Western Connecticut State University Archives and Special Collections
Documenting the history of WestConn and its surrounding area | Intra veritatem invenire | Established 1977
Panoramic photographs of the 307th Infantry Regiment, Long Island, NY, 1917
The devastating tragedy in Libya resulting from failing dams reminds us of the number of dams in the Danbury area. In 1869, the Kohanza dam broke in Danbury, which resulted in water and ice crashing into downtown Danbury. According to Harper’s, 13 were killed and it wrought $100,000 in damages (something like 2.2 million today). Take a look at the Harper’s Weekly that reported on the local event.
Among our WCSU Art Department print collection, there was an etching framed with an inscription to Ernest Roth. Great, right? Not really. We couldn’t read the signature on the piece. It was Donald M. K… something. Well, that’s how it’s been for the last decade. Using a bit of AI (Google image search), we were able to nail down that the etching might be of the Louvre in Paris. We confirmed it was. Great. But AI couldn’t match the piece of art to anything. Well, who the heck was Ernest Roth, then? I mean, we couldn’t find a Donald M. K… Ernest Roth turns out to be a highly regarded artist who specialized in etching. Well, that was something. We were trying to identify an etching and here was one inscribed to a great etcher. It had to be him (we hoped). The great etcher’s full name was Ernest David Roth. So, back to Google with the search: “Ernest David Roth” etching artist “Donald M.”
Guess what? A site came up that mentioned Ernest David Roth and a promising etching artist Donald Morris Kirkpatrick. A gallery selling his work had a piece with Kirkpatrick’s signature (which doesn’t look much like Kirkpatrick) – and they matched! Through a bit more digging, we could gather that the etching was probably created in the 1930s.
See https://lushergallery.com/kirkpatrick-donald-morris-biography for more info on Kirkpatrick and https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/items/show/1823 for a look at WCSU’s etching by the artist.
We digitized a letter we had in the Truman Warner Papers listed as the “Granville Letter.” In looking into it, we see that it mentioned an enslaved person and describes life in 18th century rural New England. Definitely, we will be investigating this letter further. Read the whole story at:
https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/items/show/7957. Let us know what you think of our transcription.
“SPECIAL FEATURES FOR SUMMER NORMAL SCHOOL: SCHOOL TO BE CONDUCED IN DANBURY –OPENS JULY 31.” Hartford Courant, June 7, 1917. https://wcsu.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/special-features-summer-normal-school/docview/556476455/se-2.
Bear with us.
Thanks.
We switched to a new server recently and we didn’t notice that our request buttons on our finding aids and our ASpace interface were sending requests into the void for the past couple weeks.
It’s fixed now, if you requested something recently and haven’t heard from us, this is probably why.
Thanks to the intrepid Stacy Haponik for tracking down the issue!
By 1894, just 45 years after Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, Danbury was home to not one, but at least seven women physicians/dentists. Find out about some of these trailblazing women in our online exhibit.
And…
In the Haas Library atrium, see our menu and cookbook exhibit or visit it virtually at: https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/menus-exhibit