In 2014, the current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., spoke at WestConn about solar energy and the misguided federal support of the coal industry.

Click here to see the Echo‘s coverage of the event.

With Confederate forces converging on Gettysburg, PA, in their second attempt to invade the non-slave-holding states of the east, the U.S. Army’s First and Eleventh Corps were on hand to hold off the invaders until the rest of their army could unite in the town.

Part of the Eleventh Corps was the 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.  A private in that unit was Danbury’s James Montgomery Bailey, who would later be known as the “Danbury News Man.”

The 17th held this ground in the early afternoon as swarms of Confederates assailed them from the front and left flank.

Battlefield map.

The 17th were pushed back, made a brief stand and then were overrun as the enemy approached them from 3 sides.  In the action, Bailey and many of his regiment were captured.

While the Confederates emerged the victors on the first day’s fighting, ~7,000 of the 30,000 Confederates , and ~9,000 of the 18,000 U.S. troops on July 1 were casualties – ~half the Union casualties were prisoners of war.  U.S. forces had extracted a high price from the Confederates, who would be forced to retreat from the area on the evening of July 4.

Official report of the 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry

 

On the corner of Osborne and Hospital Avenue, there is a large sycamore tree, shown here.

About 4ft in diameter or 12.5ft in circumference. The tree was definitely on that spot when WestConn was founded in 1903.

Here are some examples where this tree photo bombed images of the midtown campus.

This is that corner in a bird’s eye map from 1880 – the artist did place a tree in the area.

 

One can just make out the tree in an aerial photograph from the early twenties.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another view around the same time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here it is below a bit more clearly from the late 1920s.  To the left, it is just visible from a 1929 aerial photo.

Here it is, clearly visible in a 1949 aerial photograph.

This signed engraving of Ernestine Rose by Leopold Grozelier is part of WestConn’s School of Visual and Performing Arts Collection.  You may read more about Ernestine’s brave outspokenness against slavery, antisemitism, and sexism in Heroins of Freethought by Sara Underwood (1876).

From the Price of Service, CT History Review:

Hearing that a contingent of Danburians was planning to join the Bonus March on a warm and partly cloudy June 7th, local representatives from the VFW, John P. O’Keefe and American Legion, J. Irving Conley, joined a crowd of 300 that had begun to gather at 8AM at City Hall Square on Danbury’s Main Street.  Mayor G. Walker Morgan had allowed a flier to be posted by bonus-seeking vets on the bulletin board at City Hall, announcing their imminent departure for Washington. Reporting in the Danbury Evening News the day before stated that sixty veterans had signed up to make the trip to Washington, and that two-hundred were expected to take part.  Additionally, the Salvation Army were promising to provide the would-be marchers with sandwiches and doughnuts. Atop the Civil War monument in the square, a statue of a lone Union flag bearer was a silent witness as O’Keefe, Bethel’s former State Junior Vice Commander representing the VFW, and Conley, representing the local Legion post, attempted to dissuade vets from joining the thousands then gathered in Washington and the thousands reported to be on the way.  Conley in 1932 was relatively well off; he owned his house and worked selling radios and electronics.  He was also a Republican who had been a hatter before he turned 16 and who had served in France with the 56th Artillery.  O’Keefe, a carpenter and combat veteran of the 106th Infantry, came armed with a telegram from the present VFW State Commander, informing those assembled that joining the march would hurt every veteran’s effort to receive a bonus. All were aware that the BEF had grown into a more significant demonstration since its modest beginnings in Oregon.  Over the past week, local coverage of the march had increased in scope and volume; that day, the Danbury Evening News carried its first pro-Bonus March editorial. What had a week before been written off as a minor, symbolic and disjointed demonstration had animated veteran communities around the country, and now had animated Danbury. The assembled crowd and Tuesday morning passers-by watched as O’Keefe and Conley on behalf of their veterans’ organizations tried to dissuade the estimated seventy-five or so potential Bonus marchers lined up on the green from joining the demonstration in Washington. 

In 1988, Robert Keeshan, known for his portrayal of Captain Kangaroo, was invited to speak at WestConn’s commencement.  Not everyone appreciated the choice.  Read some of the commentary from the April 1988 Echo.

The WestConn Archives was thrilled to receive a box of lantern slides via a donation this month.  The slides are mostly of places around Danbury, but notably it includes many images of the 1902 New Milford fire damage, and two images relating to Danbury in the Civil War.  One these images shows four men, perhaps veterans, standing on a hillside with an American flag planted in the ground at their feet.  The image is labeled, “Battlefield of Charcoal Run .”  Likely, the image was captured in 1911 on the 50th anniversary of the “battle.”

Another image in the collection shows the Danbury company of the First Connecticut Volunteer infantry, whose veterans were involved in the Charcoal Run “battle.”

Coincidentally, Mike Allen will be hosting a program about the “battle” at the Bethel Public Library [in the Parloa Room,  189 Greenwood Ave, Bethel, CT, 06801] and on Zoom
Monday, April 20, 2026 — 6:30—7:30 PM.  Register online.

All the slides are viewable online thanks to the work of WestConn student archives assistant Mckaila McAleer and SCSU library science intern Rachel Ohring.

Another archivist preserving decaying floppy disks – “It’s a race against time (and magnetic decay) to preserve decades of cultural history stored on obsolete hardware…”

Read article here: https://www.popsci.com/technology/floppy-disk-archivist-project/

A summer “Wheelhouse” broadcast.  The guests:

Thomas Balcerski, professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University and director of the Center for Connecticut Studies
Kathy Craughwell-Varda, director of Conservation ConneCTion, Connecticut State Library
Andrea Rapacz, chief curator of collections, Connecticut Museum of Culture and History

This episode originally aired on Aug. 20, 2025.