The house was constructed by Eleazer Kimberly who was an early&nbsp;secretary to the Connecticut Colony. In 1790, Zephaniah Smith, a Yale graduate and scholar, bought the home. The Smith family resided there until 1950. Zephaniah and his wife Hannah had five daughters, the two most vocal in terms of political activism&nbsp;being Abby and Julia. The entire family was known for its activism but it was not until the 1870s that the Abby and Julia became well-known. The house was a valuable property and, as women&nbsp;owners of the home,&nbsp;they experience&nbsp;tax discrimination and refused to pay taxes. The town seized their cows and the sisters fought the seizure in court and won the case, which attracted attention from all over the country and internationally.

Built sometime in the first third of the 18th century, the Kimberly Mansion is an historic house in Glastonbury, Connecticut. It has served as a home for about 300 years and its most famous residents were sisters Abby and Julia Smith, both of whom were fierce political activists involved in causes including abolitionism but especially women's suffrage. It was listed to the National Register of Historic Places and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1974.

Kimberly Mansion-Home of Suffragists Abby and Julia Evelina Smith

This trail is a work in progress that will grow throughout our celebration of Women's History Month.

Women's History of Connecticut Heritage Trail 

In her most famous work, The History of the Standard Oil Company (which oil historian Daniel Yergin called the “most important business book ever written”), Miss Tarbell revealed, after years of painstaking research, the illegal means used by John D. Rockefeller to monopolize the early oil industry. Yet Miss Tarbell interspersed in her condemnation of Standard Oil’s illegal practices, praise for Rockefeller’s enormous accomplishments in organizing and stabilizing a volatile industry. She rejected being labeled a “muckraker” (despite its popularity), because “I was convinced that in the long run the public they were trying to stir would weary of vituperation, that if you were to secure permanent results the mind must be convinced.” 
 
Ida Tarbell had many opportunities to capitalize on her reputation as one of America’s most respected journalists. Instead, she rejected the pleas of the suffragists to endorse their causes because they contradicted her own convictions about the role of women. In 1914, Henry Ford and others tried unsuccessfully to have her join the celebrity-laden “Peace Ship” to bring an end to World War I. She considered it totally unrealistic and said so. In late 1916, she turned down President Wilson’s offer to make her the first woman on the Tariff Commission because he believed she had written more common sense about the tariff than any man. Finally, she put off writing her autobiography until she was eighty years old, and even then it was a work of such modesty and self-effacement that it added little to her popularity. 
 
The lasting results of Ida Tarbell’s brand of investigative journalism, which include the 1911 Supreme Court decision to break up the Standard Oil trust, suggest that her career, characterized by thoroughness, fairness, and intellectual integrity, should be studied by any journalist more interested in recording and influencing events that achieving celebrity status.

The Ida Tarbell House in Easton, Connecticut, is a farmhouse that was the home of muckraker journalist Ida Tarbell. She purchased the property in 1906 with proceeds from her two-volume book on the Standard Oil Company and lived in the home, which she called Twin Oaks until her death in 1944.

Ida Tarbell House

By 1965, 75% of colleges in the US were coeducational, but Yale was not yet among them. It was one of the last Ivy League institutions to accept female undergraduate students. Intermittent discussions about coeducation arose during the 1950s and 60s, and Yale considered uniting with Vassar, a women's college. Vassar, however, opted instead to remain independent and begin admitting men. In 1968, the&nbsp;Yale Student Advisory Board Committee held&nbsp;Coeducation
Week on campus, inviting 750 women to stay in Yale dormitories and sample classes. Soon afterward, Yale President&nbsp;Kingman Brewster announced that, beginning in the fall of 1969, Yale would become coeducational.&nbsp; 588 women arrived on Yale's campus that fall: 230 as first-year students and 358 as sophomore and junior transfer students. At this time, only 43 of Yale's 839 faculty members were women (~5%), and of these, only 2 worked as tenured professors. Course offerings generally focused on men, ignoring women's contributions to history, literature, science, and other subjects. Housing options for Yale's new female students were less than ideal, particularly for transfer students, whose rooms were distributed among the residential colleges, located in female-only entryways. This arrangement both led to overcrowding in the entryways, and effectively hindered students from interacting and forming friendships with other students in the college. Athletic opportunities for female students were very limited. Yale officials initially deemed sports such as soccer dangerous for women, and female sports teams also had difficulty procuring adequate funding.&nbsp; For more detail on the early years of coeducation at Yale, you can read&nbsp;the essay written by Yale College student Helen Price in the&nbsp;Yale Historical Review (available online in full).

The Women's Table was commissioned in 1989 to commemorate 20 years of coeducation in Yale College. It was designed by Maya Lin (BA 1981, M.Arch 1986). The numbers on the Table represent the female students enrolled at Yale, beginning in 1873, then believed to be the date of the earliest women to register in the School of Fine Arts (we now know that Alice and Susan Silliman enrolled in the Yale School of Fine Arts upon its establishment in 1869). The Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences opened to women in 1892, but Yale College did not have female undergraduates until 1969. The dates on the Table go up to 1993, when Lin completed work on the sculpture.

