Popular Pieces about Aspects of Social History

If you don’t want to do your own research, we have found you a number of popular and scholarly retrospective accounts of aspects of Connecticut life and society over the past 350 years. Here are the popular ones:

Bickford, Christopher. “Literary Piracy in New Haven: Sidney Babcock and the Publication of Children’s Books.” CHS Bulletin 40(July, 1975)3:65-74. Babcock ran a bookstore and publishing business during much of the nineteenth cen­tury. He was strictly commercial, and if he lifted a few things from British pub­lishers, so much the more in his pocket.

Bloom, Arthur W. “The Emergence of Theatrical Entertainment in New Haven Connecticut During the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of the NHCHS 17(De­cember, 1967)4:123-40. Though illegal and against college regulations, plays were staged at Yale and in nearby taverns, the first in 1755.

Brown, Martha C. “Of Pearl Ash, Emptins, and Tree Sweetin.” American Heritage 32(August-September, 1981)5:104-07. Amelia Simmons, probably of Hartford, published the first American cookbook in 1796, American Cookery. It was also the first cookbook to include native American recipes. You used pearl ashes instead of baking powder in them days. Recipes for Johnny Cake and pumpkin pie like great, great, great gramma used to do it.

Camp, Walter. “Sports and Outdoor Life.” In History of Connecticut in Monographic Form. Edited by Norris Galpin Osborn. New York: States History Company, 1925 4:263-78. About fifteen pages, mostly about outdoor life, by the father of American football, creator of the “daily dozen” exercises, and head of athle­tics at Yale.

Capen, Edward Warren. “The History of Connecticut Institutions.” In History of Connecticut in Monographic Form. Edited by Norris Galpin Osborn. (New York, States History Company, 1925)5:379-473. The author was an academic sociologist and an ordained Congregational minister. This article deals with penal, reformatory, and philanthropic institutions. Care of the poor, the crimi­nal, the sick and the alcoholic is discussed chronologically, from the early seventeenth-century to 1924. From Turner’s Dipsomaniac Retreat in Wilton to a commission on “abandoned, unfortunate, vicious, and vagrant girls,” Capen surveys the whole scene. See also Capen’s work on the Poor Law, below.

Chapman, Edward Mortimer. New England Village Life. Cambridge: privately printed, 1937. Based on family papers, largely mid-nineteenth-century, the work describes the life of farmers and sailors at the mouth of the Connecticut River. “For more than seventy-five years a daily record has been kept by the hand of one generation or another. It seemed worthwhile to sketch some ph­ases of this life as it was actually lived by people of our neighborhood and often of our immediate acquaintance—their work, play, sorrows, joys, modest suc­cesses and not infrequent failures.” (from the preface)

Cummings, Albert Lowell. “Connecticut Homespun.” Antiques 66(September, 1954). It took a long time for the textile mills to displace the spinster and the weaver completely. Homespun was still being worn during the Civil War.

Devoe, Shirley S. “19th-century Connecticut Toymaking: The Iron Toys of the J. E. Stevens Company of Cromwell, Connecticut.” CHS Bulletin 36(July, 1971)3:65-71. Founded in 1843, the firm was making more than 1,000 differ­ent toys by 1870. Illustrations and text.

Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. “Student Life at Yale in the Early Days of Connecticut Hall.” Papers of the NHCHS 7(1908):288-97. Taken from the pages of faculty judgments on miscreant students in 1765, Dexter’s article does not make stu­dent life sound jolly.

—”Student Life at Yale College Under the First President Dwight, 1795-1817.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society. New series 27(0ctober, 1917):318-35. Based on letters and diaries. Includes descriptions of buildings, inside and out; courses of study; teaching and study methods; textbooks; a typ­ical student week drawn from a diary; etc. No beerbusts, panty raids, racoon coats, or frisbie tournaments—to say nothing of co-eds.

Hubbard, Frederick A. Other Days in Greenwich: or Tales and Reminiscences of an Old New England Town. New York: J. F. Tapley Co., 1913. “The province of this volume is to deal with families and their home farms. Great farms that raised so many potatoes . . . afterward became residence parks.” (pp. xvii-xviii) The author came to Greenwich in 1859 at the age of seven.

Kihn, Phyllis. “The Circus in Connecticut.” CHS Bulletin 22(January, 1957)1:1-17. A lion drawn in a cart by four oxen in 1724, Irish slackwire artists in 1774, two camels in 1789, and more.

