Grating the Nutmeg

Anna Mae Duane has written an amazing new book about James McCune Smith and Henry Garnet, two African American boys who met as young students at the New York African Free School on Mulberry street. Their intertwined, but very different lives of antebellum antislavery activism helped define the possibilities for blacks in American Society. State historian Walt Woodward interviews UCONN English professor Duane, who talks about Educated for Freedom, and the inspiring and informative example Smith and Garnet provided for their generation, and ours. Episode recorded by Walt Woodward. Edited, mixed, and assembled by Matt Berky at Massive Productions

In the Winter 2019 issue of Connecticut Explored, Museum of Connecticut History curator Dave Corrigan tackles the obsolescence of everyday objects such as typewriters that were replaced by personal computers. With the advent of digital recording, CDs, and streaming music services, perhaps no industry has experienced more rapid change in the last 20 years than the music industry. But as historians, we know that some people value doing things in the traditional way. In today's episode, Assistant Publisher Mary Donohue and podcast engineer Patrick O'Sullivan visit Connecticut's legendary Dirt Floor Recording and Production Studios to talk to musician and Dirt Floor producer Eric Lichter. Connecticut Public Radio's John Dankosky calls Dirt Floor "the Music Sanctuary of Connecticut". Hear more about how Lichter uses old fashioned, hands-on musical instruments and recording methods to produce some of Connecticut's most popular new musicians. We wish to thank our guests Eric Michael Lichter and musician Angela Luna. To learn more about Dirt Floor Recording and Production Studios, go to dirtfloorrecordingstudio.com and for more about Angela Luna, go to her Facebook page at Luna & the Lost Souls. Our thanks to Luna & the Lost Souls for the music in the episode. This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Assistant Publisher of Connecticut Explored, and engineered by Patrick O'Sullivan.

In our first episode for 2020, state historian Walt Woodward interviews author and historian Tom Shachtman talks about his just released book, The Founding Fortunes: How America's Wealthy Paid for and Profited From America's Revolution. In this fascinating economic history covering the years from the Birth of the Republic to the end of the War of 1812, Shachtman asks an important question most historians don't consider: Who paid for the war for independence? The answers come with some profound insights that still resonate in the present. Shachtman also helps us understand the national significance of a number of famous Revolutionary Connecticans, including Jeremiah Wadsworth, SIlas Deane, Eli Whitney, John Fitch, and Oliver Wolcott, Jr.

For your holiday enjoyment, State Historian Walt Woodward has gathered together three historic Connecticut Christmas stories, and a Christmas Song: Francis S. Parsons "The Christmas Party" (1923), Louise Chandler Moulton's "What Came to Olive Haygarth" (1867), Abby Allin's "Old Santa Claus (1850), and Walt Woodward's own "A Children's Christmas." Happy Holidays From All the Grating the Nutmeg Team.

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 have paid the ultimate price for it. "War, Maps, Mystery: Dutch Mapmaker Bernard Romans and the American Revolution" is on view at the Connecticut Historical Society until May 2, 2020. To learn more, visit chs.org. For more great stories on maps, order Connecticut Explored's back issue for Spring 2012 -entitled "Putting Connecticut on the Map"- at our website at ctexplored.org This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Asst. Publisher of Connecticut Explored, and engineered by Patrick O'Sullivan.

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 past, the effect of the Internet on historical research and libraries, the role of Connecticut history in public education, his successes and regrets, some advice for his successor, and more.

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 curate printed stories that contained information they wanted to save for the future? In this episode, our guest, Dr. Ellen Gruber Garvey explores how Americans from all walks of life created scrapbooks to document, store, critique, and participate in a rapidly changing world of information overload. This episode was recorded as a lecture at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. You'll have to use your imagination a little to picture some of the types of scrapbooks that Dr. Garvey refers to but you'll be fascinated by impact scrapbooks had on American history. We wish to thank our guest Dr. Ellen Gruber Garvey, professor of English at the New Jersey City University and the host for the lecture, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Read more in Dr. Garvey's book Writing with Scissors American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance published by Oxford University Press. This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Assistant Publisher of Connecticut Explored, and engineered by Patrick O'Sullivan. To hear more episodes of Grating the Nutmeg, subscribe on iTunes, IHeartRadio, GooglePlay, Spotify or at gratingthenutmeg.libsyn.com. Subscribe to Connecticut Explored and get the upcoming Winter issue with stories about events or inventions that disrupted history. Subscribe, buy back issues and collections—at ctexplored.org

" class= "Apple-web-attachment Apple-edge-to-edge-visual-media" style= "caret-color: #000000; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; opacity: 1;" /> 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 the worst years of the Great Depression. In this episode, state historian Walt Woodward sits down at the New Haven Museum with poet and publisher David Wilk, whose City Point Press recently reissued Cross's 1943 autobiography Connecticut Yankee: An Autobiography of Wilbur L. Cross, to discuss Cross's remarkable nineteenth and twentieth century life. As a bonus, we include a reading by David Wilk of Wilbur Cross's 1936 Thanksgiving Proclamation, regarded then and now for its eloquent invitation to thankful reflection.

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 achievers descended from self-emancipated slaves, who settled in New Haven, Hartford, and Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Four hundred family letters survive, many of which contained stories that were fodder for Ann Petry's novels. Hear more about how Liz and two of her cousins are taking the family's story to the screen. We join Steve Courtney at the Mark Twain House & Museum as he introduces the lecture from which this podcast was recorded. We wish to thank our guest Elisabeth Petry and the host for the lecture, the Mark Twain House & Museum. Read more about Liz's search for her family history in the Fall 2019 issue of Connecticut Explored where you'll also find Martha Hall Kelly's story about Caroline Ferriday. You can listen to our podcast with Kelly in episode 34 and to hear more about Barbara Beeching's research on the black middle class in Hartford, listen to Episode 53 of Grating the Nutmeg. For more information on the James Family project and documentary go to https://www.jamesfamilyletters.com/ This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, Assistant Publisher of Connecticut Explored, and engineered by Patrick O'Sullivan. To hear more episodes of Grating the Nutmeg, subscribe on iTunes, IHeartRadio, GooglePlay, Spotify or at gratingthenutmeg.libsyn.com Please leave a review! We'd love to get your feedback!

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 speech – and now audio essay he recorded for this podcast – titled "100 Years of Fake News and Real and Fake Wars." In an era when Americans are challenged to separate fact from fiction in a myriad of different media, the Governor's message is a kind of cautionary tale for all of us. And, as you'll see, it reflects some keen and insightful thinking from a governor who takes his history seriously.