Women's Table

The first evidence of Calhoun College and the land it occupies dates back to 1641 when an educated farmer named John Brockton broke soil and used it for farmland and teach sparingly in buildings on the property. As the American Revolution passed, so did Mr. Brockton. After his death a inn was built for people passing between ports in Massachusetts and New York. Soon it became a meeting hall for a Fraternity called Phi Beta Kappa. Similar structures rose up and with it came education buildings. Some point before 1800 the college was officially founded. It grew steadily for the next half century until another larger, more prestigious school, Yale University purchased it in 1831. The movement of residential college plans practically industrialized Universities, and Calhoun did not have enough capital to innovate.&nbsp;Yale made it an affiliate school that would house the Yale School of Divinity.&nbsp; The school, Calhoun College, was named after John C. Calhoun. He was a lifelong politician in the southern states, particularly South Carolina. He forged principles of secession that led to the Civil War. He publicly advocated slavery, and was a known white supremacist. He served as a Confederate political leader during all years of the civil war.&nbsp; In recent years, the school's association with his name have drawn controversy. As recently as &nbsp;April of 2016, announcements were made that no changes would be made, despite the correlation of racism with the name. Although, as demand rose from all around the country, and even Alum, the Yale Corporation Board of trustees decided to meet and consider options.&nbsp; Yale President, Peter Solovey, Yale University Dean Jonathan Halloway, and Calhoun College head Julia Adams spearheaded an agenda to rename the college. From this decision, a committee of professors from Yale and some and it's twelve affiliate schools was formed to find an appropriate name. After extensive research and polling of Alumni they settled on an alum named Grace Murray Hopper.&nbsp; A lifelong scholar and person of service, Grace collected numerous accolades. She had a doctorate in Computer Science and Mathematics. She took a break in her career to enlist in the Navy for&nbsp;World War II. Upon return, she created the very first computer language (code) compiler, which made it possible for humans to program the first computers. She also wrote the first languages for these compilers to read. She was drafted back into the Navy at age sixty where she served an additional nineteen years, reaching rank of Admiral. The committee of professors formed from the decision to rename is still together and working today. They continue to search for conflicts of naming among schools and other institutions. Recently, they have called upon major Universities such as Princeton and Texas to make changes to their halls and affiliate colleges.&nbsp; &nbsp;

Calhoun College is a residential affiliate school to Yale University, and is owned and controlled by the Yale Corporation and its board of trustees. Nestled away in a bustling community in Connecticut, the main complex sits on the street corners of College and Elm in New Haven. It was founded in 1641 by John Brockton and grew steadily over the next two and a half centuries until it's rights were purchased by Yale. Named after John C. Calhoun, a known Confederate and white supremacist, recent pushes to rename the college found to be successful as the Board of Trustees elected to rename the school after alumni Grace Murray Hopper, a measure that will take act in late 2017. 

Grace Murray Hopper College (formally Calhoun College)

Florence Griswold, known commonly as Miss Florence, inherited her family's New England home in the late 1890s. The house had already been used as a boardinghouse prior to this, but the arrival of artist Henry Ward Ranger changed the tides for Miss Florence and her house.Having recently returned from Europe, Ranger sought to recreate the artist colonies he had encountered in France. Due to the Georgian-style house's central location to both Boston and New York, as well as the picturesque scenery surrounding the house, Ranger found Miss Florence's place the perfect location for this. Soon, the Lyme Artist Colony was the most famous Impressionist artist colony in the country. It remained successful and thriving for over thirty years.Today, The Florence Griswold Museum is an incredible site housing not only Impressionist artwork but also showcasing the history of the property and the Lyme Artist Colony.

The Florence Griswold Museum is an art museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut centered around the family home of Florence Griswold. The home was used as a boardinghouse and in 1899 welcomed artist Henry Ward Ranger. Griswold's home soon blossomed into the most famous Impressionist artists' colony in the country. The Lyme Art Colony flourished for over thirty years.

