200. Erector Sets, Trains and New Haven’s Toymaker A.C. Gilbert
Release Date: 12/19/2024
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...
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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...
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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We did it!! This is our 200th episode of Grating the Nutmeg! Thanks to our listeners, we have travelled across the state during every time period to bring you vivid, fascinating stories from our state’s history. Become a podcast subscriber to get notified every time there’s a new episode!
During this holiday season, it seemed like the perfect time to bring you the story of Connecticut’s biggest toymaker!
Of all the toys that are enshrined in the National Toy of Fame, two stand out as having solid Connecticut connections, the Cabbage Patch doll and the Erector Set. In this episode, we’re going to find out how A.C. Gilbert, a Yale educated doctor, became a millionaire with an idea he got while riding the Metro North train from New Haven to New York City. His construction toy, the Erector Set, sold in the millions and helped to educate generations of scientists and engineers. He came up with dozens of best-selling toys that were all manufactured at his factory in New Haven, Connecticut. We’ll also interview Walter Zawalich, Gilbert Trains Curator, at the Eli Whitney Museum about their holiday Gilbert train show. Co-host Patrick O’Sullivan will share his information on 1965’s James Bond slot car toy that helped to push the company into closing.
Much of today’s information comes from the book The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made, The Life and Times of A.C. Gilbert, the Man Who Saved Christmas by Bruce Watson and the website of the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, Connecticut. The Whitney Museum collects and studies the products and legacy of A.C. Gilbert and his company.
Find out more here: https://www.eliwhitney.org/museum/-gilbert-project/-man/a-c-gilbert-scientific-toymaker-essays-arts-and-sciences-october
The information on the Eli Whitney Train Show is here: https://www.eliwhitney.org/exhibitions/train-display-2024-25
Other museums with train shows:
Connecticut River Museum
https://ctrivermuseum.org/events/steve-cryans-31st-annual-train-show/
Wilton Historical Society
https://wiltonhistorical.org/events/great-train-holiday-show/
To get information about how to visit Erector Square, the A.C.Gilbert Factory complex now adaptively reused as artist studios, go to their website at https://erectorsquarestudios.com/
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This episode of Grating the Nutmeg was produced by Mary Donohue and engineered by Patrick O’Sullivan at https://www.highwattagemedia.com/ Follow GTN on our socials-Facebook, Instagram , Threads, and BlueSky.
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