American Antiquarian Society, Donald H. Cresswell of the Philadelphia Print Shop, and collectors, James Brust and John Zak, will discuss recent research and scholarship and the impact of the Connecticut Historical Society’s book and exhibit about Hartford’s Kellogg Brothers. For more information, contact Mary Muller at mary_muller@chs.org or (860) 236-5621 x209.
This is terrible! I hate to be the bearer of morbid news (unless it’s about cemeteries, which to me is not morbid), but we lost another champion of history here in the state of Connecticut. This week we have lost Bruce Fraser to cancer. He was 62.
Read about him at the Hartford Courant here and here.
He was the executive director of the Connecticut Humanities Council and did a lot for Connecticut history and its tourist industry. Almost everything I saw around Connecticut involving culture, history, and tourism had his name on it. By all accounts he was passionate about history and was a man who rolled up his sleeves and got personally involved.
They say that notable deaths come in threes. Hopefully, this will be the last one. Connecticut cannot afford to lose such talent.
Our condolences goes out to the family, friends, and associates of Groton, CT historian Carol Kimball, who died Tuesday at age 94.
Read about it at the New London Day.
As Hali Keeler (my hubby’s former library professor) says, “She knew everything.” And I got that feeling anytime I read her regular column in the New London Day newspaper or read any of her many books. Well versed in the history of the Groton area, Ms. Kimball was the person to go to with any questions about the eastern shoreline of Connecticut. She was definitely a historian’s historian, and will be missed.
A bow and applause to you, Ms. Kimball. And many, many thanks for sharing your knowledge with all of us.
Summer is here, and with the warm weather comes Willimantic’s 12th Annual Victorian Days celebration. The fun begins Thursday, June 3 and goes until Sunday, June 6.
Organized by the Willimantic Victorian Neighborhood Association, this event promotes the Victorian history, architecture, and character of Willimantic. The main feature of the celebration is the guided tours through some of beautiful Victorian houses and gardens in the Prospect Hill Historic District. The “Hill Section” neighborhood is listed by the U.S. Department of the Interior on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the largest historic districts in the state. It boasts more than 800 vintage homes and buildings.
On the event days, ticket sales will be located at the Kramer School Exhibit Hall, 322 Prospect Street, Willimantic. The hall opens at 9 AM. Home tours run from 11 AM until 4 PM. Ticket packages can be purchased for 1 day or 2 days. House ticket includes Complementary Gardens & Tour Program.
Other highlights include a Thursday evening lantern tour in historic Windham Center on the Town Green with historian Bev York; a Friday evening brass band concert and an art show opening; a trolley tour through the historic neighborhoods; a Victorian Tea Party; a tour through the historic Windham Mills; and on Sunday, a cemetery tour at Old Willimantic Cemetery with town historian Jamie Eves and Cheryl LeBeau (aka yours truly, The Cranky Yankee!).
Incidentally, admission for the lantern tour, the mills tour, the Victorian Tea, and the cemetery tour are separate from the house tours. But tickets for these events can be gotten at the same place as the house tours.
Advance tickets, information and brochures are available at Potpourri Quick Copy and The Windham Textile & History Museum or by calling 860-456-4476. You may also contact Marian Wolf at 860-423-0352 or marianbwolf@earthlink.net.
Also visit the Willimantic Victorian Neighborhood Association (WVNA) website.
Hope to see you there!!!
Just letting you know about a special event coming up this summer…
On June 12, 2010, cultural and tourism sites across the state will join together to embrace Connecticut’s fascinating worlds of history, film, art and tourism via Connecticut Open House Day.
In celebration of the state’s 375th anniversary, we invite visitors to participate in a one-day statewide celebration of Connecticut’s fascinating world of art, history, film and tourism. Art galleries, museums, theaters, historic properties, tourism attractions and other key sites will open their doors to Connecticut’s residents an dout-of-state visitors to showcase our state organizations’ unique cultural or tourism assets.
We here in Connecticut want to reacquaint citizens with the many cultural organizations and tourism attractions throughout the state, encourage visitation, and build pride among our citizens in all the unique treasures Connecticut has to offer.
Come join the fun!!
 Open House Day
Our condolences goes out to the family, friends, and associates of Norwich, CT historian Bill Stanley, who died yesterday at age 80.
Read about it at the New London Day and Norwich Bulletin.
Whatever you may think about his ideas regarding Samuel Huntington as the first President, or his boosterism of Benedict Arnold, you have to admit, Bill got people interested in history.
Well, now he is part of history!! A fitting life for someone who so loved history and loved Norwich, too.
From one historian to another, hats off to you, Bill!
Recently, I did my annual spring harvest/purge of jerusalem artichokes (aka sunchokes…easier to spell) from my garden. I had 7 gallons of the stuff this year. They sell for $3.25 lb at our local food co-op, so this was a real treat.
Oh, I hear you saying, “What’s a sunchoke?”
They are a root veggie, related to sunflowers. They get real tall: 6-8ft. with little yellow flowers appearing in the fall. Where ever one plants them, they tend to take over. I always suggest to plant them near a fence, or the side of a building, or the outer part of ones property. They make a nice natural fence for privacy and cover up ugly fencing or siding.
Sunchokes have a sweet, nutty flavor and similar in texture to a water chestnut and are very nutritious. They are delicious raw in a salad, or cooked like any other root vegetable: steamed, boiled, mashed, roasted, baked, souped or stewed. They are great in a stir-fry…the only thing you can’t do to them is french fry them.
Read about them at Wikipedia and find recipes for them at AllRecipes or your favorite cooking & food site.
I love sunchokes but usually give most of them away because they don’t keep for very long, and I haven’t figured out how to put them up. They may be a tuber but they don’t have much of a shelf life like other tubers. Instead, I dug them up, rinsed them, bagged them and offered the rest to friends and neighbors. We eat as much as we can stand, and whatever is left over, we replant in the ground.
The hubby, a bibliophile who loves to haunt used bookstores, recently brought home an old cookbook called Secrets of New England Cooking by Ella Shannon Bowles and Dorothy S. Towle (New York: M. Barrows and Company, Inc., 1947). I love old New England cookbooks and have quite a collection of them. This one is more than just a collection of recipes whereas there are several pages of food history at the beginning of each chapter. Right in the first chapter is a bit on sunchokes:
“Some of the early explorers found that the Indians on Cape Ann cultivated artichokes and used them in stews and soups. Usually the women cared for the gardens, but for some unknown reason the men raised the artichokes. The explorers liked the tubers and took some back to Europe where they became popular, especially in Spain. They were called girosoles, a word the rougher English tongue turned into ‘Jerusalem.’”
The book also gives a couple of sunchoke recipes including artickoke fritters. Boy, those old New Englanders could make a fritter out of anything!!
It is nice to enjoy the fruits of ones labor, and sunchokes are a great spring food (although they could also be harvested in the fall). I now await the growth of snap peas, spinach, and lettuce, all of which should be coming up soon.
Happy gardening!
Cranky
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