Florence Griswold Museum

During the pre-abolishment era of slavery, the town of Farmington, Connecticut was considered the "Grand Central Station" among the areas used for the Underground Railroad with a large amount of residents supporting anti-slavery regimes and laws. In March of 1941, the town was given the rebels of the famed La Armistad rebellion, including the Mendi Africans and the leader of the rebellion, Cinque. Farmington's Freedom Trail consists of many different safe-houses, churches, and schools that were used to house and educate many African American escapees. Farmington's major attraction within history comes from housing the rebels of the La Armistad ship rebellion where under the leadership of a man named Cinque, a group of Mendi people who were being transferred to Cuba after being sold, rebelled near New York and commandeered the ship and steered it toward land. Upon landing, they were arrested, but in 1841, the group was found by the Supreme Court to be freemen and allowed back to Sierra Leone. The 44 surviving rebels were brought to Farmington where they received housing, schooling, as well as fundraising by the township to pay for their way back to Africa. One rebel. known only as Foone, drowned while bathing and was buried and given a grave stone at the nearby cemetery, Riverside Cemetery.A number of well-known homes including the Samuel Deming House, where Deming allowed the rebels to live as he supervised them, as well as his storefront, The Deming Store on Mill Lane was used to educate the Africans before their return. Apart from these places, Farmington was also widely known as a capital for escaped slaves with the population being largely abolitionist, escaped slaves could rely on the town easily. In fact, it was so well-known among guides and other escaped slaves, the town was usually known better as the "Grand Station of the Underground Railroad", due to how much of the population overlooked and aided escapees.

The Farmington Freedom Trail, and specifically the town of Farmington, Connecticut, was home to a bevy of abolitionist history, notably being a hub among the Underground Railroad in Connecticut and the safe-house of the well-known La Amistad escaped Africans. The trail consists of various buildings around the town that were used as abolitionist meeting houses and in helping the Mendi people who took over the La Amistad ship. Many of the locations of note are directly related to the assistance that was granted by the inhabitants towards the Mendi people who were deemed free by the Supreme Court in 1841. The town also contains many buildings that were in assistance with the Underground Railroad, such as safe-houses, schools, and churches. 

Farmington Freedom Trail Marker

Theodate Pope, architect Pope attended Miss Porter's School from 1886 to 1888. In her diary, she describes going on a Grand Tour with her parents and developing an interest in Architecture. Once back in the United States, she moved to Farmington, Connecticut, where she rented and later purchased a house, which she restored. Pope eventually became a licensed architect in New York and Connecticut and in 1918 joined the American&nbsp;Institute of Architects.&nbsp;Hill-Stead was her first finished project. It was constructed from 1899 to 1901, and the distinctive portico was added in 1902.&nbsp; The&nbsp;&nbsp;Colonial Revival house soon made appearances in well-known architectural magazines such as&nbsp;Architectural Review&nbsp;(November 1902),The Architectural Record&nbsp;(August 1906), and&nbsp;American Homes &amp; Gardens (February 1910). The&nbsp;American Homes and Gardens article, however, downplayed Pope's role in Hill-Stead's design, acknowledging only her&nbsp;“zealous assistance…to whom much of the interior treatment is due” (quoted in "Architecture of Hill-Stead).&nbsp; Gardens Hill-Stead's gardens include a Sunken Garden and a Walking Garden (currently overgrown). The Sunken Garden, designed for Theodate Pope's mother Ada,&nbsp;is octagonal and contains 36 flower beds with an overall color scheme of pinks, blues, purples, and whites. It also includes a summer house. Today, the Sunken Garden is open to the public&nbsp;and hosts an annual Sunken Garden Poetry Festival. The Walking Garden, also know as the "Wild" Garden, was intended as a transitional space in between the home and the surrounding fields and woods. It is not yet open to visitors.

This Colonial Revival house was designed by Theodate Pope Riddle (1867-1946), one of the earliest registered female architects in the United States. Hill-Stead is now a museum offering visitors insight into life on an early 20th-century country estate. It retains many original furnishings and works of art, including pieces by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, James M. Whistler, and Mary Cassatt.

