221. New Haven’s Lt. Augusto Rodríguez, First Civil War Soldier from Puerto Rico
Grating the Nutmeg
More than twenty thousand Hispanic Americans served in the Civil War. When Cuban-born Loreta Velázquez’s husband would not allow her to join him on the battlefield, she assumed the role of First Lieutenant Harry T. Buford to be near him. Philip Bazaar, born in Chile, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his courageous exploits during the assault of Fort Fisher. The spying efforts of Floridian Maria Dolores Sánchez and her two sisters led to a Union defeat at the Battle of Horse Landing. Delving into the lives of these individuals, historian A.J. Schenkman, author of...
info_outline
220. Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Plant: The Promise and Peril of Nuclear Energy
Grating the Nutmeg
The Connecticut Yankee atomic power plant was one of the earliest commercial nuclear reactors in New England. Though it was dismantled at the turn of the 21st century, its legacy remains, both for the landscape of the Connecticut River Valley where it once stood, and for contemporary debates about energy today. This episode explores the plant’s life and afterlife, the activists who opposed it, and the promises and perils of nuclear power in the 1960s and today, through the reminiscences of Paul Gionfriddo, a former state legislator and longtime president of People’s Action for...
info_outline
219. Transgender History and Connecticut Transgender Pioneer Dr. Alan L. Hart
Grating the Nutmeg
The transgender community has struggled to receive recognition and equality. In this episode, we explore the history of the transgender community over the last 100 years with Dr. Susan Stryker and the life of Dr. Alan L. Hart, a transgender medical doctor working on the forefront of an urgent public health crisis, tuberculosis, in Connecticut. Hart, Director of Connecticut’s Office of TB Rehabilitation, is credited with saving countless lives. My guest is Dr. Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History, the Root of Today’s Revolution, published in 2017. Transgender...
info_outline
Get cool stuff in our second annual online #GTN benefit auction!
Grating the Nutmeg
We have amazing items for you in our second annual online benefit auction! The auction is the largest fundraiser of the year for our award-winning CT history podcast. New episodes are released every two weeks full of CT history makers and untold stories, and all episodes are free for all to listen to! Bidding begins on September 25, 2025 at midnight. Bids close at 11:59 on October 18, 2025.
info_outline
218. Connecticut in the Industrial Revolution: Making Buttons in Cheshire
Grating the Nutmeg
A button sounds like a very ordinary thing. But button production in Cheshire was part of Connecticut’s pioneering role in the precision manufacturing revolution of the nineteenth century. According to connecticuthistory.org, button production began with pewter buttons in the mid-eighteenth century but quickly turned to brass in the early nineteenth century. By 1860s, machines in the Scovill Brass factory in Waterbury produced 216,000 buttons per day. This type of industrial production volume for an everyday necessity such as buttons propelled investors and entrepreneurs to establish...
info_outline
217. The Smith Family of Glastonbury: Hannah and Her Daughters
Grating the Nutmeg
In this episode of Grating the Nutmeg, Natalie Belanger tells us about how two journals kept by a Revolutionary War-era girl in the ’s collection have inspired an original work of music. Several years ago, Leonard Raybon (Associate Professor of Music at Tulane University) encountered two journals and other writings by Hannah Hadassah Hickok, held at the Connecticut Museum. Hannah was the matriarch of the non-conformist Smith Family of Glastonbury. Her daughters would go on to became nationally famous for protesting their lack of voting rights in the 1870s by...
info_outline
216. Brewing Community: Labor, Alcohol, and Unrest in Industrial New Britain
Grating the Nutmeg
Immigrants from Lithuania who made their way to New Britain, Connecticut at the beginning of the twentieth century found work in the city’s factories turning out tools and hardware. Their weekly routine included work, church and socializing at neighborhood saloons. But major upheavals in American society were happening at the time that affected their lives including the rise of organized labor, the temperance movement, anti-immigrant sentiment, and labor strikes. In this episode, we have two new voices in public history, Central Connecticut State University students Jon Kozak and...
