Grating The Nutmeg

  American whale oil lit the world. The Industrial Revolution couldn’t have happened without it. Connecticut was part of the whaling industry of the nineteenth century that sent thousands of American ships manned by tens of thousands of men to hunt whales across the world’s oceans. Stonington, Mystic, New London, and New Haven were part of New England’s predominance in successful  whaling. In fact, New London, Connecticut is known today as the “Whaling City”.    My guest Eric Jay Dolan  is the author of sixteen award-winning books on maritime history. In this episode, we will be talking about the history of American whaling taken from his work in Leviathan The History of Whaling in America published in 2007 byW.W. Norton Press.  His latest book, is Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World. Dolin lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.   Note: Listeners may find this  episode disturbing. Whaling was a brutal trade - we are describing the industry in its historic context.   To fin

  In this episode, host Mary Donohue visits the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, a place that includes stellar architecture, art by some of the most renowned artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and an exhibition that tells the story of Waterbury’s rise as a manufacturing powerhouse. The Mattatuck Museum is an art and regional history museum on the Green in downtown Waterbury, that started out as a historical society in 1877.   Our guest is Rebecca Lo Presti, Assistant Curator. She served as the curator for “ The Art of Leisure” an exhibit that is up now until June 15, 2025. From pencil sketches of working-class families picnicking to paintings done by Americans on the European Grand Tour, the exhibit shows how artists depicted recreation, relaxation, and travel in their work.  They also talk about what else you’ll see at museum when you visit including the artwork of American masters associated with Connecticut such as Anni Albers, Alexander Calder and Frederic Church. And, on the quirkier side,

  In this episode, Natalie Belanger of the CT Museum of Culture and History tells the story of the Good Will Club, the forerunner of the youth club movement that got its start in Hartford. But the story of the club can't be separated from that of its founder, a woman who's an inductee of the CT Women's Hall of Fame for her barrier-breaking work in the legal field.   There are lots of ways to learn more about the history of the Good Will Club and about Mary Hall. Here’s a partial list of sources consulted for this episode:   Elizabeth Warren, “Mary Hall: Breaking the Legal Barrier,” CT Explored, Spring 2010   Kevin Flood, “The Boys and Girls Clubs of America Started Here,” CT Explored, Fall 2019   Mary Hall’s Entry in the CT Women’s Hall of Fame   Judge A. Susan Peck, “Upcoming Survey on the Status of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession,” CT Lawyer, September/October 2024   Some other  sources you might like to check out: You can look at digitized issues of the Good Will Star, the newspaper published by

  We’re celebrating May, Historic Preservation Month, with an episode on the Modern houses of the 1950s and 1960s.    Could you live in a glass house? New Canaan, Connecticut’s Mid-Century Modern homes designed after the Second War are world famous. In addition to Philip Johnson’s Glass House, now a museum, New Canaan has homes designed by Marcel Breuer, Eliot Noyes, Frank Lloyd Wright and Edward Durell Stone. Each one is a part of architectural history and is a masterwork of the era’s most talented architects. But by the 1990s, people began to demolish these relatively small homes sited on large lots. People in New Canaan  began to band together to save these artworks-”machines for living”.  Towns across Connecticut have at least one or two good Mid-Century Modern homes worth saving and celebrating.    Host Mary Donohue discusses what a homeowners and community members can do to help save these modern homes. Her guests are Gwen North Reiss, historian and author of New Canaan Modern: A Preservation History p

  In her new book, Book and Dagger, How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of the World, Dr. Elyse Graham tells the story of academics, like Yale literature professor Joseph Curtis, who hunted down German spies and turned them into double agents, and Sherman Kent, a Yale history professor who rose to become the head of analysis for all of Europe and Africa.   At the start of World War II, the United States found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today’s CIA, was quickly formed—and in an effort to fill its ranks with experts, the OSS turned to academia for recruits. Suddenly, literature professors, librarians, and historians were training to perform undercover operations and investigative work-and these surprising spies would go on to profoundly shape both the course of the war and the future CIA with their efforts.   This episode’s guest is Dr. Elyse Graham, professor in the English Department at Stony Brook University an