Hill-Stead Museum

<div>In the years following the creation of the park, the city acquired additional acreage via donation and purchase. By 1898, the park served as a plant nursery for all city parks. Superintendent of Parks Theodore Wirth designed the park gardens in 1900. Although the Olmsted firm served as consultants for the Hartford park system at the time, the gardens of Elizabeth Park are, on the whole, more formal and ornamental in style than the more natural settings typical of a Frederick Law Olmsted design.</div><div> </div><div>The park’s 2.5 acre rose garden opened to the public in 1903, making this the first municipal garden devoted exclusively to rose cultivation. Park visitors had more to occupy them than simply stopping to smell the roses, however. The former Pond residence at that time contained a small branch of the Hartford Public Library. the park also featured a pond that was home to ice skating, hockey and curling each winter. Several years later, a bowling green was added and tennis courts and baseball fields followed shortly thereafter. During the Great Depression, construction of new structures in the park served as an important source of employment with the addition of a clubhouse for the bowling green and a brownstone structure housing public restrooms.</div><div> </div><div>By the 1970s, the future of the park appeared less rosy. The&nbsp;city determined that it could no longer afford to fund the upkeep on the rose garden. Local residents were aghast to hear that the city planned to plow the rose garden under the ground to avoid the cost of upkeep. Horrified Hartfordians, refusing to take "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" for an answer, banded together to form the Friends of Elizabeth Park. The organization began their efforts to save the rose garden by first raising enough money to replace the rose bushes that had died of neglect. After restoring the garden to its former appearance, the Friends decided to raise funds and volunteer their time to provide ongoing care of those rosebushes and the park’s other plantings. The volunteer effort is still active under the authority of the Elizabeth Park Conservancy, a local nonprofit that holds fundraising events&nbsp;as well as&nbsp;contributing their time to restore and maintain the park’s historic buildings and grounds.</div><div> </div><div>Today, the park consists of just over 100 acres, the majority of which are in West Hartford owing to shifting boundary lines. In addition to gardens, both rose and perennial, the park contains two hiking trails (one on the east side, one on the west), nine tennis courts, three baseball fields, two softball fields, two lawn bowling/croquet fields, two basketball courts, a playscape, a picnic area, a scenic overlook, a pond, and four historic greenhouses. These centenarian structures are still used to cultivate plantings that will be used throughout the Hartford park system, but in deference to their age, they are only open to the public during the annual spring flower show in March. One notable absence from the park's grounds, however, is that of the original Pond house. This structure, having fallen into disrepair, was demolished in 1956, but was replaced just three years later with a building called the Elizabeth Pond Memorial. This attractive red brick structure now houses an auditorium, a banquet hall, a snack bar and an upscale restaurant called the Pond House Café.&nbsp; </div><div>Elizabeth Park is a lively place throughout the year. It hosts concerts, movie nights, poetry reading, yoga classes and other civic events in addition to winter sports. The park is also among Hartford’s favorite wedding venues, even in wintertime when ceremonies take place indoors in the Garden Room at the Pond House Café. The Spring Greenhouse Show each March helps Hartford residents get a jump start on spring fever, and Rose Weekend in June celebrates health and wellness and the arts as well as flowers and plants of all kinds - although the rose, of course, still reigns supreme. In fact, an image of Elizabeth Park’s iconic rose arbor was chosen as lead photo for a Time Magazine 2018 article on best parks in each state – and, of course, Elizabeth Park was voted #1 for the state of Connecticut.</div>

Elizabeth Park is home to the nation’s first public rose garden. the rose garden dates back to 1903 while Elizabeth Park traces its origin to 1894,. In that year, prominent Hartford businessman Charles H. Pond passed away. Pond's last will and testament bequeathed his home, along with the surrounding 90 acres of land, to the city, with the stipulation that the land would become a public park named in honor of his late wife Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth Park and Elizabeth Park Rose Garden 

The Connecticut Historical Society is the state's primary historical repository. Founded in 1825, it is one of the oldest state historical societies in the country. It is located in an old house just to the west of Saint Francis Hospital. The Society operates a museum, library and gift shop at this location. It contains an enormous collection of Connecticut-related materials dating from the 17th century to today including four million manuscripts, over 265,000 artifacts, and125,000 books and pamphlets. There are many notable highlights of the collection such as one of the American flags that was hung in the Presidential box at Ford's Theater where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and a rare 18th century "round hat" worn by a man named Phineas Meigs, who was perhaps the last American killed in the Revolutionary War (there are two bullet holes in the hat). The museum presents changing exhibits throughout the year and the society also offers many educational programs for children.

Connecticut Historical Society

Harriet Beecher was born June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut. One of eleven siblings, she showed early literary interest and took part in lively debates with her siblings. She received formal education at Sarah Pierce's Academy. Later, Harriet would study and eventually teach at the Hartford Female Seminary, founded by her sister, Catherine. At age 21, Harriet Beecher moved with her family to Cincinnati, Ohio as her father had been appointed President of Lane Theological Seminary. Here, she met and married Professor Calvin Stowe. In her adult life, Beecher Stowe would spend time living in Maine and Florida, before settling in Hartford, Connecticut. Although she is most well known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe wrote thirty novels in her lifetime, along with several short stories, poems, and songs. The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center is a "nontraditional" museum, where visitors are encouraged to interact with their tour guides. The Center also offers a virtual 40-minute program for school groups.

This National Historic Landmark was the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, for the last 23 years of her life. 

The house is part of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center which preserves the house and center's collections. The research library includes letters and documents from the family. The house includes original items from the family. In addition to the Stowe House, the historic site includes an 1873 carriage house (the visitor's center) and the Katharine Seymour Day House (1884).