info_outline
215. Connecticut’s Wild Visionary: Children’s Author Maurice Sendak
Grating the Nutmeg
Artist and author Maurice Sendak was able to achieve significant and enduring success in art and children’s literature during his lifetime. But what secrets did he had to keep from his family, publishers, parents, librarians, and readers as a gay, Jewish man negotiating the field of children’s literature? Sendak wrote and illustrated books that nurtured children and adults alike. Winner of the 1964 Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are, in 1970 Sendak became the first American illustrator to receive the international Hans Christian Anderson Award, given in...
info_outline
214. Monstrous: The Business of Whaling
Grating the Nutmeg
Whaling was big business. Connecticut and her sister New England states built ships, forged cast iron tools, produced wooden storage casks and outfitted sailors. Stonington, Mystic, New London, and New Haven were part of New England’s predominance in successful whaling. We’re going to get into the nitty gritty of the trade in this episode and hear about some of the striking artifacts from Mystic Seaport’s whaling collection - tools, ship logs, harpoons, blubber hooks and scrimshaw - that are on view. They speak to the staggering risks and rewards of the whaling industry that lit...
info_outline
213. When the Continental Army Camped in Connecticut
Grating the Nutmeg
The Redding Encampment, Connecticut’s first State Archaeological Preserve, is located in Putnam Memorial State Park. Understanding of the Revolutionary War has emphasized the battles, maneuvers, and war meetings; but far more time was expended during the long periods of winter encampment. The winter months were a brutal test of individual fortitude, unifying command, and local support. In the journal Joseph Plumb Martin kept at the time, he wrote, “We arrived at Redding about Christmas or a little before and prepared to build huts for our winter quarters. And now came on the time...
info_outline
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:
Entwined is the first exhibition by my guest Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes, Senior Curator of
Social Histories at Mystic Seaport Museum. She earned her PhD in Anthropology with a focus in Archeology at the University of Connecticut.
Our second guest is Dr. Kathy Hermes, publisher of Connecticut Explored magazine and Project Historian of the award-winning project Uncovering Their History: African, African American and Native American Burials in Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground.
This is the third and final episode in our 2024 series on Connecticut’s maritime history. Don’t miss listening to Episode 182. Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution with best-selling author Eric Jay Dolan and Episode 180. Colonial Connecticut: Sugar, Slavery, and Connections to the West Indies with Dr. Mathew Warshaurer and Dr. Kathy Hermes. Here’s the links to these episodes:
https://gratingthenutmeg.libsyn.com/182-rebels-at-sea-privateering-in-the-american-revolution
Here’s the link to the Seaman’s Protection Certificates-list on the Mystic Seaport website:
https://research.mysticseaport.org/databases/protection/
--------------------------------
Help us make up our loss of state funding and celebrate our 200 episodes by donating $20 a month or $200 annually to help us continue to bring you new episodes every two weeks. It’s easy to set up a monthly donation on the Connecticut Explored website at ctexplored.org Click the donate button at the top and look for the Grating the Nutmeg link. We appreciate your support!
Here's the link to our online benefit auction-valid until Nov. 20, 2024.
https://secure.qgiv.com/event/gtn2024/
Subscribe to get your copy of Connecticut Explored magazine delivered to your mailbox or your inbox-subscribe at ctexplored.org. We’ve got issues coming up on food, celebrations and the environment with places you’ll want to read about and visit. https:/simplecirc.com/subscribe/connecticut-explored
--------------------------------
This episode of Grating the Nutmeg was produced by Mary Donohue and engineered by Patrick O’Sullivan at www.highwattagemedia.com/ Follow GTN on our Facebook, Instagram and Threads pages.
Follow host Mary Donohue on Facebook and Instagram at WeHa Sidewalk Historian. Join us in two weeks for our next episode of Grating the Nutmeg, the podcast of Connecticut history.