  Last year in episode 186, we talked about Grove Street Cemetery’s pioneering role as the first planned cemetery in the country. The design of Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven in the 1790s used several of the features that became standard, like family plots and established walkways.   Today, we’re going to move the clock forward and discuss the rural cemetery movement of the 19th century with Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford as a signature example.   Established in 1864, Cedar Hill Cemetery encompasses 270 acres of landscaped woodlands, waterways, and memorial grounds. The urban oasis serves as a sanctuary for Connecticut history, impressive funerary art, and natural beauty. In this episode, Host Mary Donohue interviews Beverly Lucas, Director of the Cedar Hill Cemetery Foundation. The Foundation is the non-profit that raises money for the restoration of the monuments and also hosts many events and guided tours.  Be sure to follow the Cedar Hill Cemetery Foundation on Facebook and Instagram to find out abo

Coffee is more than a hot drink or a boost of caffeine. For Connecticans, it’s hundreds of years of history. It has fueled new ideas, social reform, and workers’ rights. It is comfort in wartime and connections across cultures. It is universal, yet distinctly local. In this episode, the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History's Natalie Belanger chats with her colleague, Karen Li Miller, about the Museum's new exhibition exploring these connections, Coffee — A Connecticut Story. Make sure to visit the Museum's web site to see upcoming programs! https://www.connecticutmuseum.org/exhibition/coffee-exhibition/   Thanks to the Connecticut Museum of Culture & History for their financial sponsorship of Grating the Nutmeg, helping us bring you a new episode every two weeks.   ----------------------------------------------- We count on our sponsors, advertisers and most importantly our listeners for their support. Help us continue to tell the important stories from Connecticut’s history by donating a fixed dol

Carousels are marvels of brightly painted animals, mechanical excellence, music and lights.  Located in a historic mill building in Bristol, the Carousel Museum houses well over 100 antique wooden carousel animals including white rabbits, pigs, lions and even an alligator. The museum has a full-size carousel inside the building complete with beautifully painted horses and Wurlitzer music - and you can take a merry-go-round ride during any season of the year. Plus, you can take a peek into their restoration workshop. Our guest for this episode is Morgan Fippinger, Executive Director.   Plan your visit to the Carousel Museum at www.thecarouselmuseum.org The museum can also be rented for birthdays, weddings, and other events-find out more on their website.   Be sure to let us know on our social media pages which enchanting carousel animal is your favorite!   Search for carousels to visit across the country here: www.collectorsweekly.com/hall-of-fame/view/national-carousel-association   -----------------------

The New Haven Museum staff and their community partners have reinterpreted the Amistad story in an exhibition that takes a new angle on the familiar story of the Amistad.   The 1839 Amistad Revolt was led by 53 West African captives who were being trafficked from Havana’s slave markets on the schooner La Amistad after being kidnapped from their homeland. For nearly 19 months in New Haven, the Amistad captives worked closely with anti-slavery activists who formed the Amistad Committee and connected with networks of engaged citizens to organize and fundraise for their legal defense.   The New Haven Museum exhibition, “Amistad: Retold,” centers the people who led the 1839 revolt and their collective actions to determine their own lives. It also focuses on New Haven as the site of their incarceration and abolitionist organizing.    My guests for this episode are award-winning historian, writer, and filmmaker Dr. Marcus Rediker, Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh, and Joan

  After a campaign initiated by schoolchildren, Prudence Crandall was designated the Connecticut State Heroine by the Connecticut General Assembly on Oct. 1, 1995. You may not know Connecticut has a state heroine, or you might have some inkling that Crandall was maybe a spinster Quaker schoolmarm, who had an unsuccessful school in the hinterlands of eastern Connecticut.  Founded in 1833, the Crandall Academy educated more than two dozen Black women during its eighteen-month existence. In this episode we’ll hear how a trio of like-minded women helped to get the academy off the ground, and the tremendous impact the school had in its short existence.   Many of the Black women who attended the Canterbury Female Academy went on to be teachers, activists, and leaders in the Black community. Likewise, the important white and Black Abolitionists drawn to the struggle in Canterbury made lasting contributions across the decades leading to emancipation.   The story of the Canterbury Female Academy is replete with court

