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WestConn was founded in 1903 and its first graduating class was in 1906.  From its founding, WestConn had a library and its first librarian was a graduate of Smith College in Amherst, MA, who held the position for more than eight years.

The original library in Old Main now is home to the Department of Admissions, but for sixty years it was the college’s only library.

Ella Mead Brush from the class of 1906 picture next to Katherine Butler: (https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/items/show/2091)

Ella from her Smith College yearbook…

https://archive.org/details/class1904smit/page/n23/mode/2up?q=brush

• Birth: 20 Sep 1876, in either Greenwich or New Fairfield, Fairfield County, Connecticut, USA
• Her parents were Alexander B. Brush, a prosperous farmer, and Mary Louisa Mead, both of New Fairfield
• Death: 25 Oct 1931 (aged 55), Greenwich, Fairfield County, Connecticut, USA
• Graduated from Smith College class of 1904
• Librarian at WestConn until 1912. 
• Went on to be a librarian in Greenwich, CT.
• Died of a cerebral embolism while living with her sister Emma in Asheville, NC
• She had 3 sisters

 

Find other residue of the old Web at https://web.archive.org/

In 1863, as the Civil War was about to enter its final full year, the Hartford Courant wrote on Thanksgiving day which in 1863 occurred today.  It might give some insight on how the holiday was perceived at that time.  See the WCSU Library’s databases to see more from the Hartford Courant. https://libguides.wcsu.edu/az/databases?a=h

The Connecticut Courant (precursor to the Hartford Courant) reported on the good work done by state delegates in Philadelphia, representing their constituents.  For access to the historical issues of newspapers, see WCSU’s news databases: https://libguides.wcsu.edu/databases/db_news

From Wikipedia- The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex, hand-written in an unknown script referred to as Voynichese.^[18] The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438). Stylistic analysis has indicated the manuscript may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance.^[1][2] While the origins, authorship, and purpose of the manuscript are still debated, hypotheses range from a script for a natural language or constructed language, an unread code, cypher, or other form of cryptography, or perhaps a hoax, reference work (i.e. folkloric index or compendium), or work of fiction (e.g. science fantasy or mythopoeia, metafiction, speculative fiction) currently lacking the translation(s) and context needed to both properly entertain or eliminate any of these possibilities.

Lisa Fagin Davis has an interesting 62 tweet long analysis of the manuscript, viewable here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1557092705485967360.html

There’s also an article in the most recent Atlantic.

The Juneteenth holiday does not come up in a search of the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America database, scoped to Connecticut newspapers before 1963.

However, historically it appears that communities in Connecticut did celebrate, but referred to the celebrations to mark the abolition of slavery resulting from the Union military victory in the Civil War as “Emancipation Day.”  It appears that the “Emancipation Day” was sometimes observed in January, April, June or August.

Below are a sampling of the oldest Connecticut clippings found regarding the observance of the holiday.  Please be advised that the language and attitude of the articles is frequently racist. 

More importantly, however, these clippings document the persistence of the holiday, which remained part of the nation’s patriotic celebrations, despite being ignored or denigrated by the White press over the past 159 years.

The Hartford Courant, August 3, 1865 – an August celebration in Brooklyn, NY, 4 months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, VA.

Litchfield Enquirer, January 4, 1872 – January celebration in New Haven

July 19th, 1872 – Willimantic Journal

August 8, 1873, the Connecticut Western News decided to be particularly racist in referring to the celebration.

August 7, 1874, the Willimantic Journal reports on Frederick Douglass’ presence at the Bridgeport celebration.

August 8, 1880, Morning Journal Courier reported on the celebration at Elmira, NY.

Aug 2, 1881, Morning Journal Courier again…

April 28, 1882.  The Willimantic Journal placed the celebration in Washington, D.C. in April, and with a racist flourish.

August 1, 1894, Stamford Daily Advocate – Frederick Douglass in attendance at Brooklyn celebration.

August 27, 1908, Stamford Daily Advocate – twenty days after the fact.

July 7, 1925, the New Britain Herald, 99 years ago, mentions “Emancipation Day” in Oklahoma as being celebrated on June 19th.  In the story, a Black man was sentenced to die on the Juneteenth holiday, but the Sheriff who was to carry out the execution forgot, and arrangements had to be made to execute the prisoner at a later date.

Newspaper and archival collections provide a means to explore topics such as this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

… and the less famous 29th and 31st Connecticut.

The end of the Confederacy of U.S. states that fought to continue enslaving millions of people of color was realized with the enlistment of around 200,000 (about 10% of the Union’s fighting force) soldiers and sailors serving in the Navy and in the Army as U.S. “Colored” Troops (USCT).

Connecticut’s 29th and 31st Regiments were “colored” regiments, like the more famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment portrayed in the film Glory.  However, there were men from Connecticut who enlisted in other “colored” regiments and at least three Connecticut soldiers were in the 54th Massachusetts.

• Crossler, Chauncy – Company F
• Place Enlisted: Norfolk, CT
• Date of Enlistment: May 12, 1863

 

• Hines, Edward – Company A
• Place Enlisted: Norfolk, CT
• Date of Enlistment: March 4, 1863
• Killed at the Battle of Fort Wagner, SC

 

• Parritt (also spelled Parrot), William – Company G
• Place Enlisted: Sharon, CT
• Date of Enlistment: July 14, 1863
• A former glass maker who died of disease in January 1864 at Morris Island, SC

For more information, see: https://www.nps.gov/boaf/learn/historyculture/faces-of-the-54th.htm

This is the site where Halstead and Edwards’ headstones stand, overlooking the pond in Wooster Cemetery.