Kingsbury, Frederick J. “Old Connecticut.” Papers of the NHCHS 3(1882):63-84. Peddlers, beggars, superstitions, and other aspects of Connecticut life in the early nineteenth century. Also an interesting discussion of the degradation of the agricultural population between 1800 and 1860.

Lewis, A. N. “The Venerable and Illustrious Order of the Cincinnati, 1783-1900:

History of the Connecticut State Society.” Connecticut Magazine 6(1900)6:416-27. This old society of Revolutionary officers, once suspect, was revived by members’ descendants in 1860 and was alive and well in 1900 as a social, not political, organization.

Mitchell, Sidney K. “Social Life and Customs.” In History of Connecticut in Monog­raphic Form (New York: States History Company, 1925)5:279-347. “Early Games,” “Taverns and Reforms,” “Civic Pride Awakened,” “Styles in Dress,” “Architecture,” are some chapter titles. Mitchell succeeds amazingly at making some very interesting material very dull.

Phelps, Charles Shepherd. Rural Life in Litchfield County. Norfolk, Conn.: the Litchfield County University Club, 1917. Much excellent agricultural and domestic industrial detail concerning the period between about 1830 and 1917, with an interesting sketch of agriculture c. 1917 and some guesses about the future. Forestry and parks could enliven the county’s economy, Phelps suggests.

Pryde, Robert D. The History of Golf in New Haven. New Haven, NHCHS, 1952. A small pamphlet incorporating a talk by the Rev. Mr. Pryde given in 1947.

Shelton,Jane DeForest. The Salt-Box House: 18th-century Life in a New England Hill Town. New York: Baker and Taylor, 1900. The town is Shelton, formerly Huntington. This account of the Shelton family, of Derby, and of neighboring towns up to the early nineteenth century is based on family papers owned by the author. Our impression from reading chapters is that it is to be trusted, and that teenage girls especially ought to find it a very interesting pic­ture of the past.

Smith, Helen Evertson. Colonial Days and Ways; As Gathered from Family Papers. New York: Century Company, 1900; reprinted in 1960. By alphabetical chance this work follows a very similar one. But this one leaves us uneasy. Try Alice Morse Earl or Shelton first.

Solenberger, Willard E. One Hundred Years of Child Care in New Haven: The Story of the New Haven Orphan Asylum and the Children’s Community Center, 1833-1933. New Haven: Children’s Community Center, 1933. Includes a section, “What It Meant to be an ‘Orphan.’” A very interesting book, with thumbnail sketches of typical children at the Center. Ninety-six pages plus appendix and illustra­tions. No citations.

Warner, C. Dudley. “Domestic and Social Life in Colonial Time.” In Memorial History of Hartford County. Vol. I. Edited by J.H. Trumbull. Boston, E.L. Osgood, 1886. Maybe, but be careful.

Yacovone, Donald. “A New England Bath: The Nation’s First Resort at Stafford Springs.” CHS Bulletin 41 (January, 1976) 1:1-11. Health cures in the 1760s.

Books describing everyday life in the past—especially in colonial New England—are legion. Still reliable and available in reprint editions are several marvelous books by Alice Morse Earle:

Child Life in Colonial Days. New York: Macmillan, 1899.

Home Life in Colonial Days. 1898; repr. Middle Village, N.Y.: Jonathan David, 1975.

Stage Coach and Tavern Days. New York: Macmillan, 1900.

These are only three of her ten similar works. We like the several works by Eric Sloane, of Kent, some of which are available in paperback. Espe­cially useful in stimulating young teenagers’ interest in the past is Sloane’s Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake, 1805. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1962).

Teachers at all grade levels, including the college undergraduate, should know about the education program at Old Sturbridge Village. OSV has prepared and published numerous pamphlets and teaching packets focusing on family, work, and community in early national Amer­ica, 1790 to 1840. The pamphlet series includes some twenty small illus­trated works, which were selling for under $2 each in 1981—many for under a dollar. Titles include Country Garb in Early New England; Child Life in New England, 1790-1840; Customs on the Table Top; Country Stores in Early New England; The Village Mill; Medicine in New England; The Country Lawyer; New England Characters; and Rum and Reform. The pamphlets are researched and written by professional scholars, many with Ph.D’s, and they can be relied on for accuracy and authenticity. A lively and instruc­tive catalog is available from Old Sturbridge Village, Mass. 01566. It cost $2 when we got ours in 1980.