In this episode, Host Mary Donohue talks to Griffin Dunne, actor, producer and director and now New York Times best-selling author about his family memoir The Friday Afternoon Club. His Hartford to Hollywood family includes generations of writers, movie producers, journalists, and actors including his father Dominick Dunne, uncle John Gregory Dunne, and aunt Joan Didion.   This prominent family dynasty has part of its roots in Irish-American Connecticut, coming from Ireland to Derby and Hartford. Irish Catholics, unwelcome in Protestant Connecticut from the jump in the 1820s, nevertheless made Connecticut  home. In this episode, Dunne shares stories about family figures such as Hartford’s Dominick Burns, a self-made man who immigrated from Ireland at age 11 and became a business owner and bank president. And Dr. Edwin Dunne, a Harvard-trained surgeon, who was the grandson of an Irish immigrant and the son of a machinist at the Farrell Foundry and Machine Company in Ansonia. And we don’t forget the Hollywood

We did it!!  This is our 200th episode of Grating the Nutmeg! Thanks to our listeners, we have travelled across the state during every time period to bring you vivid, fascinating stories from our state’s history. Become a podcast subscriber to get notified every time there’s a new episode!   During this holiday season, it seemed like the perfect time to bring you the story of Connecticut’s biggest toymaker!    Of all the toys that are enshrined in the National Toy of Fame, two stand out as having solid Connecticut connections, the Cabbage Patch doll and the Erector Set. In this episode, we’re going to find out how A.C. Gilbert, a Yale educated doctor, became a millionaire with an idea he got while riding the Metro North train from New Haven to New York City. His construction toy, the Erector Set, sold in the millions and helped to educate generations of scientists and engineers. He came up with dozens of best-selling toys that were all manufactured at his factory in New Haven, Connecticut. We’ll also interv

  In the mid-20th century, Hartford's G. Fox and Co. was one of the most successful family-owned department stores in the United States. Today, many Connecticans have fond memories of visiting G. Fox at the holiday season -- marvelling at the Christmas Village atop the marquee and meeting Santa in Toyland. In this episode, Natalie Belanger and Jen Busa of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History talk about the history of the store, owner Beatrice Fox Auerbach's commitment to customer service, and the holiday traditions that so many customers still remember.    You'll hear snippets from oral histories conducted in the 2000s by the Stave Group for the Connecticut Museum. Transcripts and audio files of these oral histories are available at the CT Digital Archive, a collaborative member organization that supports digital preservation and access for all Connecticut's people. The voices you heard today were those of Ann Uccello,  Bruce Blawie, Ruth Blawie, Betty Jane Ladd, Bruce Stave, and Fanny Raptopolous.

  We all know a little about New England and Connecticut’s  European maritime history. Dutch traders came to North America to trade for beaver pelts and English colonists came to start new communities such as Hartford. But a new exhibition at the Mystic Seaport Museum doesn’t rehash this history - it looks to reveal African and Indigenous perspectives on water and the sea.    Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty, and the Sea is an exhibition that surveys the interplay of maritime histories through Indigenous, African, and African American worldviews. On view until Spring 2026, the exhibition examines  twelve millennia of Black and Indigenous history through objects and loaned belongings from Indigenous and African communities dating back 2,500 years, coalescing in a selection of 22 contemporary artworks.   For more on the exhibition, go here: https://mysticseaport.org/press-release/a-new-major-exhibition-at-mystic-seaport-museum-entwined-freedom-sovereignty-and-the-sea/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAlsy5BhDeARIs

  Early voting has already started in the 2024 presidential election and I just couldn’t resist the suggestion by my guests to explore what Samuel Clemens alias Mark Twain, Hartford’s greatest Gilded Age humorist, had to say about the United States presidents. Was Twain the John Stewart or John Oliver of his day? Known for his sharp wit and scathing satire, what presidents met with his approval? Corruption, national identity, the power of big business, and America’s global role were just as contested then as they are now. His funny, insightful observations about the presidents of his day apply readily to the modern presidency.   Guests on this episode are Twain experts Mallory Howard, Assistant Curator at The Mark Twain House & Museum and Dr. Jason Scappaticci, historian and Associate Dean of Student Affairs at Connecticut State Community College Capital in Hartford.   Looking for a fun and informative event for your library, book club, or historical society? The Mark Twain House & Museum can bring y

