Nov 15, 2023
In this episode of Grating the Nutmeg, Natalie Belanger sits down with acclaimed crime writer M. William Phelps to get to the bottom of a notorious early 20th century Connecticut murder story. In the 1910s, Amy Archer Gilligan operated an innovative business in Windsor: a convalescent home for the ill and elderly. Her...
Nov 1, 2023
Witchcraft accusations began in Connecticut in May, 1647, with the trial and execution of Alice Young of Windsor, 45 years before the better-known witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Connecticut had witchcraft accusation outbreaks in the early 1660s in Hartford and again in Fairfield in 1692, with criminal trials...
Aug 15, 2022
The discovery of four 18th century male skeletons thought to be possible soldiers in the April 27, 1777 Battle of Ridgefield, prompted the most in-depth research into that crucial Revolutionary War conflict ever undertaken. In this presentation to the town sponsored by the Ridgefield Historical Society earlier this...
Feb 15, 2022
Forty years ago, a freshman legislator in the Connecticut General Assembly wrote and engineered passage of one of the most important pieces of consumer protection legislation in history – The Lemon Law (actually two laws passed in 1982 and 1984) that required automobile manufacturers to repair defective vehicles in...
Dec 16, 2021
In the spirit of the season, we’re pleased to present a Victorian era Christmas story, written by the celebrated 19th century author from Guilford, Reverend William Henry Harrison Murray. Better known as “Adirondack” Murray, because his books almost single-handedly transformed that region from a New...