Harriet Beecher Stowe House and Center, Hartford

The historic house served as the home to John Hooker, a successful lawyer, an active abolitionist, and son of Hartford's founder, Thomas Hooker; and his wife Isabella Beecher-Hooker, a women's rights activist and sister to Harriet Beecher-Stowe. The couple bought the land in 1851 and then built the house in 1853. The home stood on what became "Nook Farm," a nineteenth-century literary and intellectual enclave that included the homes of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe.&nbsp; The neighborhood that became Nook Hill grew out of a slightly earlier neighborhood
known as Asylum Hill because it was the site of the American Asylum for the
Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb, which was built in 1821. The area
surrounding the asylum gradually began to emerge as a residential district as downtown
Hartford became increasingly crowded. As downtown Hartford was transformed by
an influx of immigrants, the Asylum Hill neighborhood became an enclave of the
upper middle class and very wealthy, many of whom were prominent in the
business and social life of the city.&nbsp;

In 1851, John Hooker and Francis Gillette, who were brothers-in-law,
bought a 100-acre parcel of the Asylum Hill district known as Imlay Farm. At
the time, the area was largely pasture and woodland bordered by Farmington
Avenue, Sigourney Street, and the Park River. &nbsp;Both men built homes for themselves then sold parcels
to family members and friends, who proceeded to build their own homes. Many of
the early residents of Nook Farm were connected to each by family ties or
friendship, and it became an unusually close-knit neighborhood of like-minded
individuals.&nbsp;

John and Isabella Beecher Hooker built their home at the corner of
Forest and Hawthorn Streets. Hooker was an attorney and his wife, daughter of
famed minister Lyman Beecher and sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, was a
well-known suffragist. The Hooker home, built in 1853, is an expansive Gothic
style house that would be expanded over the years by subsequent owners. Many of
the later homes built in Nook Farm were influenced by the Hooker home in style
and/or size.&nbsp;

The early connection with the Hooker and Beecher families helped
establish Nook Farm as a desirable neighborhood for Hartford’s most educated
and affluent families. In time, it also became known around the world as a
literary and politically active community. Harriet Beecher Stowe moved to Nook
Farm in 1863 and Mark Twain built an elaborate home on the same street as Stowe
in 1874, where he would live for much of the rest of his life. Stories abound
of the residents of Nook Farm wandering in and out of each other’s yards and
homes, with trails connecting the back yards.&nbsp;

Many of Nook Farm’s residents were ahead of their time, with
progressive ideas regarding women’s rights and abolitionism, and the community
also gained a reputation for forward-thinking, open-minded people. The
Spiritualist movement, which rested on the belief that the dead can communicate
with the living, had a number of adherents in Nook Farm, notably Isabella
Beecher Hooker and Mark Twain.&nbsp;Isabella Beecher married John Hooker at the age of nineteen. She often accompanied her husband to his law firm where he read passages from William Blackstone to her. One passage in particular profoundly troubled Isabella: It stated that a married woman forfeited their legal standing once married because they were defined as one person under the law with their husband. The notion that marriage ultimately suspended a woman's legal status pushed Isabella Beecher Hooker to dedicate her life’s work to the enfranchisement and empowerment of women.&nbsp;Isabella, along with her older half-sisters,&nbsp; Catherine and the lauded author Harriet Beecher-Stowe became heavily involved in the cause of women’s suffrage, often crossing paths with other noted activists such as Susan B. Anthony. Isabella founded the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 and served as its director until 1905. She also organized and funded a suffrage convention in Washington, D.C. intended to function as a formal protest to Congress. In addition to lobbying the U.S. Congress for a woman's right to vote, she spent seven years in Connecticut fighting for a woman's right to own property; the state legislature finally passed the bill 1877.&nbsp;Meanwhile, John Hooker was an active abolitionist, organizing the anti-slavery, liberty convention in 1846 and serving as the president of the Hartford's anti-slavery committee, which published a newspaper titled The Charter Oak. Moreover, he helped Reverend James W.C. Pennington obtain his freedom from slavery by paying Pennington's Maryland slave owner $150.&nbsp;

Nook Farm’s best days were over by the 1890s. Harriet Beecher Stowe
died in 1896, and her neighbor, Mark Twain, left a few years earlier, driven
away from his grand home by bad business decisions and personal tragedies. The
paving of Farmington Avenue in 1899 led to the transformation of the park-like neighborhood
into a more urban neighborhood, with more businesses and increased traffic.&nbsp;

Hartford’s population grew increasingly large in the early twentieth
century, and numerous businesses and insurance companies moved their offices to
the Nook Hill neighborhood. Apartment buildings were built (the Hooker home is
partially obscured by an apartment block built in the 1950s), and gradually,
many of the grand homes of the nineteenth century were demolished.&nbsp;

Some of the most historically significant homes remain, however, such
as the Hooker home, the Twain house (now a museum) and the Stowe house (now the
Harriet Beecher Stowe Center). All three homes—as well as numerous others in
the neighborhood—are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as is
the district as a whole.