In 1924, the Adjusted Compensation Act was passed.  So what… Well, some background:

The Bonus March in 1932 transformed how this nation compensates those who serve in the military, and at least six Danburians were active participants in that March.  For all the veteran benefits that the episode helped advance like the GI Bill, one might expect that these Danburians would have been commemorated at some point, but they were not.  In fact,  because of partisan resentments and red-scare superstitions of the time, participation in the 1932 March was not something that was ever promulgated.

In the collections of the WestConn Archive was a June 10, 1932, 8 x 10”, black and white ACME Newspictures photograph of Bonus Marchers then known as “Bonuseers” from Danbury with the caption: “Vets from Danbury, Conn., gather around the campfire in front of their shack, it is one of the more luxurious in Bonus City, after spending another day in their siege for payment of the bonus in Washington, D.C.”  It became apparent after looking into the identities of these Danbury vets that their participation in this historic event and contribution had truly been forgotten.

What was the Bonus March, and why did it happen?  As the Great Depression (1929-1941) settled into its third year, Congressman Wright Patman, a Democrat from Texas and a veteran, proposed legislation to immediately pay vets of the First World War a cash bonus that had been legislated in 1924 as the Adjusted Compensation Act.  Its “bonus” was an attempt to redress the fact that vets had been underpaid while in the service.  Unfortunately for vets during the Depression, the 1924 Act had deferred payout of that bonus until 1945, and given the economic situation, a substantial number of veterans needed that money in 1932.  In March 1932, about one thousand members of the VFW came to Washington with hundreds of thousands of signed petitions in support of the Patman Bill, and the effort seemed to be moving the legislation toward wider support.  Notably, Danbury’s representative in Congress, Democrat William Tierney, came out in favor of the Bill.  Seeing the results of this lobbying effort, unemployed and underemployed veterans followed Sergeant Walter Waters and his fellow Oregonian veterans to Washington to push for passage of the Patman Bill.  By late May, the Oregonians had picked up on their way east hundreds of similarly inclined and destitute veterans.  They had hopped trains and hitchhiked the breadth of the country and arrived in Washington, where the City had no apparatus in place to care for this huge influx of homeless persons.  The mass of veteran Bonuseers were called the Bonus Army and the Bonus Expeditionary Forces (BEF) – after the American Expeditionary Forces moniker under which they had served in the War.  The superintendent of the Washington D.C. Police Department, veteran Pelham Glassford, found the Bonuseers places to encamp around the City, but primarily at an area called the Anacostia Flats, across the Anacostia River, south of the Capitol.  The area was large, and the river was an effective mote between the encampment and Washington.  Anacostia was home to a predominantly Black population. 

It is safe to assume that Danbury’s known Bonuseers – William Hampson, Martin La Cava, Harry Brink, Anthony Saniuk, Frank Nasser and Michael Omer – thought their journey to join the thousands assembled in Washington on June 8, 1932 would be successful in securing quicker if not immediate payment of the Bonus, given the reverence shown to veterans in their lifetimes. Additionally, they had a compelling need for that cash because there was no social safety net in place in those days before the New Deal.  These vets, and in particular those from Danbury, were not likely without flaws but neither were they communists or “shiftless bums,” as they were called by folks such as columnist Westbrook Pegler in 1948.  Prominent voices like Pegler’s perpetuated a negative profile of the Bonuseer perhaps to soften criticism of Hoover, MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton for their repugnant action in attacking the BEF on July 28, 1932 that left 2 Bonuseers dead and dozens wounded. 

Of Danbury’s one-thousand World War vets, Danbury’s Bonuseers represented a tiny fraction. They had braved the privations and tribulations of the encampment in Washington to ultimately succeed in securing the Bonus in 1936, not just for themselves, but for all the First World War vets, and not to mention inspiring the GI Bill and a stronger Veterans Administration.  However, that small group also had little notion when they climbed  into a truck on West Street to join the BEF of the chain of events that would unravel in the next four years as a result of the Bonus demonstration.  Though undocumented by the News-Times, they likely celebrated even more than other vets in June 1936 when the Bonus was finally paid.

On Memorial Day, we placed Bonus Army flags on the Danbury Bonuseers’ graves in Wooster Cemetery.

See the Memorial Day article by Kendra Baker: https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/danbury-wwi-veterans-bonus-march-wooster-memorial-19464105.php

In the 1930s, the Main Street School in Danbury published a student newspaper called the Echo.  In 1955, the Danbury Teachers’ College, as WestConn was then called, had been calling its newspaper the Supplement and then changed the name that year to the Echo.  It seems likely that resurrecting the name from the Main Street School’s newspaper may have been behind the renaming.  Truman Warner, who attended both the Main Street School and WestConn, returned as an administrator and professor in 1957, but there were many students and staff who had been affiliated with both institutions. See the Main Street School Echo and the first WestConn Echo at the WCSU Archives.

WestConn was then known as the Danbury Normal School.  They seem to have had a good time!

See the 1924 Yearbook digitized by Ian Hendrie, ’27.