Guides

There is a whole genre of guides to trips around Connecticut. Some are for hikers, some for bicyclists, others for those taking excursions by trolley or train. They are not historical in approach, but they do constitute primary source material for the social historian and the historical geographer. We have made no attempt to include the genre in this bibliography. A few items are especially useful to historical researchers, however, and we trust our selection of those to describe here does not strike readers as arbitrary.

Perhaps the earliest guide to Connecticut places is the account by John Winthrop, Jr., of his trip from Boston to Springfield, down the Connecticut to Saybrook and then east along the coast to Boston via Providence. It was edited by William R. Carlton as "Overland to Connecticut in 1645: A Travel Diary of John Winthrop, Jr.," in New England Quarterly 13 (September, 1940) 3:494-510, and includes Winthrop's own map of the journey, over the "Old Connecticut Path," which was marked by a group of young volunteers in 1944, as reported in Connecticut Woodlands(May, 1944) 2:28-29. Another of this sort of travelers' views is Charles Harvey Towshend's "Early History of Long Island Sound and its Approaches," in Papers of the NHCHS 5(1894):275-306, which includes several long eye witness accounts by European visitors between 1619 and 1633. See also works of Baldwin, Dexter, and Ives in the section on "Society and Daily Life."

The granddaddy of the Connecticut travel guides is Travels in New England and New York, by Timothy Dwight. The best edition by far is the four volumes edited by Barbara Miller Solomon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). Dwight, appointed president of Yale in 1795, each fall for ten years beginning in 1798, when the boys went home to help with the harvest, took trips by horseback and sulky, and sometimes another trip in the winter. He comments on every aspect of society and daily life and describes each town he passed through. Moses Colt Tyler, the pioneer literary historian, wrote approvingly of the book and added that it was "the private dumping ground of a philosopher, into which he could cast all the odds and ends of knowledge or opinion for which he happened to have no other convenient receptacle." (Three Men of letters, p. 125). The work, say Dwight's editors, is "the first native work to describe the process of American settlement and to consider the effects upon the developing society... Though Dwight never intended to be a social theorist, he understood the relationship between social institutions and community development." (p. xlvii) There is a superb index by Patricia M. King at the end of volume IV. Dwight's perception of the countryside through which he traveled is analyzed in John F. Sears’ "Timothy Dwight and the American Landscape: The Composing Eye in Dwight's Travels in New England and New York," in Early American Literature 11 (Winter, 1976-77)3:311-21. The second major milestone in the genre of guides is the work by John Warner Barber, Connecticut Historical Collections (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1836). Barber describes each town which he passed through, and in many cases he has drawn a sketch of the village center, of which etchings are included.

There are numerous guides to tours around Connecticut, most of them centered in particular areas, such as one-hour drives from Bridgeport or a day’s hike around Wallingford. Someone who called himself Thursty McQuill wrote Connecticut By Daylight: A Guide (New York: Gaylord Watson, 1877) advertised as "The First Descriptive Guide-Board Ever Published." It is a pocket-sized volume describing "what the traveler wants to see and know of the route to the White Mountains" from New York. It includes thumbnail sketches of the towns along the railroad route. A walking-tour guide that covers the most ground and is written with a purpose in mind is the geological tour laid out in Chester R. Dana and Edward S. Longwell, Walks and Rides in Central Connecticut and Massachusetts (Hamden, 1932 and 1961). In addition to excellent sketches and clear descriptions of geologic formations, the book includes a chapter on trees and other vegetation found in the area. A more recent version of the same sort of thing is the Connecticut Walk Book, publication no. 36 (1937) of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association. The original edition covered 500 miles of blue-blazed trails in Connecticut. There have been numerous up-dated editions and supplements, as well as a companion volume called Connecticut Outdoor Recreation Guide. (The most recent edition of the latter is that of 1976.) This work describes sites and facilities of state forests, parks, and other outdoor recreational and cultural centers. Another in the genre of tour guides is Gerry and Sue Hardy, Fifty Hikes in Connecticut: A Guide to Short Walks and Day Hikes Around the Nutmeg State (Somersworth, N.H.: The New Hampshire Publishing Company, 1978). It consists of 152 pages, including a bibliography.

Edgar L. Heermance, a retired minister who became an avid parks and forests conservator, wrote the first modern guide to Connecticut intended for automobile tourists, The Connecticut Guide: What to See and Where to See It (Hartford: Emergency Relief Commission, 1935), a project of the State Planning Board. This guide describes every town in Connecticut as it was in the mid-thirties, with particular attention to old houses, though other points of interest are fully covered. The Heermance work was the basis for the famous W.P.A. Guide described elsewhere. Although Cedric Robinson calls the older work "still the best popular guide to the state" (catalog no. 139, 1981), it is primarily of historical interest, not easy to find, and less inclusive then the 1938 W.P.A. work, which is discussed below (see under Works Progress Administration in the index). A useful contemporary guide for the automobile traveler is William Bixby's Connecticut: A New Guide (New York: Scribners, 1974), but that is not history. One contemporary guide that is historical is A Guide to Historic Sites in Connecticut (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, for the Connecticut Historical Commission, 1962). This fifty-two-page work includes an introductory interpretive essay by Eric Hatch, a fiction writer and long-time chairman of the Historical Commission; many beautiful photographs; and a list of historic sites open to the public in 1962. The modern guide most useful to historians is the essential Crofut, described above.

Another work in the genre of contemporary guides is Robert O'Brien, ed., The Connecticut Almanac (West Hartford: Green Spring, 1982). This is the first number of what is planned as an annual compendium of information about the state. (The editors refer to 1982, tongue in cheek, as their "first consecutive year of publication.") There are some historical sections, but the work is not intended for historical reference, the emphasis being on contemporary statistics. There are sections titled "Business and Economics," "Climate," "Media," "Population," "Towns," etc. It duplicates much of what is in the Register and Manual but is easier to get, though more expensive, and much more interesting. It is illustrated and includes a number of sketches about colorful episodes and personalities from Connecticut's past. It would be useful in classrooms where Connecticut history is studied, especially in intermediate schools and junior high schools. But, again, it is not intended as a historical reference work and should not be used as such.

Another work in the genre of contemporary guides is Robert O'Brien, ed., The Connecticut Almanac (West Hartford: Green Spring, 1982).  There is nothing much here that is not in the Register and Manual.  It was to have been an annual publication, but only one saw print.