For a time in the 1800s, Hartford’s Nook Farm neighborhood was a hive of literary and reform activity. The neighborhood attracted well-educated and open-minded people from around the country, most notably Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The neighborhood began when John Hooker and Francis Gillette bought the 100-acre Imlay Farm, they named Nook Farm because of its location along a bend in the Park River. The home that Hooker built for himself and his wife, Isabella Beecher Hooker, was the first home in the new neighborhood. Both the neighborhood and the Hooker home are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

John & Isabella Beecher Hooker House and Nook Farm 

The Keneys were prominent Hartford businessmen in the early 1800s. Their business in Hartford began in the early 1800s when Joseph Keney established a wholesale grocery on Main Street. He married Rebecca Turner and they had two sons, Henry and Walter. Joseph Keney died at a young age, leaving his wife to raise two young sons and to run the family business alone. She asked her brother-in-law to run the grocery business until her sons came of age and could take over the business, which he did. The Keney brothers were especially close and had a good reputation in Hartford. They not only ran the grocery business together, they lived together, even after Walter married and moved into a house on Main Street. The brothers were highly regarded for their keen business sense and honest dealings. When Walter died in 1889, his obituary was reprinted in the New York Times, which reported that H&amp;W Keney was the oldest business in the city and had never had a lawsuit brought against it. Rebecca Turner Keney died in 1848 and her sons lived another five decades, with&nbsp;Walter's death coming in&nbsp;1889 and Henry living until 1894. Henry's will included the donation of this land for the creation of Keney Park, along with a number of donations to charities. The site of the grocery store and the family home was set aside for the construction of a tower in memory of their mother. Trustees of the Keney estate chose architect Charles C. Haight to design the memorial tower. Haight was well-known as the designer of several buildings on Yale's Old Campus. The tower was built in the Collegiate Gothic style, which was a specialty of Haight. Inside the tower is a plaque that reads: " This tower, erected to the memory of my mother, is designed to preserve from other occupancy the ground sacred to me as her home and to stand in perpetual honor to the wisdom, goodness and womanly nobility of her to whose guidance I owe my success in life and its chief joy.--Henry Keney"&nbsp; The tower is unique in that it is dedicated to a woman whose primary accomplishment in life is that she was a good mother. The trustees of the Keney family deeded the tower and the park to the city of Hartford in 1924 and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.&nbsp; By the 1990s, the grounds surrounding the tower were overgrown and the tower itself had been defaced with graffiti. The city undertook a restoration of the tower, including replacing the gold leaf on the clock face.&nbsp;

Keney Memorial Tower was built in 1898 as a memorial to Rebecca Turner Keney, the mother of Hartford business leaders Walter and Henry Keney. The unique tower stands at the location of the Keney home and the grocery store that was operated by Rebecca Turner and her two boys after the loss of their father. The land for the tower and park was donated to the city by the Keney brothers as a memorial to their mother, and the tower was designed by architect Charles C. Haight and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

Keney Memorial Tower 

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born June 14 of 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, and her mother, Roxanna Foote Beecher, had 11 children all together. Harriet was the sixth. Her later success can be at least marginally attributed to her parents who urged all the Beecher children to act as agents of change. All of the 7 Beecher boys became ministers, and the oldest daughter, Catharine was a ardent advocate for the education of women. The youngest daughter, Isabella, founded the National Women’s Suffrage Association.When Harriet was just five her mother died. The young girl would take up writing, drawing and painting very much in her mother’s honor, as she had a talent for these arts. While in primary school Beecher won a school essay contest; she was just seven. Harriet’s father got married again when Harriet was young, to Harriet Porter Beecher. The woman was supposedly very beautiful and treated her stepchildren kindly. She added three of her children to the family- Isabella, Thomas, and James. The family created a great environment for learning and debate. They boarded at Tapping Reeeve’s Law School. Harriet’s father taught religion at Sarah Pierce’s Litchfield Female Academy. The intellectual conversation was common for the family. Stowe started her education at Sarah Pierce’s Academy and was one of the very first girls encouraged to learn academic subjects as well as simple arts and trades. She then attended Hartford Female Seminary, an institution founded by her sister Catharine. She later graduated, and the accepted a teaching position.




