  Have you got your Halloween costume ready? Been on any graveyard tours this month? Well, this story for you! I’d never thought of body snatching as having anything to do with Connecticut but as this episode proves, the disappearance of a young women’s body lead to a New Haven riot. I’ll get the details from Richard Ross author of the new book American Body Snatchers, Merchandising the Dead in 19th Century New England and Washington, DC.   Dick Ross is a retired college librarian and professor emeritius from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Order his new book American Body Snatchers, Merchandising the Dead in New England and Washington, D.C. from Amazon here: American Body Snatchers: Merchandising the Dead in 19th Century New England and Washington, D.C.  Order his book on the Connecticut witch trials here: Before Salem: Witch Hunting in the Connecticut River Valley, 1647-1663   You can hear more about that topic in GTN #39, parts 1-3, here: https://gratingthenutmeg.libsyn.com/39-witch-hunting-i

  Most people know something about Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens. After all, he wrote his most famous books while living in Hartford, Connecticut. His 25-room house on Farmington Avenue cost over $40,000 in 1874 dollars. Raised as a child in Missouri, he became world famous for his wit and humor both in print and on stage. But what if the man who served as Twain’s butler for 17 years had a story that was just as powerful and gripping as Twain’s? In today’s episode we are going to meet that man, George Griffin.   Twain scholar and collector Kevin MacDonnell's biographical sketch George Griffin: Meeting Mark Twain's Butler which provides the most comprehensive look into Griffin’s life to date, and brings us face to face with the man who is said to have inspired Jim in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. George Griffin came to wash the windows in Mark Twain’s new house in 1874 and stayed for seventeen years, taking on the position of butler, the highest-ranking employee in the household.   A photograph

In this episode, you'll hear about the remarkable life and legacy of the man that Lin-Manuel Miranda called "America's favorite fighting Frenchman," the Marquis de Lafayette. This month marks the 200th anniversary of Lafayette's visit to Connecticut, part of his so-called "Farewell Tour" of America in 1824. Natalie Belanger of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History spoke with Julien Icher of the Lafayette Trail about the Marquis' role in the American Revolution, and how his farewell tour 50 years later helped Americans to reflect on how far they'd come.    Check out The Lafayette Trail's YouTube series "Follow the Frenchmen” here:  https://www.youtube.com/@thelafayettetrailinc.1207/videos?app=desktop   The website for the Lafayette Trail is here: https://www.thelafayettetrail.org/  And the Connecticut Lafayette Trail website is here: https://lafayettecttrail.org/    ---------------------------------------------------- To celebrate our 200 episodes, we’re asking listeners to donate $20 a month or $200

Author Steve Thornton asks “Who really makes history”? In his new book, Radical Connecticut: People’s History in the Constitution State, co-authored by Andy Piascik,  guest Steve Thornton tells the stories of everyday people and well-known figures whose work has often been obscured, denigrated, or dismissed. There are narratives of movements, strikes, popular organizations and people in Connecticut who changed the state and the country for the better. Unlike a traditional history that focuses on the actions of politicians, generals, business moguls and other elites, Radical Connecticut is about workers, the poor, people of color, women, artists and others who engaged in the never-ending struggle for justice and freedom.  In this episode, we’ll hear more about unions and labor strikes in Connecticut history including Thornton’s participation in the Colt Firearms strike of the 1980’s.  Historian, activist, and union organizer, Thornton was designated a Connecticut History Gamechanger by Connecticut Explored ma

  Have you ever discovered that one of your favorite places is being renovated? Like your grandmother’s kitchen, your favorite restaurant, or even a museum, and you worry that the charm or the appeal of the place might be gone after the renovation? Podcast editor Patrick O’Sullivan and Producer Mary Donohue went to just such a place, the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale in New Haven. We had both been to the museum many times before the pandemic. But, the newly-reopened Peabody Museum is not just better, it’s fantastic!   The massive dinosaur and prehistoric fossil collections in the Burke Hall of Dinosaurs are what every schoolchild remembers from a fieldtrip.  The renovation has created new space for exhibiting more of its cultural, anthropological, and other scientific collections, including never-before displayed artifacts and contemporary art. For example, one intriguing  new area was the History of Science and Technology gallery that included Yale’s first microscope — purchased in 1734. Just th