When Harriet turned 21 she moved to Cincinnati, OH where her father taught at a prominent seminary. It was this year, 1832, that Harriet meet Calvin Stowe, a theology professor. Harriet and Clavin had 7 children. However,&nbsp;Stowe lost one of her sons; Samuel Charles was just 18 months old when he died of cholera. Stowe later described&nbsp;the intense&nbsp;pain and lost she felt&nbsp;as one inspiration behind&nbsp;Uncle Tom's Cabin&nbsp;because she now understood the&nbsp;pain slave women&nbsp;felt when their children were taken from them and sold. A few years later Calvin Stowe joined the faculty of his alma mater, Bowdoin College and the family moved to Brunswick,&nbsp;Maine, where they would remain until&nbsp;1853.Though Stowe had been writing and publishing actively since the 1830s. Her most famous work came in 1851 with the first installment of Uncle Tom's Cabin in The National Era.&nbsp;The magazine's&nbsp;publisher, Gamaliel Bailey, contacted Stowe wanting a story to&nbsp;"paint a word picture of slavery". The story would run in installments in the magazine.&nbsp;Stowe had expected&nbsp;Uncle Tom's Cabin&nbsp;to be written in just 3 or 4&nbsp;installments, but she ended up writing&nbsp;more than 40.&nbsp;Due to the&nbsp;financial security that followed the publishing of&nbsp;Uncle Tom's Cabin&nbsp;Stowe began to&nbsp;write full time. She published a number of&nbsp;works including&nbsp;Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, a sort of companion to&nbsp;Uncle Tom's Cabin, and&nbsp;Dred: A Tale from the Swamp, another more intensley&nbsp;violent anti-slavery story.In 1862, after the wide spread popularity of her book, Harriet Beecher Stowe was able to meet President Abraham Lincoln on Thanksgiving day. The story we hear today is that&nbsp; Lincoln greeted &nbsp;Stowe by saying "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." This occurrence has yet to be proven historically, but it does highlight a very important&nbsp;historical reality- that Uncle's Tom's Cabin helped illustrate the heinous nature of slavery and started a national moral conversation that had been put off for nearly 100 years.The family moved back to Connecticut to&nbsp;Hartford after Calvin retired. It was here that&nbsp;Harriet built her dream house at&nbsp;Nook Farm, a family neighborhood. Debts brought on by&nbsp;weighty maintenance costs and the increasing&nbsp;factory industry forced her to sell the home&nbsp;in 1870. The family moved to a&nbsp;brick Victorian cottage-style home near Forest Street, where she would reside until her death. While living Connecticut, Stowe started doing&nbsp;speaking tours all around the United States. She traveled to promote the&nbsp;progressive ideals of abolition and women's suffrage, among other things. She helped reestablish&nbsp;the Wadsworth Atheneum Art Museum&nbsp;and the Hartford Art School, which today is the&nbsp;University of Hartford. Stowe wrote more highly popular works during this time including- Lord Byron Vindicated,&nbsp;The&nbsp;American Woman's Home,&nbsp;and&nbsp;Pogunuc People.&nbsp;

Harriet Beecher Stowe was the best-selling author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the wildly popular 19th-century anti-slavery story. The novel made Stowe a household name in the era and garnered her an audience with then President Abraham Lincoln. Stowe was a writer, publishing more than 30 books, and an ardent abolitionist. She was also a mother and a Christian, which strongly informed her views on slavery. Stowe’s novel is widely read and commonly taught even today. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln Statue

<div>A group of Hartford investors formed Willimantic Linen Company in 1854 and bought Jillson Mills. They intended to produce linen but demand for linen decreased significantly when the Crimean War (1854-1855) broke out, which cut off the supply of European flax to America. The company decided to produce cotton thread as a result but kept the original company name.&nbsp; Over time, the mill grew into a large complex, featuring several factory buildings, warehouses, and worker housing. The company built the massive Mill No. 4 factory in 1880, which was the largest mill building in the world at the time. Mill No. 4 also set the standard for factory building as its lights were powered by electricity, belts and other mechanical equipment were placed in conduits in the floor, and it was one-story tall. </div><div>Throughout its history, the mill produced cotton thread, which was a highly lucrative commodity in the 19th and early 20th centuries as sewing machines became popular. The company expanded reach&nbsp;by acquiring companies that made other textile products. As a result, it began to&nbsp;produce threads for a variety of goods such as tea bags, baseball stitching, and shoelaces. Investing in these other areas enabled the company to grow to its huge size. In 1898, as mentioned above, the American Thread Company corporation bought Willimantic Linen Company. Production increased even more as a result. The workforce was diverse throughout the company's lifespan—especially after 1925 when the company hired workers to replace those who went on strike—consisting of Italian, Polish, German, Estonian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Puerto Ricans immigrants.&nbsp;</div>

ArtSpace Windham, a residential apartment building for artists, is located in a mill complex that was the largest in the world at the time of its completion in 1880. This building was part of the Willimantic Linen Company and the complex is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the American Thread Company, the firm that acquired Willimantic Linen in 1898. The first mill at this site was called Jillson Mills and was established in 1824 by brothers William, Seth, and Asa Jillson. Their mill grew into a true powerhouse, driving the local economy for decades and providing employment until the 1980s. 

Willimantic Linen Mill Complex (ArtSpace Windham)

In 1985, life in
Willimantic, Connecticut – and in the other old industrial cities and towns of
southern New England – changed forever. The American Thread Company, the city’s
signature industry, closed its Willimantic Mills plant and shifted operations
to North Carolina and later Mexico. The closing exemplified a larger trend.
Beginning in the 1960s, one by one, almost all of the giant New England textile
mills that once had provided jobs for tens of thousands of workers had
generated billions of dollars in sales closed their doors. For more than 150
years, the textile industry’s whirring spindles and thumping looms had
symbolized Willimantic’s and New England’s industrial prominence. Now, almost
all of them are gone. A way of life has vanished forever. 
 


The Windham Textile and
History Museum (also known as the Mill Museum of Connecticut) tells and
preserves the history of the rise and fall of the textile industry in
Willimantic and the rest of eastern Connecticut. Although textile mills operated
in the western part of Connecticut as well as the eastern, for the most part
manufacturing in eastern Connecticut centered on textiles, while the western
half focused more on making precision machines and tools like Colt
six-shooters, Sharps rifles, Wheeler and Wilson sewing machines, Stanley tools,
Columbia bicycles, Pope automobiles, and Seth Thomas clocks. The museum
occupies the former headquarters of the American Thread Company’s once giant
Willimantic Mills. 

Founded in 1854 as the
Willimantic Linen Company, at its height in the early 20th century the
Willimantic Mills was the largest factory in Connecticut and the largest thread
mill in North America. It sprawled through nine separate factory buildings, two
office buildings, a barn, three warehouses, and dozens of company-owned worker
houses, which were arranged in three distinct worker villages, Iverton, the
Oaks, and Carey Hill. It employed 3,500 workers. It was the first factory to
install electric lights, and consequently the first to operate a second shift.
It was the first factory to give its workers coffee breaks. Its massive
buildings included the iconic Mill Number Four, the prototype of the modern
factory building and at one time the largest one-story building in the world.
The company manufactured the first thread specifically designed for sewing
machines, and the thread in U. S. army uniforms, NASA spacesuits, and major
league baseballs. The city of Willimantic – located along the Willimantic River
in the town and county of Windham in northeastern Connecticut – boomed as
America’s fabled Thread City. 

Today, the museum still stands and tells the story of
textile work and its history in the U.S. Visitors are encouraged to stop by and
learn about one of America’s most important and fascinating histories.&nbsp;

The Windham Textile & History Museum is a private, nonprofit, educational institution, incorporated in 1989 in the State of Connecticut. Located in the historic former headquarters of the American Thread Company in Willimantic, Connecticut, the Windham Textile and History Museum houses a museum, a library, and an archive. Through its exhibits, programs, and collections, the Windham Textile and History Museum preserves and interprets the history of textiles, the textile arts, and the textile industry, with special emphasis on the experiences of craftspeople, industrial workers, manufacturers, inventors, designers, and consumers. The Windham Textile and History Museum also promotes a greater understanding of the major trends and changes in technology, the economy, immigration, society, the environment, and culture that shaped the history of textiles, the textile arts, and the textile industry in Connecticut, New England, and the United States from the colonial period to the present.

Windham Textile and History Museum

Prudence Crandall (1803-1890) opened an academy on the Canterbury Green in 1831 to educate daughters of wealthy local families. The school was extremely successful until the following fall when she admitted Sarah Harris, a 20-year-old Black woman. Sarah had hoped to become a teacher with the help of the education the academy could provide. Reflecting the attitudes of the times, Sarah's admittance to the academy led parents to withdraw their daughters. Miss Crandall made contacts throughout the northeast's free Black communities to attract young Black women students. They came from as far away as Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia. The State responded by passing the "Black Law" which made it illegal for Miss Crandall to operate her school. Miss Crandall was arrested, spent a night in jail, and faced three court trials. The case was dismissed in July of 1834. Two months later a mob attacked the school, forcing Miss Crandall to close. The courage shown by Miss Crandall, our State's official heroine, features prominently in civil rights history. The "Black Law" was repealed in 1838. The museum includes period rooms, changing exhibits, a small research library (available by appointment for in-house study), and a gift shop. The museum's first floor is fully accessible.

Prudence Crandall House and Museum commemorates the life of abolitionist Prudence Crandall and the school for African American girls which she ran from 1832 until 1834 when it was closed by mob violence. For her brave actions at this home and school, Prudence Crandall is Connecticut's official state heroine.


The home was the site of a girls school run by Prudence Crandall during 1832&ndash;1834 that first had all-white students, then Crandall admitted one Black girl, which made the school into what is believed to be the first integrated school in the United States. That led to immediate protest and withdrawal of the white girl students. The school was then was closed and reopened as an all-Black school, first with three then eventually 24 students, mostly boarding students from out-of-state. The school was challenged locally and in court rulings up to the state supreme court level. The case became a &quot;cause celebre&quot; nation-wide, and was subject of William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator and other newspaper coverage.


The Connecticut legislature passed a law, the &quot;Black Law&quot; in 1833, which prohibited Blacks from out-of-state to receive education unless the school's town specifically allowed it. Undaunted, Crandall proceeded. She was arrested and put in jail over one night in August 1833. Later, after receiving a court ruling in favor of the school, a mob attacked the school with clubs and iron bars, breaking 90 windows on September 9, 1834. Crandall closed the school the next day.

Women's History of Connecticut Heritage Trail

Kimberly Mansion-Home of Suffragists Abby and Julia Evelina Smith

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources